Obama has several options, although it could take a combination of several to clear the camp.
PUT SOMEBODY IN CHARGE
In January, the State Department reassigned the special envoy who had been in charge of trying to persuade countries to take Guantanamo inmates approved for release, Daniel Fried, and did not replace him. That was widely seen as a signal that Obama was giving up on closing the prison any time soon.
Fried arranged for the transfer out of scores of prisoners, but the departures slowed to a crawl after Congress imposed restrictions on them. White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday the administration was considering naming a senior diplomat to renew the focus on repatriation or transferring detainees.
Christopher Anders, the senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said such a "point person" was sorely needed as a first step to manage the administration's effort - but that the person should be from the White House. "For the last three years at the White House, it's been like no one home" on Guantanamo, he said.
USE EXCEPTIONS IN LAW TO LET PRISONERS GO
Obama has blamed Congress for interfering with his plan to close Guantanamo. Starting in 2011, Congress began restricting transfers out, saying the Defense Department first had to certify a number of things, including that the destination country was not a state sponsor of terrorism and would take action to make sure the individual would not threaten the United States.
Starting last year, Congress let some restrictions be waived if it was in the "national security interests" of the United States. Obama has not used the waiver or certification provisions.
"For the past two years, our committee has worked with our Senate counterparts to ensure that the certifications necessary to transfer detainees overseas are reasonable.
The administration has never certified a single transfer," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon, a Republican, said this week.
The White House could have pushed harder for officials at the Pentagon to process certifications, said the ACLU's Anders.
Wells Dixon, a senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York organization that has represented a number of Guantanamo prisoners, said Obama could order the Pentagon to begin certifying transfers out. But he also noted potential risks for the president. "There's no political upside" if Obama certifies that a prisoner can leave and then that prisoner later attacks U.S. interests, Dixon said.
SEND PRISONERS BACK TO YEMEN
Congress has prohibited the transfer of detainees to countries with troubled security situations. But the United States could decide that new Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour has taken adequate measures against al Qaeda and made the country stable enough to resume repatriations to Yemen.
Repatriations were halted in 2010 after a man trained by militants in Yemen tried to blow up a U.S.-bound plane in 2009.
Of the 86 prisoners cleared for transfer or release, 56 are Yemenis. The Yemeni government says it wants them home and is building a facility to hold them for rehabilitation.
That option also has a potential danger - if a repatriated Yemeni eventually attacked the United States or its interests.
USE THE PERIODIC REVIEW BOARD PROCESS
Two years ago, Obama signed an executive order establishing extra review procedures for Guantanamo detainees to determine if continued detention were warranted, but the Periodic Review Boards have not been used.
This option looks fairly simple, since it involves carrying out the president's own executive order. But there may have been no rush to establish more reviews boards since prisoners cleared by earlier review boards are still being held.
USE COURT RULINGS TO GET PEOPLE OUT
Dixon suggested the administration could use court rulings to help get prisoners released. Two members of China's Muslim Uighur minority were resettled in El Salvador in April 2012, four years after a U.S. District Court in Washington ruled there were no grounds to hold them.
When prisoners challenge their detention in federal court, the government could decide not to contest the case, paving the way for a court order effecting the prisoner's release, said Dixon. He said that could happen in any of the more than 100 detainee "habeus corpus" cases filed in federal court.
Obama could instruct the Justice Department to stop contesting those cases.
SEND PRISONERS OUT IN A PRISONER EXCHANGE
The United States tried to work out a deal to transfer five senior Taliban prisoners back to Afghanistan in return for U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Berghdal, who has been a prisoner of Taliban militants since 2009.
The talks were suspended last year. But there will be pressure to return the Afghan prisoners when the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan ends in 2014.
This option would depend on how relations evolve with Afghanistan. But the Taliban prisoner release plan also met strong resistance among some members of Congress, especially Republicans, who might object if it resurfaces.
Four Obama Policies That Help Keep Guantanamo Open
1. Detaining prisoners already cleared for release.
The administration has already transferred 72 detainees out of Guantanamo, and cleared another 86 for release, either to their home country or to another nation willing to take them. “There are a number of the folks who are currently in Guantanamo who the courts have said could be returned to their country of origin or potentially a third country,” Obama said on Tuesday.
But the administration put a freeze on any transfers after the 2009 attempt by a Nigerian man to bring down a US airliner. The man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is believed to have been inspired by a Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, and many of those cleared for release are from Yemen. The administration was concerned about returning them to a country besieged by terrorists. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), noting that the situation in Yemen had become more stable, called last week for the president to consider lifting the transfer ban.
2. Closing the office responsible for transferring detainees.
In January, the State Department announced that it was shuttering the office of the special envoy assigned to work on closing Guantanamo. Daniel Fried, the ambassador assigned to the post, worked to relocate detainees and find countries that might accept those who can’t be returned home, and secured the 72 transfers before the ban was put in place. Fried is now working on sanctions policy. The State Department said he wouldn’t be replaced.
3. Force-feeding detainees.
Currently, 100 of the 166 people currently being held in Guantanamo are on hunger strike, and 21 are being force-fed through tubes put down their noses. “I don’t want these individuals to die,” Obama said on Tuesday.
But the practice is a violation of medical ethics, according to the American Medical Association, which sent a letter of protest to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. The definitive report on torture during the Bush administration, released in April by a nonpartisan task force, said that the practice is “a form of abuse and must end.”
The prisoners began the strike out of despair that they may never be released. Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the Obama administration in a recent letter that Red Cross staff members visiting the prison had said that the detainees’ level of desperation is “unprecedented.”
4. Preserving the designation of “indefinite detention.”
The Obama administration also determined that 46 detainees can never be released, either because they are too dangerous, or because they cannot be charged with a crime and put on trial.
On Tuesday, Obama said, “I mean, the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no man’s land in perpetuity … that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.” But even if Guantanamo were to close, the Obama administration would not release these detainees. Instead, they would be sent to a federal prison, to be held indefinitely without trial on U.S. soil.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/four-obama-policies-that-help-keep-guantanamo-open/
[font size="4"]"What's an example of historical revisionism?"[/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
