The US Detention Center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has a giftshop. As reported by Mary Ann Akers‘ blog The Sleuth for the Washington Post, the highly controversial Gitmo detainee operations center sells T-Shirts, windbreakers and baseball caps to visiting journalists reporting on the facility. Apparently military base officials were thrilled to have reporters buying up their wares as souvenirs for the folks back home in transactions that have redefined the term “crass commercialism”.

Thankfully, the future of the detainee facility is now in serious doubt due to yesterday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling which restored the right of habeas corpus to enemy combatants imprisoned at the center, reaffirming their right to a fair trial in a United States Federal Court. The ruling struck down the Bush Administration’s efforts to confine any judicial review of the prisoner’s cases to kangaroo courts military tribunals set up at the facility.

You can takepart in ensuring that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center are treated fairly and in accordance with both the US Constitution and International Law by logging onto Human Rights Watch, the largest human rights organization in the United States that has played a key role in keeping the world informed and advocated the fair treatment of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

LINKS:

BlogJunkies: Get Your Gitmo Gear

Think Progress: Get Your Gitmo Gear

The Sleuth: My Husband Went to Gitmo and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt