Just because Obama wants GITMO to close doesn’t mean he will be able to do it any time soon. Remember when George Bush also said he wanted GITMO closed about two years ago? Well, he did, and then he didn’t do anything about it because he secretly wanted it to remain open. I doubt very much that Obama wants to keep that horrible prison open, but his aides say to not expect any movement on that soon. Part of the problem might be simple prioritization. He will have a lot to do once he takes office. The following is from Anti-war.com
Though newspapers have been reporting all day that President-elect Barack Obama intends to move swiftly to close the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as soon as he takes office, sending detainees to face criminal trials in the US, his aides are suggesting that the incoming administration isn’t close to any such decision.
According to the Chicago Tribune, foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough says Obama shares the “broad bipartisan belief that Guantanamo should be closed,” but that there is “absolutely no truth to reports that a decision has been made” about how to do that, nor is there even any process in place to make such a decision.
The Obama Administration will be under growing pressure to act once he takes office, with the ACLU planning a $500,000 advertising campaign to pressure Obama to close the base by executive order. But obstacles will make the move politically difficult.
After years of detention in questionable conditions under dubious legality, trials in US criminal courts are likely to struggle with legal issues.
However, according to Time magazine, Obama is planning to close Guantanamo and is “quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.”
So which is it? We likely won’t know for a few months. According to Free Speech Radio news today, Obama has a “blueprint” for closing Guantanamo. Not true, his aides say. I would believe that Obama has a plan to close it and is waiting to announce it for various political reasons. From his meeting today in the White House with President Bush, it looks like Bush is in the mood to make deals. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he might sign more orders that are impossible for Obama to overturn during his first term in office. Or, it’s possible that Obama just isn’t willing to overturn them. There may be an entirely new court system set up to deal with the prisoners. The Obama administration would have to gather a lot of information and categorization of prisoners before any plans could be done. The Pentagon has not been open about who is at GITMO and why. Another problem in dealing with the prisoners might be that several of them were tortured and they will have to be treated with some type of compensation or formal apology. Then arrangements for repatriation will have to be completed before anyone can be let go.
Several GITMO prisoners have already been found innocent, or their charge thrown out of court, most recently the prisoner Mohammed Jawad who was captured as a teenager, gravely wounded, and may very well not be guilty of what he was accused of. His “confession” was thrown out because it was determined it was gotten due to torture.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — In a first, a military judge ruled on Tuesday that a Guantanamo detainee’s confession was extracted through torture, and excluded it from the trial of a young Afghan detainee at the war court.
Afghan police threatened the family of teenager Mohammed Jawad while he was undergoing interrogation at a Kabul police station, said Army Col. Stephen Henley, the judge, in a three-page ruling.
Jawad, now facing trial by military commission, is accused of throwing a grenade inside an Afghan bazaar in December 2002, which wounded two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter. None were killed.
Henley found in the ruling that there was reason to believe Jawad was under the influence of drugs at the time of his capture and forced confession.
He also accepted the accused’s account of how he was threatened, while armed senior Afghan officials allied with U.S. forces watched his interrogation.
“You will be killed if you do not confess to the grenade attack,” the detainee quoted an interrogator as saying. “We will arrest your family and kill them if you do not confess.”
Jawad confessed, was turned over to U.S. forces and was transferred to Guantanamo two months later.
The judge said he was accepting Jawad’s account of what happened to him because the government had been unable to provide timely disclosure of evidence for the coming war crimes trial, scheduled for Jan. 5. A Jawad case prosecutor recently quit the war court to protest over his inability to provide potentially exculpatory evidence.
Tuesday’s ruling was the first at the war court to exclude a confession on grounds of torture using the international standard, noted attorney Jamil Dakwar, a military commissions observer with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Whatever happens to these prisoners, they need to be let go or tried in a U.S. court. Their current status is a sad reflection on the attempts by the Bush administration to overturn our most basic laws and Congress’s complicity in allowing this.
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