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Guantanamo 2

Flickr / Rennet Stowe

President Obama has ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by January 2010. To meet that deadline, the administration may push for a new detention facility on U.S. soil. Such a compound, sources tell AP, would include space for the indefinite detention of prisoners deemed too dangerous to face trial.

It would also house a court where detainees could be tried on the premises. Both the military and the Justice Department would be involved, and it seems detainees would be tried in a civilian or military system, depending on what suits the government.

The cheaper alternative of simply transferring Gitmo inmates into the existing justice system is considered politically unfeasible. Congress already has blocked one effort to bring detainees to the U.S.

AP via Google:

The administration’s plan, according to three government officials, calls for:

—Moving all the Guantanamo detainees to a single U.S. prison. The Justice Department has identified between 60 and 80 who could be prosecuted, either in military or federal criminal courts. The Pentagon would oversee the detainees who would face trial in military tribunals. The Bureau of Prisons, an arm of the Justice Department, would manage defendants in federal courts.

—Building a court facility within the prison site where military or criminal defendants would be tried. Doing so would create a single venue for almost all the criminal defendants, ending the need to transport them elsewhere in the U.S. for trial.

—Providing long-term holding cells for a small but still undetermined number of detainees who will not face trial because intelligence and counterterror officials conclude they are too dangerous to risk being freed.

—Building immigration detention cells for detainees ordered released by courts but still behind bars because countries are unwilling to take them.

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TAGS: congress detainees guantanamo law military obama pentagon prison rights

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By RAE, August 4 at 1:10 pm #

Is it just me or is it true that there seems to be, in the USA, not a separation of church and state, but a separation of CONGRESS and the people.

Reading stuff here in Truthdig can lead only to the conclusion that what “the people” want is irrelevant. It is Congress (& the Senate) while appearing to go through the motions of leadership are instead just running their own little kingdom. Oh sure you can call and write and lobby but in the end they pretty much dismiss the “peoples’ wishes” to engineer the end result they want for reasons that almost always remain a mystery. (One can guess of course that those who REALLY run things - Big “everything” - whispers in their ears and they respond with “how high?”)

I’m not sure what role/game the POTUS & staff play - they either seem to be way behind or way out in front of the people - but in any case it’s what goes on behind the scenes from unnamed, mysterious sources that really pulls the strings.

Just my imagination?

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By DBM, August 3 at 8:57 pm #

Good point neutron ... and good points all. It is amazing that this farce can continue. That all the legislators have objected to having the Guantanamo detainees in their states and districts is incredibly cowardly. These are the guys who support other people’s children fighting in wars? ... and they can’t have even potentially innocent men housed in a nearby supermax prison??

I have heard the the actual incidence of Americans suffering an injury or death from terrorism in the last 10 years (including 9/11) is a bit less than being hit by lightning.

If the previous administration has rendered these people “untriable” then the risk of them going free is the price to be paid for commiting the horrendous crime of torture.

It is likely that the “danger” their trials pose is the danger of Americans being prosecuted for torture. This is not news to the rest of world living outside the American media bubble.

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By Mr. Neutron, August 3 at 5:29 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I find it ironic that some will proclaim loudly how patriotic it is to send our troops overseas to “fight terrorists,” riding around with a magnetic ribbon on their SUV proudly saying that we should “support our troops” and, by extension, be thankful for the ultimate sacrifice many have made will continue to make.

But when asked to support this cause by accepting the transfer of “terrorists” into our nation’s judicial system, that’s a sacrifice they just can’t make. Guess they’re no magnetic ribbons for that one.

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By Lou, August 3 at 4:08 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Yet another Obama promise will be broken - this time by his cowardly fellow “Democ-rats.”
Where’s the surprise here?
It is a mystery, as other commenters have mentioned below, how someone can be “deemed too dangerous to face trial” before they have even had a trial.
Isn’t a trial supposed to prove guilt or innocence? And who deems these prisoners so? Alberto Gonzales or Dick Cheney?
It really appears to me that the Bush-Cheney way of running America has not ended.
Those two really did an incredibly amount of damage to what used to be a democracy.
Now we are just a bloated, corrupt banana republic.

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By dihey, August 3 at 4:08 pm #

This is a strange interpretation of the verb “closing”. I would call it “moving”.

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By RAE, August 3 at 1:37 pm #

I, for one, “and I am unanimous in this,” see little difference between the illegality of a 100% violation of each prisoner’s basic right to a fair and speedy trial and the illegality of perhaps piling them onto a huge transport plane and flying them back and forth across the Bermuda Triangle until they all just “disappear.”

Moving them from prison in Gitmo to a prison in the USA without proceeding to either trial or release is about as an irrelevant and transparent move as I can think of. What the hell’s the point?

I guess when you’re holding all the guns and are the size of the USA you just don’t give a rat’s ass about having a ZERO credibility rating with the rest of the world.

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By Jim Yell, August 3 at 9:02 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I must ask about the statement in this aritcle “too dangerous for trial”. How is someone too dangerous to allow a trial? The point of a trial is to give the accused a chance to answer the charges against them.

This is the basic concept of our society or was until the Republicans forgot that the President is not a dictator and that Congress is not supposed to focus only on Corporate America when writing laws.

I am no lover of those who blew up the World Trade Building, full of a lot of average working people just trying to get by. If any of these people had a hand in 9/11 I have little sympathy for them, but let us face the truth our government has lied about this business from the very beginning and continues to lie. We hold many people who could not be held if we knew complete lack of evidence for their being held.

The war party, the dishonest war party aka Republican Party wants a large amount of people held in order to justify their complete disregard and disrepect for our government process, for our liberties, for our rights. Are we so degraded that we can’t recognize this?

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