Your View: Support fair trials for Gitmo, Bagram prisoners


By Bruce Magnuson, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia


As a former resident of Mankato now living in Saudi Arabia, I want to state that I strongly feel that we must close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


This prison has been a holding place for people for quite a long time, and the people there have still not had a chance to defend themselves in court. I don’t know if any person there is innocent or guilty, but it is wrong to detain someone and hold him or her without charge for that many years without charging him or her with a crime and without giving the person a chance to defend himself/herself in a courtroom.

Unfortunately, this is also the case of the prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The people there are just being held in limbo. They’re not being charged with anything or being given fair trials. It’s true that it is in a theater of war but some of the people there were actually moved into the theater of war from other places.

I urge everyone to support fair trials for the prisoners at Guantanamo and at Bagram Air Base. Any prisoner found guilty can be sentenced and any prisoner found innocent can be released.