THE WHITE House yesterday announced plans to transform a largely disused state penitentiary in northwest Illinois into a federal prison reserved in part for Guantánamo detainees.
The state’s Democratic governor and senator campaigned for what has been dubbed “Gitmo North” on the grounds it will create some 3,000 jobs and bring a billion dollars to the depressed region. But Republican opponents say the plan makes the area a “terrorist target”.
“Today’s announcement marks an important step towards closing Guantánamo, which will protect our national security and help American troops by removing a deadly recruiting tool from the hands of al-Qaeda,” said a statement from the White House.
Illinois governor Pat Quinn and senator Dick Durbin were yesterday briefed on the plan at the White House by President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, a deputy secretary of defence and the director of the federal bureau of prisons.
Speaking earlier in the day on MSNBC television, Mr Durbin said: “We need those jobs; they’re good-paying jobs with good benefit packages. You can build a family, a neighbourhood, a town, a community with those kinds of jobs.”
Under the plan, the federal government will buy the Thomson Correctional Centre from the state government. The prison was completed in 2001, at a cost of $120 million, to house dangerous criminals. But only 140 of 1,600 cells are inhabited, because the state does not have the money to run it.
Most of the prison will be used to reduce crowding in other federal prisons, while the defence department will operate a small section for fewer than 100 of the 215 detainees still held at Guantánamo. “The two parts of the facility will be managed separately, and Federal inmates will have no opportunity to interact with Guantánamo detainees,” said the letter notifying Mr Quinn of Mr Obama’s decision.
“The administration has failed to explain how transferring terrorists to Gitmo North will make Americans safer than keeping these terrorists off of our shores in the secure facility in Cuba,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a written statement.
Opposition to the move recalls the outcry when attorney general Eric Holder announced on November 13th that Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and four other men charged with participating in the atrocities of September 11th, 2001, will be tried at a federal court in Manhattan. Many New Yorkers claim the trial will endanger their city.
Guantánamo is one of the biggest headaches left to the Obama administration by George W Bush.
Mr Obama promised to close the prison by January 2010, but the White House has said that deadline will not be met. Last month the White House counsel Greg Craig was fired because of his mishandling of the issue. It could take up to six months for prisoners to be shifted from Cuba to Illinois.
The administration has had difficulty finding third countries willing to take in former Guantánamo detainees. Ireland received two Uzbeks in September.
A joke circulating in the state department says foreign diplomats run when the official responsible for placing Guantánamo detainees approaches them.
The most thorny issue involves up to two dozen prisoners whom the US cannot try because of insufficient evidence, but says it cannot release because they are too dangerous. These prisoners are understood to be slated for transfer to Illinois. But the administration must first persuade Congress to reconsider a ban on transferring Guantánamo prisoners to the US other than for prosecution.
The Thomson Correctional Center is surrounded by a four-metre interior fence with an electrical stun barrier on both sides, and a three-metre outer fence.
“It will be enhanced to exceed perimeter security standards at the nation’s only ‘supermax’ prison,” the letter to Mr Quinn said.