President Obama has failed to meet his own deadline to close Guantanamo by January 2010, the detention and torture facility remains operative, he now says it will probably close later in 2010, but he does not set a specific deadline.
The adminstration has yet to identify an alternative maximum security detention centre on the US mainland to which they will transfer the remaining detainees, the sites still being considered include U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility in Standish, Michigan.
Although 40 prisoners are now to be tried in the US, some including alleged 9/11 instigator Khalid Sheikh Mohamed will be tried by Civil Courts and the remainder will be tried by military tribunal.
The remaining detainees are global pariahs, although 90 of them have been cleared for release they are still imprisoned because they are considered to dangerous to be allowed into the US and there is no where else in the world that will accept them.
Dubbed by the Bush adminstration “the worst of the worst,” the twisted logic of the US military deems that even if they weren’t terrorists before their incarceration they may have been so radicalised by their exerience in Guantanamo that if they were released they would take up arms against the US, therefore they must continue stay in detention without recourse to judicial process.
The remainder of the detainees are in a legal limbo, neither charged or cleared, either because there is insufficient evidence to charge them, or, because they have been to badly tortured and mistreated to be able to stand trial.
One possibility is that the US will seek to create more guantanamos in new locations around the globe beyond the jurisdiction of US Justice, one such location is Bagram prison located at Bagram airbase in the ancient city of Bagram near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan. (more…)
