CPUd
01-26-2017, 01:30 PM
Gitmo numbers likely to rise under Trump
The Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba has seen its population continually shrink since 2008 to the point that it now holds only 41 prisoners.
That trend may be about to change.
President Trump has pledged to “load” Guantánamo “up with some bad dudes,” and executive orders he is expected to sign on Thursday will represent a sea change from the last eight years of U.S. policy.
While it is uncertain whether Trump will follow up on his vow, outside groups are preparing for a major battle.
“Our people are ready to mobilize if new people are added to Guantánamo, which hasn’t happened in a long time,” said Elizabeth Beavers, senior campaigner for security with human rights at Amnesty International USA. “That’s something very serious, and I think it would activate people in a robust way.”
The White House has said Trump will act on Guantánamo but has not elaborated with details.
“On Gitmo, I think you’re going to see further action,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday. “I don’t want to get ahead of the president, but this is something that has been discussed.”
Asked by The Hill at Tuesday’s briefing whether Trump has ordered the armed forces to start capturing terrorists and bringing them to the facility, Spicer said, “We have nothing on that right now.”
Former President Barack Obama was unable to fulfill his own campaign promise to close the facility, but he did slash the population from the 242 who were there in 2009.
Guantánamo has held roughly 780 people since the first detainees were brought to the naval base in Cuba in 2002. President George W. Bush released more than 500 of the detainees he brought there, while the last known arrival was on March 14, 2008.
Obama stopped sending new detainees there, continued transferring current ones out and signed an executive order on his second day in office to close the facility within a year. But that order went unfulfilled after Congress banned transfers to the U.S., on which Obama’s closure plan relied.
Of the 41 detainees left by Obama, five were cleared for transfer by either the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force set up in 2009 or interagency Periodic Review Boards set up in 2011. A variety of factors prevented them from making it into Obama’s final flurry of transfers.
For example, Abdul Latif Nasir’s home country of Morocco didn’t give the United States security assurances until Dec. 28, too late to meet the congressionally mandated 30-day notification period before Obama left office, according to a court filing.
Meanwhile, Sufyian Barhoumi wasn’t transferred because former Defense Secretary Ash Carter didn’t sign off on it “based on a variety of substantive concerns, shared by multiple agencies, relevant to [Barhoumi’s] circumstances, including factors not related to [Barhourmi] himself,” according to a court filing.
Both Nasir and Barhoumi filed lawsuits earlier this month in last-ditch efforts to be transferred before Trump took office, but courts rejected them.
Ten of the remaining detainees have either been convicted or charged by military commissions. Among those awaiting trial are five 9/11 suspects and the USS Cole bombing suspect.
The final 26 detainees are known as “forever prisoners” — people who have been deemed too dangerous to release but can’t be tried by the military commissions for reasons including a lack of evidence or evidence that can’t be used because it was obtained through torture.
The draft order published Wednesday calls for suspending any existing transfer efforts pending a new review. It also calls for the continued operation of Guantánamo to hold and try members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces,” including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The order extends to “newly captured alien enemy combatants” from those groups.
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http://thehill.com/policy/defense/316215-gitmo-numbers-likely-to-rise
The Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba has seen its population continually shrink since 2008 to the point that it now holds only 41 prisoners.
That trend may be about to change.
President Trump has pledged to “load” Guantánamo “up with some bad dudes,” and executive orders he is expected to sign on Thursday will represent a sea change from the last eight years of U.S. policy.
While it is uncertain whether Trump will follow up on his vow, outside groups are preparing for a major battle.
“Our people are ready to mobilize if new people are added to Guantánamo, which hasn’t happened in a long time,” said Elizabeth Beavers, senior campaigner for security with human rights at Amnesty International USA. “That’s something very serious, and I think it would activate people in a robust way.”
The White House has said Trump will act on Guantánamo but has not elaborated with details.
“On Gitmo, I think you’re going to see further action,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday. “I don’t want to get ahead of the president, but this is something that has been discussed.”
Asked by The Hill at Tuesday’s briefing whether Trump has ordered the armed forces to start capturing terrorists and bringing them to the facility, Spicer said, “We have nothing on that right now.”
Former President Barack Obama was unable to fulfill his own campaign promise to close the facility, but he did slash the population from the 242 who were there in 2009.
Guantánamo has held roughly 780 people since the first detainees were brought to the naval base in Cuba in 2002. President George W. Bush released more than 500 of the detainees he brought there, while the last known arrival was on March 14, 2008.
Obama stopped sending new detainees there, continued transferring current ones out and signed an executive order on his second day in office to close the facility within a year. But that order went unfulfilled after Congress banned transfers to the U.S., on which Obama’s closure plan relied.
Of the 41 detainees left by Obama, five were cleared for transfer by either the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force set up in 2009 or interagency Periodic Review Boards set up in 2011. A variety of factors prevented them from making it into Obama’s final flurry of transfers.
For example, Abdul Latif Nasir’s home country of Morocco didn’t give the United States security assurances until Dec. 28, too late to meet the congressionally mandated 30-day notification period before Obama left office, according to a court filing.
Meanwhile, Sufyian Barhoumi wasn’t transferred because former Defense Secretary Ash Carter didn’t sign off on it “based on a variety of substantive concerns, shared by multiple agencies, relevant to [Barhoumi’s] circumstances, including factors not related to [Barhourmi] himself,” according to a court filing.
Both Nasir and Barhoumi filed lawsuits earlier this month in last-ditch efforts to be transferred before Trump took office, but courts rejected them.
Ten of the remaining detainees have either been convicted or charged by military commissions. Among those awaiting trial are five 9/11 suspects and the USS Cole bombing suspect.
The final 26 detainees are known as “forever prisoners” — people who have been deemed too dangerous to release but can’t be tried by the military commissions for reasons including a lack of evidence or evidence that can’t be used because it was obtained through torture.
The draft order published Wednesday calls for suspending any existing transfer efforts pending a new review. It also calls for the continued operation of Guantánamo to hold and try members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces,” including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The order extends to “newly captured alien enemy combatants” from those groups.
...
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/316215-gitmo-numbers-likely-to-rise