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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObama admin expects more inmates will be transferred from GITMO this year
(Reuters) - The Obama administration expects more inmates will be transferred from the Guantanamo Bay military prison this year, a U.S. official said on Thursday, despite the political firestorm over the exchange of five Taliban detainees for the last American soldier held in Afghanistan.
"There are a significant number of transfers in the pipeline at various stages, and I think you are going to be seeing substantial progress this year," a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told a briefing for reporters on moves toward closing the base.
The official declined to say how many of the 149 prisoners still at the U.S. detention center at the naval base in Cuba are up for transfer. Seventy-eight - including 58 Yemenis and four Afghans - have been approved to be released without charge.
Current U.S. law does not allow any prisoners to be moved to the United States from Guantanamo, for trial in federal courts or any other reason, even medical emergency.
read: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-usa-afghanistan-bergdahl-guantanamo-idUSKBN0EG2Y020140605
morningfog
(18,115 posts)Lint Head
(15,064 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)They are all "terrorists", after all. And "terrorists" have to pay, regardless of lack of evidence or due process.
Cha
(298,018 posts)Cha
(298,018 posts)alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)Open the gates, and let the detainees make their own way. Maybe Cuba will hold them. Maybe not.
Test the Congress. Obama can't allocate funds to transfer the detainees, but he's still Commander-in-Chief, and can order on a dime the complete departure of all US troops at Gitmo.
he should do it with a 3 months timeframe, and dare the GOP to stop it.
delrem
(9,688 posts)I'm fucking well SICK of the indifference USians have to any somehow sane concept of international law.
undeterred
(34,658 posts)bigtree
(86,016 posts)delrem
(9,688 posts)Please explain.
bigtree
(86,016 posts)I'm giving you my opinion on what I believe will happen.
I'll leave all of the histrionics to you and anyone else shocked that politics might play a role in the fate of these prisoners.
Do some reading on the history of congress' steadily more restrictive legislation tying the president's hands on the transfer or release of prisoners almost each and every year this president has been in office.
here's a good article:
Why Obama Can't Close Guantanamo
National Security Policy Is Foiled by Congressional Politics and Bureaucratic Infighting
Congress has used its spending oversight authority both to forbid the White House from financing trials of Guantánamo captives on U.S. soil and to block the acquisition of a state prison in Illinois to hold captives currently held in Cuba who would not be put on trial -- a sort of Guantánamo North. The current defense bill now before Congress not only reinforces these restrictions but moves to mandate military detention for most future al Qaeda cases unless the president signs a waiver. The White House withdrew a veto threat on the eve of likely passage Wednesday, saying the latest language gives the executive enough wiggle room to avoid military custody.
On paper, at least, the Obama administration would be set to release almost half the current captives at Guantánamo. The 2009 Task Force Review concluded that about 80 of the 171 detainees now held at Guantánamo could be let go if their home country was stable enough to help resettle them or if a foreign country could safely give them a new start.
But Congress has made it nearly impossible to transfer captives elsewhere. Legislation passed since Obama took office has created a series of roadblocks that mean that only a federal court order or a national security waiver issued by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta could trump Congress and permit the release of a detainee to another country.
Neither is likely: U.S. District Court judges are not ruling in favor of captives in the dozens of unlawful detention suits winding their way from Cuba to the federal court in Washington. And on the occasions when those judges have ruled for detainees, the U.S. Court of Appeals has consistently overruled them in an ever-widening definition of who can be held as an affiliate of al Qaeda or the Taliban . . .
Meanwhile, Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's top lawyer, believes that Congress crafted the transfer waivers a year ago in such a way that Panetta (and Robert Gates before him) would be ill-advised to sign them. (In essence, the Secretary of Defense is supposed to guarantee that the detainee would never in the future engage in violence against any American citizen or U.S. interest.)
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136781/carol-rosenberg/why-obama-cant-close-guantanamo?page=show
delrem
(9,688 posts)I had no ill intent.
I can't imagine what "histrionics" you attribute to me, in these circumstances.
I think that you and I should consider this discussion closed.
bigtree
(86,016 posts). . . take the info and expand on it. You and I 'discussing it' won't inform you as much as you can inform yourself.
Consider what Congress has done seriously, because that's the key to understanding why the President is having so much trouble fulfilling his promise to end the facility.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Funny how that happened, eh?
Either try the men in a US court, or set them free.
struggle4progress
(118,379 posts)Number of prisoners as of 28 May 2013: 166
Number of prisoners as of 5 June 2014: 149
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/USLS-Fact-Sheet-Gitmo-Numbers.pdf
http://www.bu.edu/today/2013/gitmo-the-legal-mess-behind-the-ethical-mess/
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/12/322461/by-the-numbers.html
Cha
(298,018 posts)Hekate
(91,004 posts)Yes!