As of this week, lawyers reviewing each detainee’s case have completed the initial sorting process for only about half the total Guantánamo population of 229 men, though officials said that by October they expected to complete the initial evaluations, determining who could be transferred to other countries, prosecuted or detained without charges.
At the same, prosecutors are trying to decide who among the detainees, to be sent to detention centers in the United States for prosecution, would face charges in federal criminal courts and who would be tried by military commissions, though the evidentiary and procedural rules for those tribunals have not yet been completed.
In addition, the administration has not yet decided on the federal prisons, military brigs and local jails where the detainees would be incarcerated after being sent to the United States. Some security officials said that the decisions were being made, but that they remained concerned that they were running short of time needed to designate prisons, prepare the detention units within them and assign required personnel.
The proposal to relocate detainees in the United States has already provoked a bipartisan Congressional protest. After lawmakers expressed alarm that detainees, deemed not to be security threats, might be resettled in the United States, the House and Senate voted in May to bar the resettlement of detainees in this country and stripped $50 million from an emergency war spending bill for closing the Guantánamo prison until after the administration submitted a detailed plan.
Over all, the accumulation of problems and the pace of the effort have led to a growing worry within the Obama administration that the president will not make his January 2010 deadline for closing Guantánamo, although senior officials said that they remained determined and that they were on track to close the prison that has symbolized what some see as the excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies.
The officials complained they had been slowed by what they called the disarray left to them by the previous administration, which brought only a handful of detainees to trial because of accusations of abusive interrogations, skimpy intelligence on some of the detainees and changing rules for military commissions.
“We’ve recognized that this is going to be a very difficult undertaking,” said a senior administration official who asked for anonymity so he would not be identified as speaking about a sorting process that the administration is trying to keep secret. The official said that the administration could not rely “on the system that we inherited, which by all indications didn’t deliver on what we all expected it should, namely successful prosecutions.”
In the preparations to close the prison, an administration detainee task force composed of officials from the Departments of Justice, Defense, State and Homeland Security and intelligence agencies has been meeting weekly since March to review the files of each detainee and sort them into three basic groups: those who can be transferred and for the most part released to other countries; those who can be tried, and those to be held without trial on American soil.
An administration official said the task force had focused initially on the first group, those who could be transferred and released to other countries. (A handful in that group might be sent for trial in other countries.) So far, more than 65 detainees have been cleared for transfer, the official said, and 11 have already been released, although getting other countries to accept detainees has proved more difficult than Obama officials initially hoped.
The official characterized those cleared for release as “not saints” but detainees who did not present a serious threat.
“The middle-of-the-road person we’re clearing for transfer is a low-level, not very sophisticated volunteer for a bad cause,” the official said. “He’s not a hardened terrorist, and is someone who, given slightly different circumstances, would not get involved at all.”
The second category includes detainees who may be tried in either American federal courts or by military commission. Justice Department officials have declined to estimate how many people might be in this group, but they say their first preference is to bring detainees to trial in federal courts, probably in places like New York and suburban Virginia, where prosecutors have experience in terrorism cases.
Officials said the most problematic group was made up of detainees to be held without trial, who are deemed by the administration to be too dangerous to release but who cannot be tried because evidence against them may not be usable in court. Administration officials say they hope this group will be as small as possible, acknowledging opposition by civil liberties groups. But they said they were convinced there were some detainees who must be detained without charges because of their backgrounds, like extensive time in a militant training camp or a long association with a terrorist group.
“When you see someone,” the administration official said, “who had been at a camp longer, who had more of an involvement, who was part of a more sophisticated, committed cadre, then it’s much harder to agree that these people should be resettled and released in a third country.”
Administration officials say that one option under consideration is a version of indefinite detention, in which detainees would be allowed an annual review of their cases and access to legal representation and some of the evidence against them. The administration official asserted that Mr. Obama would not blindly issue an executive order without Congressional input and judicial review.
“It won’t be a presidential decree that locks people up for the rest of their lives,” the administration official said. “It will be legally based. It will have protections. It will have process.”
The administration is now working with a bipartisan group in the Senate to devise new, more legally defensible rules to try some detainees before military commissions, an approach introduced by the Bush administration but that was repudiated by the courts and widely viewed as too heavily tilted to favor prosecutors. That legislation is nearing a vote in the Senate, and appears likely to win approval.
Some administration officials complained that when lawmakers cut financing for closing the Guantánamo prison, they imposed new reporting requirements about the movement of detainees that would further slow the already cumbersome process of relocating detainees.
Under the new rules, the administration must report to Congress its progress in closing the detention center by late August and every three months thereafter, providing information on the evidence and intelligence about each detainee as well as details on those who have been released overseas.
The new rules would allow the relocation of detainees to the United States for prosecution, but would effectively delay any such move until late September. In addition, the rules require a report to Congress before sending a detainee overseas and information about the costs, risks, security arrangements, as well as notification to the governor of each state, for any detainee who is to be sent to the United States for prosecution.
In addition to the detainee task force, two other administration groups are reviewing Guantánamo issues. One is considering legal changes in detention policy, and the other group is examining changes to interrogation policy, although Mr. Obama has already forbidden many of the harshest tactics authorized by the Justice Department under the Bush administration.
The two policy groups are expected to submit their recommendations to the White House by July 21 in a report that officials say is not likely to be made public. The July deadline was set by executive orders, signed by Mr. Obama shortly after taking office, in which he proposed a far-reaching overhaul of the country’s detention and interrogation programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment