Constitutional Attorney: Guantanamo ‘Nearly Impossible To Close’ Thanks To NDAA

[Purveyor]

The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will not be closing any time soon thanks to President Barack Obama’s approval of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a constitutional attorney who’s represented terrorism suspects told Raw Story this week in an exclusive interview.

Even though President Barack Obama made closing Guantanamo one of his core campaign promises in the lead-up to the presidential election in 2008, that promise now appears to be “nearly impossible” to fulfill thanks to provisions in the new laws, Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, explained.

As an attorney, Azmy represented Murat Kurnaz, a German who was detained by Pakistani authorities and sold to the U.S. for a bounty. Kurnaz, who even the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) thought was innocent, ended up in Guantanamo at age 19 as a suspected terrorist, and he stayed there for five years without ever facing a criminal charge. Azmy also wrote briefings for the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, a case which challenged the right of the U.S. military to exclusively detain terrorism suspects.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/03/constitutional-attorney-guantanamo-nearly-impossible-to-close-thanks-to-ndaa/

[TheWraith]

1. Gitmo has been impossible to close since Congress banned closing it.

Nobody apparently remembers that whole thing back in 2009 when Obama's first executive order was to shut down Gitmo, and it was promptly overridden by Congress.

[RC]

2. Oh, yeah, the super criminals that no ordinary high security prison could hold.

Walk right through the 4 foot thick rock walls or something.

[EFerrari]

7. Yeah, those grandfathers and bakers and religious tourists and goat herds. nt

[ixion]

3. Mission Accomplished.

Way to support Endless War, Obama.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

4. When you try to make everyone happy, you make no one happy. This is why our president

needs to decide. Is he going to make everyone happy, and have everyone angry with him, or is he going to do the right thing?

[gratuitous]

6. So difficult to know what the right thing to do is, isn't it?

Although perhaps a quick consultation with the Constitution, our treaty obligations, and what America has historically stood for might inform the canny incumbent with a pretty clear path, the President can't just go around willy-nilly obeying the law when there's so many yammerers out there ready to pounce with the indefensible position that the United States should stand for indefinite detention without charge, access to counsel, or any other relief.

I'm so old, I remember a time when the United States used to register a very strong objection to such dictatorial procedures.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

8. People like you, who remember, need to speak up to the rest. Right now things are a mess, and

we desperately need good ideas that we let go of when the Repukes slithered in.

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

[_ed_]

9. Too bad we didn't elect a liberal Consitutional scholar

.