Security issues set to thwart Obama's bid to close Guantanamo by January

Published on Saturday 26 September 2009 21:06

AMERICA may break its promise to shut its military prison in Guantanamo Bay by January, officials have admitted.

White House insiders warned that their self-imposed deadline was slipping as they struggled to work their way through thorny legal and logistical questions.

US President Barack Obama is said to remain committed to closing the facility, a camp for international terror suspects at an American base on Cuba opened by his predecessor George W Bush after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday that they still hoped to meet the January deadline by stepping up their efforts.

Guantanamo, which has become a lightening rod for anti-US criticism across the globe, holds some 225 detainees, including some suspected of having links to al-Qaeda, as well as Taleban and foreign fighters captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Obama promised soon after taking office – and many times since – to close the prison, arguing that doing so is crucial to restoring America's image in the world and to creating a more effective anti-terror approach.

But eight months after the president's pledge and with only four months to go before the January deadline, a number of difficult issues remain unresolved.

They include establishment of a new set of rules for military trials, finding a location for a new prison to house detainees and finding host countries for those who can be released.

This has prompted top Republicans in Congress to demand that the prison stay open for now, saying it is too dangerous to rush the closure. Even Democrats defied the president, saying they needed more information about Obama's plan before supporting it.

After the president's promise, administration officials and lawyers began reviewing the files on each detainee.

At issue: which prisoners can be tried, and whether to do so in military or civilian courts; which can be released to other nations; and – the hardest question – which are too dangerous or have cases too compromised by lack of evidence that they must be held indefinitely.

A major complaint surfaced immediately – that the Bush administration had not established a consolidated repository of intelligence and evidence on each prisoner. It took longer than expected to build such a database, the officials said, because information was scattered throughout agencies and was inconsistent.

That database has now been completed, and prosecutors have also concluded their initial review of the detainees and recommended to the US Justice Department an unspecified number who appear eligible for prosecution. The Justice Department and the Pentagon will now work together to determine which prisoners should be tried in military courts and which in civilian ones, the officials said. They would not provide a number recommended for prosecution since this could change.

Obama's officials have pledged they will not "voluntarily release" any detainee inside the United States. But this does not address what might happen if any of the detainees who are tried are found innocent – a matter of considerable angst about Obama's plans, both in Congress and among the public. However, the US could – and probably would – seek to transfer those people to other countries in that case, as none is a US citizen.