Citing Religious Beliefs, Muslim Gitmo Inmates Object To Female Guards : NPR

I am with General Kelly on this, apart from his comment on whether the prisoners beliefs reflect Islamic teachings (Supreme Court of Canada approach of assessing whether beliefs are sincere, and whether they infringe on rights of others is preferred, rather than commenting on theology).

The right of prisoners has to be balanced between the right of the guards, and I suspect the prisoners are making more of a political point than a religious one.

Of course, in the overall context of due process and respect for human rights at Gitmo, this is minor:

Ruiz says his client refuses to leave his cell if women are on the escort team because Muslim men can only touch women they’re related to.

“It means that we are not able to meet, we are not able to speak with each other on legal issues, and therefore I’m not able to provide the legal services that I am required to provide and the advocacy that I’m required to provide on his behalf,” Ruiz says. “It’s an access to counsel issue.”

Today, no female guards are allowed to handle the defendants in the Sept. 11 case. The judge presiding in that trial, Col. James Pohl, has refused to lift his restraining order.

At a recent Senate hearing, New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte criticized the judge’s decision.

“When the 9-11 attackers don’t want women guarding them, it’s absurd, and I don’t think we should be accommodating that,” she said.

Ayotte directed her remark to Gen. John Kelly, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, who’s in charge of Guantanamo. Kelly told Ayotte he disagreed with the judge’s order, but there was nothing he could do about it. He suggested the judge had been misled.

“Because the high-value detainees felt it was against their religion, which anyone that knows anything about the Muslim religion knows that it’s not against their religion,” Kelly said.

The general said the five Sept. 11 defendants and their lawyers were manipulating the court trying their case.

“And as soon as this is over, it’ll be, ‘We don’t want to be touched by Jews, or we don’t want to be touched by, you know, black soldiers, or we don’t want to be touched by Roman Catholics,” Kelly said. “It’s beyond me why we even consider some of these requests.”

Ruiz, the lawyer for one of the defendants, finds that comment telling.

“When General Kelly makes that kind of statement, it’s very clear that he doesn’t really understand what is happening in the detention center that they’re supposed to be supervising,” Ruiz says.

And that’s not the only issue, says David Nevin, who represents alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Nevin says it’s also a matter of showing respect for a well-established tenet of Islam.

“There’s a problem, a religious problem, protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, with having women touch men,” Nevin says. “It’s just something that’s not done.”

Citing Religious Beliefs, Muslim Gitmo Inmates Object To Female Guards : NPR.