Update on Gitmo closing prospects here from the Wall Street Journal with this headline (September 17, 2022):
“Biden Administration Quietly
Steps Up Effort to Close Guantanamo”
Special representative named to oversee efforts to
transfer detainees out of the military facility in Guantanamo, Cuba: The U.S.
has held foreign terrorists there since it opened in 2002.
WASHINGTON — The
Biden administration is revamping its effort to close the Guantanamo Bay
prison, for the first time appointing a senior diplomat to oversee detainee
transfers and signaling it won’t interfere with plea negotiations that could
resolve the long-stalled prosecution of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka: KSM) and
four of his co-defendants.
President Biden, after taking a low-profile approach to the matter for his first
year in office to avoid political controversy, now is moving closer to
fulfilling a campaign promise to shut down the facility.
Gitmo (common nickname) is in Cuba and it was set
up in January 2002 to house alleged foreign terrorists captured overseas
following the 9/11 attack, and it has held nearly 800 men since then.
As of now, only 36 detainees
remain at the facility. That at is after hundreds were returned to their homeland
or resettled in third countries during the administrations of George W.
Bush and Barack Obama. The newest detainee arrived in 2008; thus some
have been held for two decades.
Nine of the remaining detainees are defendants in military commission proceedings.
That includes five accused of
conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, hijacking, or hazarding a vessel
One example is Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri: He has as been charged with perfidy,
murder in violation of the law of war, terrorism, conspiracy, and hazarding a
vessel in planning attacks on three vessels, including the 2000 bombing of the
USS Cole that killed 17 sailors.
That case is now under serious review affecting al-Nashiri
that was reported on here from the Washington Post in 2019.
Three other detainees
have been convicted by military commissions, including two via plea bargains.
The first is Abd
al-Hadi al Iraqi: He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and violation of the law
of war and is awaiting sentencing.
The second is Ali
Hamza al-Bahlul: He is serving a life term for providing material support
for terrorism, solicitation and conspiracy.
The third is Majid
Khan: He made a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to conspiracy, murder
in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war,
and spying. He became a government co-operator and completed his sentence in
March.
Four detainees
are being held indefinitely without charge because authorities consider them a
security risk.
Twenty others
have been cleared for transfer by a review board including defense,
intelligence and law-enforcement officials, but moving the men out has proven
harder than the Biden team expected.
Some critics of the Biden
administration’s action on closing the prison, both within and outside the
administration, say newer crises have been occupying the national security
staff, and the potential for being branded soft-on-terrorism has slowed the
administration’s efforts, they say.
The White House is seeking to avoid the kind of backlash that stymied Obama’s plans after his high-profile calls to shut the prison down.
Congress
responded to the Obama administration’s effort to close the prison in 2010 by
passing a ban on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S.
FYI: Gitmo costs some $540 million a year to operate, according
to a University of PA study (the Penn study) including about $100 million for military commissions.
That comes to $15 million
per detainee, and that is compared to about $78,000 a year for an inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary
at Florence, CO, where non-war captured detainees, and high-security convicts are held.
The Bush administration transferred more than 500 detainees from Guantanamo before 2009, and the Obama administration transferred nearly 200 more.
Only one transfer, which had been negotiated during the Obama era, took place during the Trump administration.
Forty detainees were at Guantanamo when Biden
took office.
Harvey Rishikof, a
former head of the military-commissions apparatus who helped draft a recent report on closing the facility from the
University of PA Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law said: “The Biden administration doesn’t want
to look like it’s soft on terrorism and is awaiting a political consensus.”
This more-detailed article continues here.
My 2 Cents: Not much to add to this updated story except to say
just image that any of our VN era POWs, who were labeled as “War criminals or
accused of war crimes were still being held in Hanoi?”
The outrage would be
tremendous – so why isn’t this after over 20 years not an outrage now?
In my opinion, I say it’s
time to close Gitmo. Process and try those lingering who have been charged with
crimes, and let’s move on with justice that we say we take pride in achieving.
Thanks for stopping by.
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