Kicking out of his way the dark legacy of Bush administration President Barack Obama on Thursday outlawed torture as US policy and ordered closure of the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison. He directed immediate review of the 245 detainees still being held there "to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted".
He also prohibited the CIA to maintain its overseas prisons under the practice called rendition. But it is not clear if the Kabul-based Bagram Airbase prison camp, where some 600 inmates are held without trial, and other such facilities that host governments own as their own come under that ban. President Obama also ordered suspension of torture techniques, specially invented by the CIA to deal with the 9/11 suspects, like isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, water boarding and sexual humiliation - that are in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Instead, he wants the detaining officials should follow the US Army Field Manual while interrogating terrorist suspects. That his promise that ideals will not be bartered away for 'safety' materialised within a short span of two days indeed speaks of the measure of the man Barack Obama is.
He also set up a task force to firm up a framework to carry out his orders for which the outer time limit is one year. The possibility that some innocent detainees, who of course many are, may have to wait for many more days to be free is quite frustrating. But what the new president has done is no less consoling and encouraging.
Of the detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison five or more, the exact number remains mystery, are Pakistanis. They, probably, belong to that contingent of 369 who were handed over to the CIA by ex-president, Pervez Musharraf in return for "bounties totalling millions of dollars". Enumerating his "most important victories" in the war on terror in his memoir, In The Line Of Fire, he dared those "who habitually accuse us of not doing enough should ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan".
One of these unfortunate ones was Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the erstwhile Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, whose story of capture and hand-over is too shameful to be recounted. Mullah Zaeef wants President Obama to prosecute those who were involved in persecution of Guantanamo Bay inmates. Some 600 prisoners are being detained at the Bagram and many more at other US bases in Afghanistan. Lal Gul Lal, head of Afghanistan Human Rights Organisation, wants the detainees to be handed over to the inmates' countries. As the air of freedom would permeate hopes will rise.
The 9/11 tragedy touched every heart, everywhere including Muslim populations. Only patently insane people took joy out of that massacre of the innocents irrespective of the victims' colour and creed. But the way Bush Administration organised its revenge was no less horrifying. If the crumbling Twin Towers was a ghastly sight no less macabre was the treatment of hooded inmates of the Guantanamo Bay or sexual humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghuraib jail in Baghdad.
By keeping alive the ghost of 9/11 by colour-coded alerts the Bush administration had silenced not only the US Congress but also the American media and civil society. People were snatched of their basic freedoms and their rights in the name of ensuring national security. The law called habeas corpus was removed from the statute books. By ordering closure of both the CIA's open and secret prisons President Obama has upheld the rule of law and restored his country's constitution. And from a distant perspective, his bold decision would indeed help restore America's image and improve its rating as a free society.