US PRESIDENT Barack Obama will today address the future of the 240 remaining detainees at Guantanámo Bay amid mounting pressure from Congress to keep the detention centre open.
Senate Democrats yesterday joined Republicans in rejecting by 90 votes to six Mr Obama’s request for $80 million to close Guantánamo by next January.
Earlier, a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration could hold some Guantánamo inmates indefinitely without charge. US district judge John Bates ruled that the president can detain persons who he determines “planned, authorised, committed or aided” the 9/11 attacks, as well as “persons who harboured those responsible for those attacks.”
The judge concluded, however, that ruled the government could not indefinitely hold those who supported enemy forces.
“The court can find no authority in domestic law or the law of war, nor can the government point to any, to justify the concept of ‘support’ as a valid ground for detention,” he wrote.
The Senate’s rejection of funding to close Guantánamo is a serious setback for Mr Obama, who has promised to shut it down by January 22nd, 2010. The White House has sought to persuade European countries, including Ireland, to accept up to 30 detainees but so far, only two have been resettled in third countries – one in France and one in Britain.
Yesterday’s Senate vote reflects growing unease in Congress at the prospect of jailing or releasing Guantánamo detainees within the US. “The American people don’t want these men walking the streets of America’s neighbourhoods,” South Dakota Republican senator John Thune said yesterday. “The American people don’t want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their backyard, either.”
The White House argues that it is unrealistic to think that no detainees will come to the US and that Washington cannot ask allies to accept detainees while refusing to take on the same burden.
However, FBI director Robert Mueller yesterday told a senate panel that if alleged terrorists held at Guantánamo are released in the US, they could pose a domestic threat.
“The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalising others,” he said.
Mr Mueller said that the detainees could even pose a threat if they were locked up in maximum security prisons in the US, noting that gang leaders continued to run their criminal organisations from prison. The FBI director admitted he had no idea what the best solution is to the problem of what to do with the detainees.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid said Democrats still support Mr Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo but they want a detailed plan for how to deal with the detainees.
“Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States,” he said.
Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell said the president had been too hasty in ordering the closure and called for the decision to be reversed.
“Guantánamo is the perfect place for these terrorists,” he said. “However, if the president ends up sticking with this decision to close it next January, obviously they need a place to be. It ought not to be the United States of America.”
The White House announced last week that it would revive the controversial military commissions devised by the Bush administration to prosecute some of the terrorism suspects.
The tribunals will be modified to expand the legal rights of suspects, including a limit on the use of hearsay evidence and a ban on evidence obtained through torture.