American laws and values do not permit Secretary Austin or anyone else to erase the judicial impact of the torture the U.S. inflicted on the defendants. One might say that for this reason prosecutorial failure was baked into the initial design of the commissions. Given this, there is no just or even effective resolution other than Austin’s withdrawal of his objection to the acceptance of the plea agreements. We urge him to exercise his authority to restore the plea deal, if that is possible at this point, and to use the opportunity to educate the public by explaining why a plea deal is the best the system can possibly hope to produce, given the history of torture, and to move swiftly through the defendants to resolve cases though additional guilty pleas, transfers, and any other means of emptying the Guantanamo Bay prison camp on the path toward shutting it down for good.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240821121023/https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/Secreary-Austin's-Fateful-GTMO-Plea-Deals-Decision