Gitmo: Holding post-9/11 detainees since January 11, 2002
(When the
first batch of 20 arrived)
U.S. Transfers First
Guantánamo Detainee Under Trump, Who Vowed to Fill It
WASHINGTON (NY
TIMES) – May 6, 2018: The Pentagon has
transferred one Guantánamo Bay detainee (prisoner) to the custody of Saudi
Arabia. The handoff is the first detainee who has left Gitmo under Trump, the
candidate who once vowed to fill it back up but has now instead overseen a
reduction in its population.
Reminder of that aspect and showing the difference
between Obama and Trump, in part here from
NPR (November 14, 2016):
Obama all along has promised
to close Gitmo, even since his second day in office back in 2009, and he
repeated that pledge again in February 2016, saying as before: “I'm
absolutely committed to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo.”
Meanwhile at a campaign
rally in Sparks, NV (on that same day), Trump was promising just the opposite
telling the crowd: “This morning, I watched President Obama
talking about Gitmo, right, Guantanamo Bay, which by the way, which by the way,
we are keeping open. Which we are keeping open ... and we're gonna load it up
with some bad dudes, believe me, we're gonna load it up.”
Ben Wittes, Editor of the national
security blog Lawfare wrote: “You have to ask the
question, with whom, because the U.S. is not fighting ground wars and taking
prisoners like it once did.”
Wittes also wondered how Trump expects
to load up Guantanamo with bad dudes, saying: “Trump's stated
military strategy and ambition are so hard to figure out that it's not at all
clear to me what the captive population that would be subject to being moved to
Guantanamo is, who they would be or where they would come from.”
Noteworthy: If it were up to Trump, suspects
might actually come from the United States just like when he was asked that summer
by the Miami Herald if Americans accused of terrorism should be tried
by military commissions in Guantanamo, Trump quickly endorsed such a policy.
Trump said in part then: “I
know that they want to try them in our regular court systems, and I don't like
that at all. I don't like that at all. I would say they could be tried there,
that'll be fine.”
Memo for
Mr. Trump:
Under current U.S. law,
American citizens cannot, in fact, be held in Guantanamo, much less tried
there.
Proponents
for closing Guantanamo are demanding that Obama fulfill his promise before
Trump takes over on January 20, 2017.
At least one online video counted down
the days Obama had left in office that featured a new anthem with the refrain:
“Close Guantanamo, Close Guantanamo.”
It didn’t work, however.
As far as
the detainee released, Ahmed Muhammed Haza al-Darbi, it is highly unlikely he would
even be set free soon in Saudi Arabia.
American
officials intend for him to serve the roughly nine years remaining in a 13-year
sentence he received after pleading guilty before a military commission to
terrorism-related offenses involving a 2002 al-Qaeda attack on a
French-flagged oil tanker off Yemen’s coast.
Al-Darbi said in a prepared statement
from his volunteer lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University
of New York: “My words will not do justice to what I lived
through in these years and to the men I leave behind in prison. No one should
remain at Guantánamo without a trial. There is no justice in that.”
Al-Darbi’s departure leaves 40 detainees still at
Guantánamo, down from 41 when Obama left office. The transfer comes as the
Trump administration has been struggling to fulfill Trump’s strong desire (and now his official order) to back up his
chest-thumping campaign rhetoric about filling Guantánamo with “bad dudes” and
keeping it open – that even as counterterrorism and security professionals, including Sec. Def. Jim Mattis have all
repeatedly argued that other approaches made more practical sense.
We shall see
what Trump’s next promise will be, or not.
Thanks for
stopping by.
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