President Barack Obama’s decision to resume military trials for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will open the door for the prosecution there of several suspected 9/11 conspirators, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Obama’s order, which reverses his move two years ago to halt new trials, has reignited arguments over the legality of the military commissions.
Fierce congressional opposition to trying Mohammed and other Guantanamo detainees in the United States, which would essentially threaten the safety of Americans by bringing their terrorist to their front door, left Obama with few options in which he defaulted on his campaign promise of closing down Guantanamo within a year of his coming into office.
Currently, a handful of detainees have been charged in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, including Mohammed. However, the charges were dismissed following Obama’s decision to halt military commissions in January 2009.
The first Guantanamo trial likely to proceed under Obama’s new order would involve Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2006.
Defense officials have said that of around 170 detainees at Guantanamo, about 80 are expected to face trial by military commission.
More than two dozen detainees have been charged there, and so far six detainees have been convicted and sentenced. They include Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, Osama bin Laden’s media specialist, who told jurors he had volunteered to be the 20th Sept. 11 hijacker. He is serving a life sentence at Guantanamo.
Meanwhile, the first Guantanamo detainee tried in civilian court – in New York – was convicted in November on just one of more than 280 charges that he took part in the al-Qaida bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. That case ignited strident opposition to any further such trials.
Monday’s announcement also included a process for periodically reviewing the status of detainees held at the prison.
That’s an effort to resolve one of the central dilemmas at Guantanamo Bay: what to do when the government thinks a prisoner is too dangerous to be released but either can’t prove it in court or doesn’t want to reveal national security secrets in trying to prosecute him? The answer, the White House said, is that the U.S. will hold those men indefinitely, without charges, but will review their cases periodically.
While I am all for prosecuting terrorists in a timely manner– what happened to the law “innocent until proven guilty?” We cant just hold people indefinitely without any condemnation. Think of the slippery slope that could create!
However, I am in full support of keeping GITMO open as stated in my blogs, Keep GITMO open! and Block federal funds to move GITMO detainees to the US as long as the holdings and hearings are done in a respectful and quick manner.
On a side note, it strikes me as odd that President Obama is reopening GITMO for trials yet in the same breath states that he is seeking to overturn a bill that was signed into law in January blocking federal funds that would move GITMO detainees to the US.
Proving to me once again, that in order to learn what is really going on- one must watch President Obama’s actions as his words tend to be the complete opposite of what he is actually doing.
Copyright (c) March 8, 2011. All rights reserved.
The Heart of America 