By Jason Leopold
President Barack Obama will follow through on one of his campaign promises and sign an executive order Thursday ordering the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, aides to Obama said.
Obama administration officials have circulated a five-page draft executive order that aims to shut down the detention facility, which currently houses 245 prisoners, “practicable, and no later than one year from the date” the executive order is signed.
Earlier Wednesday, Obama ordered a 120-day suspension of war crimes trials at Guantanamo so his advisers can review the tribunals. It is unlikely the military commissions trials will resume.
The draft executive order says, “some individuals currently detained at Guantánamo have been there for more than six years, and most have been detained for at least four years. In view of the significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantánamo and closure of the facility would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.”
Since 2002, about 779 people the Bush administration identified as enemy combatants have been detained at Guantánamo and were denied the legal right to challenge their imprisonment. The Bush administration either released or transferred 527 prisoners, some of who were wrongly detained for years. The Department of Defense has determined that additional Guantanamo prisoners may be eligible for transfer or release, according to Obama’s draft executive order.
Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the decision, calling Obama’s order “the first ray of sunlight in what has been eight long years of darkness, of trampling on America’s treasured values of justice and due process.”
“The order is remarkable in its timing and its clear intent to close down Guantánamo and unequivocally halt the Bush administration’s shameful military commissions,” Romero said. “While the order leaves some question as to how some detainees will be released or prosecuted, we trust that’s not President Obama’s intent and hope that any ambiguity is due to the fact that this order was done on day one in record time.”
Obama’s draft executive order states that “the individuals currently detained at Guantánamo have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Most of those individuals have filed petitions for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal court challenging the lawfulness of their detention.
“It is in the interests of the United States that the Administration undertake a prompt and thorough review of the factual and legal bases for the continued detention of all individuals currently held at Guantánamo, and of whether their continued detention is in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and in the interests of justice. The unusual circumstances associated with detentions at Guantánamo require a comprehensive interagency review.”
However, “merely closing the facility without promptly determining the appropriate disposition of the individuals detained would not adequately serve those interests. To the extent practicable, the prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals detained at Guantanamo should precede the closure of the detention facilities at Guantanamo.”
“If any individuals covered by this order remain in detention at Guantánamo at the time of closure of those detention facilities, they shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States,” the executive order says.
Alleged terrorists captured in the so-called global war on terror began arriving at Guantanamo in January 2002. That same month, former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales advised President George W. Bush to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protection under the Geneva Conventions.
On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush acted on Gonzales’s legal advice as well as guidance from the Department of Justice and issued an action memorandum that denied al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners baseline protections under the Geneva Conventions.
The United States Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo prisoners were entitled to the right of habeas corpus. In a report published in May 2005, Amnesty International called Guantanamo the “gulag of our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.”
Dozens of detainees held at Guantanamo have reported being tortured by military interrogators. Several congressional investigations concluded that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was responsible for implementing the brutal interrogation methods interrogators used against detainees.
Last month, former Vice President Dick Cheney admitted he personally authorized the “enhanced interrogations” of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners at Guantanamo.
“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.
Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. “That’s it, those three guys,” Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times.
Other detainees at secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to harsh treatment, including being stripped naked, forced into painful stress positions, placed in extremes of heat or cold and prevented from sleeping – actions that international human rights organizations, and previously the U.S. government, have denounced as torture and illegal abuse.
Obama is also expected to sign an executive order Thursday ordering the CIA to shut down its secret network of foreign prisons and adhere to strict interrogation practices outlined in the Army Field Manual, aides to Obama said.
