Trump vows to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he would keep Guantanamo Bay open, breaking from his predecessor Barack Obama's lengthy and ultimately failed efforts to shutter the maligned detention facility.

"I just signed an order directing Secretary Mattis to reexamine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay," Trump said, in his State of the Union address to Congress, in keeping with a campaign promise.

Under president George W. Bush, the US military hastily constructed a prison camp on Guantanamo Bay, located on the US naval base on the eastern tip of Cuba, in the months following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

At first, inmates were held in cages and fenced in with razor wire, and conditions for the orange jumpsuit-clad detainees provoked a global outcry in 2002.

That early facility, known as Camp X-Ray, was soon replaced with more permanent structures and today, Guantanamo Bay consists of numerous high-security prison buildings.

At the height of its operations after 9/11, the facility held 780 people, detained mostly for their alleged ties to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Since then, hundreds have been transferred back to their home countries or other places.

Some of the most notorious inmates, including several alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, among them accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are still awaiting trial.

Their cases have been beset by legal woes at Guantanamo, where a bespoke criminal justice system grants detainees -- who are considered "unprivileged enemy belligerents" -- only some of the legal rights that US federal courts guarantee.

Of the 41 inmates remaining at Guantanamo, about 26 are trapped in legal purgatory.

These so-called "forever prisoners" have never been charged -- yet they have been deemed too dangerous to release.

Some were cleared for release under Obama, but have been stranded at Guantanamo under the Trump administration.

'BAD DUDES' 

On the campaign trail, Trump famously vowed he would load Guantanamo with "bad dudes," and said it would be "fine" if US terror suspects were sent there for trial.

In 2009, soon after he was sworn in, Obama ordered the prison to be closed within a year, and no new inmate has been sent there since early 2008.

Political bickering, vehement Republican opposition and foreign allies' reluctance to take in the prisoners meant Obama could not close Guantanamo, though the population dropped from 242 to 41 under his watch.

Since becoming president, Trump has toyed with the idea of sending Americans to Guantanamo, though federal judges would likely bar any such attempt.

In October, he suggested that the man accused of carrying out a deadly truck attack along a bike path in New York could be sent to Guantanamo, but he later backed off the idea.

Another case that could potentially bring Guantanamo into legal focus is that of a US citizen who was captured in Syria and had allegedly been fighting for the Islamic State group.

The man, whose name has not been released, is apparently being held in Iraq.

The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up his case and a federal judge has ruled that the US must give it advance notice before transferring the man overseas.

That would allow time for the ACLU to mount a legal challenge.

bur-oh/dc

source: news.abs-cbn.com

9/11 defendants ask for 'Zero Dark Thirty' court screening

WASHINGTON - The five alleged 9/11 plotters should be allowed the same access to classified information as the makers of 2012 hit film "Zero Dark Thirty," a US military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay was to hear this week.

In a series of pre-trial hearings from Monday, the tribunal was to consider the request made in July by defense attorney James Connell, who asked that 20 minutes of the film be aired in court.

"At this point, we just want to get the same items they gave to Hollywood," Connell -- who represents Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi -- told AFP. Ali's co-defendants support the request.

Ali -- the nephew of the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed -- is accused of helping organize logistics for the airplane strikes on New York and Washington.

"Zero Dark Thirty" features a character closely resembling Ali, who is identified as a detainee subjected to torture in a secret Central Intelligence Agency prison.

The 20 minutes of the film at issue show a prisoner named "Ammar" being subjected to simulated drowning, being locked naked in a coffin and stripped and tied with a dog collar in a secret CIA prison.

Ali's lawyers claim the CIA must have given the film's director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal more information about Ali's detention than they were, and that they deserve access to that information.

The organization Judicial Watch accused the Obama administration of giving the Hollywood filmmakers "unusual access to classified intelligence information, including the names of CIA operatives involved" in the May 2011 raid to kill Osama bin Laden.

Connell told AFP he had provided a DVD of the segment of the film he would like the court to see, but was not sure his request would be granted.

He claims prosecutors have given him no information about Ali's arrest, detention or interrogation, but that "documents show" the CIA gave that information to the filmmakers.

The issue is one of several to be taken up this week at the military tribunal.

Monday's hearing was held behind closed doors but other hearings are to be broadcast on a closed-circuit feed to journalists at Fort Meade, outside Washington.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Obama eyes Guantanamo envoy but closure path thorny

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama may name a new envoy as a first step toward honoring his renewed pledge to close Guantanamo Bay, but the path to shuttering the "war on terror" camp seems as intractable as ever.

With more than half of the inmates on a hunger strike, Obama said the situation was "not sustainable" in rare comments Tuesday on a jail that stained the US image and that he promised, and failed to close in his first term.

A day later, the White House was under pressure to explain exactly how Obama planned to do things differently for the George W. Bush-era facility.

Spokesman Jay Carney said the president was considering naming a new senior State Department official to work to transfer some of the 166 inmates still in the camp and on the way to close it.

"There are a number of things that we can do," said Carney.

"One of the options available to us that we're examining is reappointing a senior official at the State Department to renew our focus again on repatriating or transferring detainees that we determine can be returned to their home countries or third countries."

The previous envoy, Daniel Fried, was reassigned by the agency earlier this year and no new official has been named. The White House had apparently quietly halted the near-impossible chance of closing Guantanamo.

But the task any envoy would face remains daunting.

The White House again accused Congress of blocking Obama's efforts to close the camp, by restricting its plans to transfer inmates deemed too dangerous for release to a planned top security jail in the United States or to try prisoners in civilian courts.

Congress has also restricted funds that Obama could use to transfer inmates cleared for release to their home countries.

"We will work with Congress to try to persuade them of the overriding national security interests as well as economic interests in closing Guantanamo Bay," Carney said.

But a majority of lawmakers, particularly Republicans, have insisted the jail should stay open, that the detainees are too dangerous to hold on the US mainland and that the suspects should only be tried before military tribunals.

Some human rights and legal advocacy groups, along with some lawmakers, also complain that Obama has not exhausted the power he already has to free inmates.

Congress in 2012 gave Obama the power to waive, on national security grounds, limits it placed on his ability to transfer inmates who are deemed suitable for release.

"The administration has never certified a single transfer," said Howard "Buck" McKeon, Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

"Contrary to what President Obama has implied, there are no restrictions on releasing detainees who have won their habeas cases in federal court."

Carney sidestepped a question as to why Obama had yet to use that waiver power.

But any decision to do so would require a political leap of faith, as the secretary of defense would have to certify that the detainee would not engage in terrorism or act against the United States in the future.

Obama has also complicated matters further by maintaining a moratorium against sending cleared detainees back to Yemen -- about half of the inmates still at Guantanamo hail from the troubled country.

The moratorium was imposed after an attempt to down a US airliner in Detroit on December 25, 2009 was traced back to Al-Qaeda's franchise in Yemen.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, concerned about the impact of the hunger strikes, urged Obama in a letter last week to reconsider the moratorium.

"The fact that so many detainees have now been held at Guantanamo for over a decade and their belief that there is still no end in sight for them is a reason there is a growing problem of more and more detainees on a hunger strike," Feinstein said in a letter to National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.

"I believe it would be prudent to revisit the decision to halt transfers to Yemen and assess whether President (Abdrabuh Mansur) Hadi's government, with appropriate assistance, would be able to securely hold detainees in Sanaa."

Carney said the situation was under review, but "the moratorium remains in place."

The task is also complicated by the fact that the administration's effort to try the most dangerous inmates -- including accused September 11 attacks plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- in civil court has failed.

He is now facing a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay.

Another category of inmates is also holding up the closure of the camp -- those who are deemed too dangerous to be released, but who cannot be tried because evidence against them may have been extracted by harsh interrogation methods branded by critics of torture.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com