THE WHITE House has insisted that US president Barack Obama will keep his promise to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre by next January, despite the postponement of two reports on detention and interrogation policy.
A task force led by the justice department, which was due to report yesterday, has been given a further six months to recommend changes to detention policy. A second group, charged with examining interrogation policy, has been given an extra two months.
“These are hard, complicated, consequential decisions,” a senior White House official told reporters. “What we are trying to do is to make sure that we make the right decisions.”
Officials said a number of European countries, including Ireland, had agreed to accept detainees the US administration no longer viewed as dangerous but who cannot return to their home countries for fear of persecution. The administration has assessed about half of the 229 remaining detainees and has recommended that more than 50 should be transferred to third countries.
The Detention Policy Task Force issued an interim report on Monday, declaring that, wherever possible, detainees who are not transferred to third countries would be tried in federal courts. In some cases, however, detainees will be tried before revamped military commissions with what the White House says will be tougher rules on the use of hearsay evidence and confessions or evidence obtained using torture.
A third category of detainees, who cannot be tried in federal courts or before military tribunals because the evidence against them would be inadmissible, could face indefinite detention without trial.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), warned the Obama administration against slipping into “the same legal swamp” over Guantánamo as the Bush administration did. “Any effort to revamp the failed Guantánamo military commissions or enact a law to give any president the power to hold individuals indefinitely and without charge or trial is sure to be challenged in court and it will take years before justice is served,” he said.
“The only way to make good on President Obama’s promise to shut down Guantánamo and end the military commissions is to charge and try the detainees in established federal criminal courts. Any effort to do otherwise will doom the Obama administration to lengthy litigation.”
The interim report said the new, three-tier system of justice could apply not only to Guantánamo detainees but could provide a framework for dealing with “future detainees captured in the fight against terrorists”.
The administration’s critics point out that the US already has broad criminal laws describing “material support for terrorism”, which have been used to convict people who were not accused of committing any violent acts.
A senior administration official insisted that Mr Obama would seek congressional backing for any system of indefinite detention without trial rather than asserting executive authority to introduce it unilaterally.