Terror Attempt May Hinder Plans to Close Guantánamo
From The New York Times:
The attempted bombing of an American passenger plane on Christmas Day could greatly complicate President Obama’s efforts to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as lawmakers in both parties call on the administration to rethink its approach.
The task of determining what to do with the detainees held at Guantánamo has already proved so daunting that Mr. Obama is poised to miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for shuttering the prison by Jan. 22. But evidence that Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen was behind last week’s failed plane attack will make closing the center even harder since nearly half the remaining detainees are from Yemen.
“The current threats emanating from Yemen dramatically increase the political costs of closing Guantánamo,” said Matthew Waxman, a former top Pentagon official who handled detainee issues and supports trying to close the detention center. “To close it anytime soon, the Obama administration either has to send many detainees back to Yemen — widely viewed as a major terrorist haven — or it brings many of them into the U.S. for continued detention without trial.”
[L]eading members of Congress are pressing Mr. Obama to either abandon plans to close the prison or to suspend any transfers of prisoners to Yemen.
Mr. Obama inherited 242 detainees at Guantánamo when he came into office, and his team has released or transferred 44. Of the 198 remaining, about 92 are from Yemen, and of those, about 40 have been cleared for release.
But a senior administration official said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s interagency team had already decided quietly several weeks ago that the security situation in Yemen was too volatile to transfer any more detainees beyond six who were sent home in December. The government concluded it had to release those six because it was about to lose habeas corpus hearings in court that would order them freed.
As for the rest, “we all agreed we couldn’t send people back because of the security situation,” said the official, who like others requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The attempted bombing of an American passenger plane on Christmas Day could greatly complicate President Obama’s efforts to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as lawmakers in both parties call on the administration to rethink its approach.
The task of determining what to do with the detainees held at Guantánamo has already proved so daunting that Mr. Obama is poised to miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for shuttering the prison by Jan. 22. But evidence that Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen was behind last week’s failed plane attack will make closing the center even harder since nearly half the remaining detainees are from Yemen.
“The current threats emanating from Yemen dramatically increase the political costs of closing Guantánamo,” said Matthew Waxman, a former top Pentagon official who handled detainee issues and supports trying to close the detention center. “To close it anytime soon, the Obama administration either has to send many detainees back to Yemen — widely viewed as a major terrorist haven — or it brings many of them into the U.S. for continued detention without trial.”
[L]eading members of Congress are pressing Mr. Obama to either abandon plans to close the prison or to suspend any transfers of prisoners to Yemen.
Mr. Obama inherited 242 detainees at Guantánamo when he came into office, and his team has released or transferred 44. Of the 198 remaining, about 92 are from Yemen, and of those, about 40 have been cleared for release.
But a senior administration official said Thursday that Mr. Obama’s interagency team had already decided quietly several weeks ago that the security situation in Yemen was too volatile to transfer any more detainees beyond six who were sent home in December. The government concluded it had to release those six because it was about to lose habeas corpus hearings in court that would order them freed.
As for the rest, “we all agreed we couldn’t send people back because of the security situation,” said the official, who like others requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 2:22 PM
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