Former Guantanamo Detainee Convicted in Italy

A court in Milan has convicted and sentenced to six years in prison a former Guantanamo detainee originally from Tunisia, the Associated Press reports. It's another case that seems to me to beg the question of how we define success as we navigate the benefits and perils of long-term detention, transfers to foreign governments, and criminal trials of various sorts. The detainee in question was transferred from Guantanamo in 2009. The upside? He's not our problem any more, and for now, he's incapacitated. The downside? He went from a status in which we could lawfully secure his incapacitation long-term to one in which he has a fixed and relatively short sentence--even assuming his appeals fail. I think this sort of tradeoff is probably reasonable, particularly if one believes the individual in question poses only a modest threat. But it is a tradeoff, and we should be candid about it.