Guantanamo detainees may go on trial in US
During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a “sad chapter in American history” and has said generally that the US legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.
Under plans being put together in Obama’s camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in US criminal courts.
A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not final.
The move would be a sharp deviation from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States. Obama’s Republican challenger, John McCain, had also pledged to close Guantanamo. But McCain opposed criminal trials, saying the Bush administration’s tribunals should continue on US soil.
The plan being developed by Obama’s team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the US and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and Obama legal adviser, said discussions about plans for Guantanamo had been “theoretical” before the election but would quickly become focused because closing the prison is a top priority. Bringing the detainees to the US will be controversial, he said, but could be accomplished.
“I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on US soil as anywhere else,” Tribe said. “We can’t put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there.”
The tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration’s military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on US soil.
“There would be concern about establishing a completely new system,” said Rep Adam Schiff, D-Calif, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor who is aware of the discussions in the Obama camp. “And in the sense that establishing a regimen of detention that includes American citizens and foreign nationals that takes place on US soil and departs from the criminal justice system — trying to establish that would be very difficult.”
IRAN’S Foreign Ministry yesterday dismissed comments by US president-elect Barack Obama about Tehran’s disputed nuclear ambitions and said it did not expect any major change in the policies of its old foe.
Obama called on Friday for an international effort to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb, saying it was “unacceptable.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi repeated Tehran’s official position that nuclear weapons had no place in the Islamic Republic’s defence doctrine.
“We need a change in the erroneous impressions of the United States,” he told a news conference, broadcast and translated by Iran’s English-language Press TV station.
“It is very clear that Iran does not... possess nuclear weapons.”
Iran says its nuclear plans are to make electricity so it can export more oil and gas.
Washington severed diplomatic ties with Iran shortly after its 1979 Islamic revolution and is spearheading the drive to isolate Tehran over its nuclear activities.
Iranian officials have said Obama’s victory showed Americans wanted a fundamental change from the policies of George W Bush, who branded Iran part of an “axis of evil”.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Obama, who has said he would harden sanctions on Iran but also held out the possibility of direct talks.
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