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Tag: closing guantanamo bay
Trump Wants To Try Americans At Guantánamo Bay

Trump Wants To Try Americans At Guantánamo Bay

In an interview with the Miami HeraldThursday, GOP nominee Donald Trump suggested that under his presidency, U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism could be tried at Guantánamo Bay. As noted in the Herald piece, that’s illegal under current federal law.

“I know that they want to try them in our regular court systems, and I don’t like that at all,” Trump said. According to Trump, it “would be fine” for military tribunals prosecute American citizens.

Trump has previously been asked about Guantánamo Bay and has said he would want to “load it up with bad dudes.”

“I want to make sure that if we have radical Islamic terrorists, we have a very safe place to keep them,” he said.

Trump also slammed President Obama over his Gitmo policies, saying Obama is “allowing people to get out that are terrible people.”

The Obama administration previously faced opposition and criticism for considering trying five people alleged to be involved in the September 11 attacks in Federal court in New York City, rather than at Gitmo where they were held. The opposition was so strong that the administration changed course and decided to prosecute via military tribunal.

Closing Guantánamo Bay is something President Obama hoped to accomplish during his time in office, and he signed an executive order in 2009 intending to have the prison closed within one year. The plan was for individuals still remaining there to be returned to their own country, released, transferred to another country or brought stateside to a detention facility.

Obama has faced staunch opposition at every step, however, as many politicians and members of the public do not agree with his proposal to bring any prisoners to the continental U.S.

At one point, Obama threatened to veto the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), because it contained provisions barring the transfer of detainees to the U.S., among other things. He ultimately signed it and began an attempt to speed the transfers of detainees to their home countries or other nations.

Obama has said he feels very strongly about the closure of the prison, but he hasn’t been able to form any solid plan to effectuate such a change: “I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president, whoever it is. If we don’t do what’s required now, I think future generations are going to look back and ask why we failed to act when the right course, the right side of history, and justice and our best American traditions was clear.”

The current population of Guantánamo Bay is 76.

Photo: A sign identifies Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s closed down Camp I at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba March 22, 2016.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

U.S. Says At Least Three Uighurs Freed From Guantanamo

Washington (AFP) – The last three Uighurs who had languished in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay for over a decade despite facing no charges have been freed and sent to Slovakia, the Pentagon announced Tuesday.

“This transfer and resettlement constitutes a significant milestone in our effort to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement, thanking Slovakia for taking the three men in.

Yusef Abbas, Saidullah Khalik, and Hajiakbar Abdul Ghuper, who were transferred from the U.S. military jail in Guantanamo Bay, southeastern Cuba, were the last of a group of 22 ethnic Chinese Muslims captured in Afghanistan in 2001.

They had been cleared since 2008 for release from the notorious jail — opened in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States — but the United States refused to return them to China where they faced persecution, and had struggled to find a third country to take them in.

All the Uighurs have been now resettled in six countries over the years, including Albania, Palau and El Salvador.

“The United States is grateful to the government of Slovakia for this humanitarian gesture and its willingness to support U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,” Kirby added in his statement.

Department of State special envoy Cliff Sloan added Washington had cooperated closely with Slovakia over the transfers.

“We have worked together on humanitarian migration issues for many years, and this important humanitarian action reflects Slovakia’s sustained assistance, which, on the issue of Guantanamo, began in 2009,” Sloan said in a statement.

The Uighurs — members of a largely Muslim people who have long accused China of discrimination — were cleared years ago of wrongdoing and had been staying in a special part of the prison with a library and recreational space.

In principle, Washington has been seeking to send cleared inmates to their home country. But it has refused Beijing’s demands to repatriate the Uighurs, saying they would face almost certain persecution.

Uighurs hail from China’s western Xinjiang region, which in 2009 witnessed some of the country’s deadliest ethnic violence in years.

The Guantanamo releases were announced a day after a new outbreak of violence, when Chinese authorities said they had shot dead eight “attackers” armed with knives and explosives during a “terrorist attack” on a Xinjiang police station.

An exiled Uighur group on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into the incident.