Despite hopes that closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay would end
practices of permanently detaining suspected terrorists, the Washington
Post
reports
that about 75 detainees could be locked up indefinitely. Those
detainees have been "deemed too
dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary
issues and limits on the use of classified material." So-called "fifth
category" detainees are legally and politically problematic, especially
with the Obama administration's stated desire of moving past Bush-era
detention policies.
- How Obama Got There The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder digs the detail
out of the back of a Washington Post story. "If true, that means that
there are 75
so-called 'Fifth Category' detainees who might be subject to indefinite
detention without trial," he writes, acknowledging that the Obama
administration anticipated keeping less permanent detainees. "At the
time, administration officials insisted that only a small
fraction of detainees would be included in this category. At the time,
though, the administration had only begun to review the evidence files
and might have simply assumed that the former administration could not
have been as totally reckless as it turned out to have been."
- 'Neo-Guantanamo' At Bagram Spencer Ackerman anticipates
that the White House will look to avoid a battle with the courts. "Will
the courts ultimately decide that the administration doesn't,
in fact, have the power to hold them without charge? And where will
they be held if Guantanamo is to close? After all, if they're moved
into the United States, the courts will almost certainly exercise
jurisdiction over them. A possible clue comes in a recent and widely
discussed report from Ken Gude of the well-connected Center for
American Progress. As my colleague Daphne Eviatar reported, Gude
proposed simply sending the detainees to Bagram Air Field in
Afghanistan -- which would, in effect, create Neo-Guantanamo."
- Bagram Wouldn't Work The American Prospect's Adam Serwer explains
why "Bagram is not a solution" for these detainees. "Sending 'fifth
category' detainees captured in third countries would jeopardize the
government's position in appealing the judicial ruling that granted
detainees captured in third countries and held at Bagram habeas
rights." He quotes a Bush-era official charged with detainee policy,
who says, "If the government starts simply swapping detainees among the
facilities, it hurts its case that for all these reasons Bagram should
be treated differently as a legal matter."
- Jeopardizes KSM Trial Salon Glenn Greenwald decries
the move, which he says makes Obama's civilian trial for Khaleid Shaikh
Mohammed a hoax. "[Attorney General] Eric Holder struggled all day to
justify his decision to put Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to
invoke," Greenwald writes. "Once you endorse the notion that the
Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any
battlefield
without giving them trials -- as the Obama administration is doing
explicitly and implicitly -- what convincing rationale can anyone offer
to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in
New York?"
