Obama defiant on closing Gitmo
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Daily News with wires
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Mayıs 22, 2009 00:00
WASHINGTON - The US Senate deals a major blow to the president's plans by voting to keep the jail at Guantanamo Bay open for the foreseeable future. Obama defiantly insists on closing the jail and charges the Bush administration with squandering American values with its hard-line anti-terror strategy
U.S. President Barack Obama found himself in a political bind at home and abroad yesterday over Guantanamo Bay when the Senate, at the behest of majority Democrats, denied his request for $80 million to close the prison facility.
The 90-6 vote followed a similar move last week in the House and underscored widespread apprehension among Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress over the issue. Despite the major setback, Obama was set to lay out his strategy for the controversial American prison camp as the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review went to press yesterday.
Providing a summary of Obama’s speech on the condition of anonymity because it had not yet been delivered by yesterday noon, a senior administration official wrote that the president would work through the cases of the remaining 240 prisoners held at Guantanamo by using federal courts to try those who have violated law, military commissions to try those charged with violating the rules of war, and transferring detainees to third countries when it is possible and does not pose a security risk.
In a national security address, Obama was set to say the United States had lost its way fighting terrorism over the past eight years, according to an administration official. The president would also make the case that decisions made under former President George W. Bush established an ad-hoc legal approach to fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable, the official told the Agence France-Presse.
"That is why we lost our way. That is why we were alienated from our allies," the official said in previewing the speech, adding that Obama would also honor his commitment to close Guantanamo despite the congressional opposition.
First civilian trial
The U.S. administration plans to send a top al-Qaeda suspect held at Guantanamo Bay to New York to stand trial for the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, Attorney General Eric Holder announced early yesterday. The suspect, Ahmed Ghailani, would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court, according to the Associated Press.
On his second day in office, Obama announced that he would close the prison within one year. The Guantanamo facility was constructed by the Bush administration at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to hold terrorism suspects, most of them captured in Afghanistan.
According to the Obama administration, the lockup had become a "recruiting poster" for al-Qaeda because prisoners were being held indefinitely without charges and some were subjected to "enhanced interrogation," including water-boarding Ğ a simulated drowning technique that Obama has called torture. But when prisons close, inmates must either be released or sent to other jails, and Obama still "has not decided where some of the detainees will be transferred," spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.
That is the essence of Obama’s problem with both U.S. politicians and American allies abroad, which have been asked by the administration to accept some of the prisoners.
With Wednesday’s action in the Senate, lawmakers from both houses of Congress have gone on record criticizing the lack of specific plans for housing inmates deemed too dangerous to release or transfer to other countries.
The 90-6 vote followed a similar move last week in the House and underscored widespread apprehension among Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress over the issue. Despite the major setback, Obama was set to lay out his strategy for the controversial American prison camp as the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review went to press yesterday.
Providing a summary of Obama’s speech on the condition of anonymity because it had not yet been delivered by yesterday noon, a senior administration official wrote that the president would work through the cases of the remaining 240 prisoners held at Guantanamo by using federal courts to try those who have violated law, military commissions to try those charged with violating the rules of war, and transferring detainees to third countries when it is possible and does not pose a security risk.
In a national security address, Obama was set to say the United States had lost its way fighting terrorism over the past eight years, according to an administration official. The president would also make the case that decisions made under former President George W. Bush established an ad-hoc legal approach to fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable, the official told the Agence France-Presse.
"That is why we lost our way. That is why we were alienated from our allies," the official said in previewing the speech, adding that Obama would also honor his commitment to close Guantanamo despite the congressional opposition.
First civilian trial
The U.S. administration plans to send a top al-Qaeda suspect held at Guantanamo Bay to New York to stand trial for the deadly 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, Attorney General Eric Holder announced early yesterday. The suspect, Ahmed Ghailani, would be the first Guantanamo detainee brought to the U.S. and the first to face trial in a civilian criminal court, according to the Associated Press.
On his second day in office, Obama announced that he would close the prison within one year. The Guantanamo facility was constructed by the Bush administration at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to hold terrorism suspects, most of them captured in Afghanistan.
According to the Obama administration, the lockup had become a "recruiting poster" for al-Qaeda because prisoners were being held indefinitely without charges and some were subjected to "enhanced interrogation," including water-boarding Ğ a simulated drowning technique that Obama has called torture. But when prisons close, inmates must either be released or sent to other jails, and Obama still "has not decided where some of the detainees will be transferred," spokesman Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.
That is the essence of Obama’s problem with both U.S. politicians and American allies abroad, which have been asked by the administration to accept some of the prisoners.
With Wednesday’s action in the Senate, lawmakers from both houses of Congress have gone on record criticizing the lack of specific plans for housing inmates deemed too dangerous to release or transfer to other countries.