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Friday, February 22, 2013

President Obamas plan of closing Guantanamo Bay halted by 9/11 terrorism trial


Pre-trial hearings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind who the Obama administration wanted to try in downtown Manhattan, resumed this week at Guantánamo Bay.

House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said that bipartisan opposition prevented the administration from closing the prison when Democrats held majorities in both chambers of Congress.
“If he wants to try again, that is his choice,” McKeon, who has helped lead GOP efforts to block transfers of Gitmo detainees in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), said in a statement to The Hill.

An Obama campaign official said that closing Guantánamo remains a priority for the president, and that he is committed to closing it in a second term.

The official noted that even while Gitmo remains open, the Obama administration has reduced the detainee population. Mitt Romney supports keeping the prison open and increasing its size, the official said.
Democratic aides in Congress acknowledge it would be difficult to gain enough support to close the military prison while Republicans retain control of the House. But they say that some traction has been made on the issue in the past year.
Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said that the administration’s failed attempts to close the prison have been disappointing. But she believes Obama remains serious and would try again in a second term.
“I don’t think he wants to go down in history as man who promised to go close down Guantánamo and didn’t,” Prasow said.



Guantánamo opponents say there’s new reason for optimism, as a federal appeals court this week threw out a conviction from Gitmo’s military tribunals of bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan.
The court tossed the conviction against Hamdan because he was charged with a law created in 2006, and he committed the crime of providing material support to terrorists from 1996-2001.

Prasow said the ruling could throw into doubt future convictions at Guantánamo’s military tribunals.
“This could very well be the pivotal piece with respect to how Congress and the current administration review what the long-term effect of having Guantánamo remain open will be,” said Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Even if there was a shift in Congress on military tribunals at Guantánamo, however, the question of moving detainees onto U.S. soil is perhaps the trickiest of all.
“It is a political reality, if they come to the U.S. they’re going to have to go into somebody’s congressional district, some senator’s state,” said a Democratic aide who supports closing the prison. “So those are difficult issues.”