(Daphne Eviatar is a Reuters columnist but her opinions are her
own.)
By Daphne Eviatar
May 1 (Reuters) – At his news conference on Tuesday,
President Barack Obama for the first time in years spoke about
the controversial detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which he
had promised to close when he first took office.
“Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” Obama
said, responding to a reporter’s question. “It is expensive. It
is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international
standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on
counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for
extremists. It needs to be closed.” He went on to acknowledge
that more than half the detainees have been officially cleared
for release.
As if to forestall the obvious next question (then why
hasn’t he closed it?) the president blamed the prison’s
continued existence on Congress. “Congress,” he said,
“determined that they would not let us close it.”
Though Congress has made closing the prison difficult, Obama
is the one who put his legacy on the line by ordering its
closure within days of assuming office. It’s still in his power
to follow through.
In his remarks, Obama began to acknowledge this, pledging to
“examine every option that we have administratively to try to
deal with this issue.” He actually has many such options.
The National Defense Authorization Act that Congress passed
last year specifically allows the president to transfer
detainees out of Guantanamo if the defense secretary certifies
that it’s in the interest of U.S. national security and that
measures will be taken to substantially mitigate any risks they
may pose.
So here are the steps Obama can take right now to start
closing the Guantanamo prison:
First, he can direct Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to
certify that all detainees already cleared for release, either
by courts or internal Defense Department reviews, should be
transferred out of the prison in the interest of national
security.
Second, he can lift the self-imposed ban on transferring
detainees back to Yemen. Of the 86 prisoners cleared for release
from the prison, 56 are Yemenis. Obama imposed the ban after
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, tried to detonate plastic
explosives hidden in his underwear on a Northwest Airlines plane
headed for Detroit in 2009. But just because Abdulmutallab
received terrorist training in Yemen shouldn’t mean that none of
the Guantanamo detainees should ever be returned to Yemen.
The ban was an easy political move at the time, widely
supported by a frightened public. At this point, though, it does
more harm than good.
Obama can work with the Yemeni government, a strong ally in
the U.S. fight against al Qaeda affiliates, to provide security
assistance that would allow Yemeni detainees to live safely in
their own country.
As Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who supported the
ban on returning prisoners to Yemen back in 2009, wrote recently
to Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon: “I believe it
would be prudent to revisit the decision to halt transfers to
Yemen and assess whether President [Abd Rabbuh Mansur] Hadi’s
government, with appropriate assistance, would be able to
securely hold detainees in Sana.”
Third, the president can create the Periodic Review Boards
that he promised in an executive order two years ago. They would
scrutinize the legal basis for continuing to hold the rest of
the detainees, who have neither been tried by military
commission nor cleared for release. It is unclear why those
boards aren’t working, much less even been formed.
To make sure closing the prison remains a priority, the
president should immediately appoint a senior White House
official to be responsible for transferring all detainees back
home or to a third country, and for shuttering the prison.
Daniel Fried, the State Department special envoy who used to
have this job, in January was reassigned to coordinate sanctions
against countries such as Iran and Syria. No one was hired to
replace him. His old envoy position should be recreated at a
higher level, within the White House, to signal Obama’s
commitment to finally getting this done.
There’s no question that the situation at Guantanamo Bay has
grown desperate and must be addressed quickly. This week the
military confirmed that 100 of the 166 men there are on hunger
strike, officially starving themselves to death. Twenty-one are
being force-fed, strapped to a chair with a tube snaked up their
nose and pumping Ensure into their stomachs. This is a violation
of medical ethical guidelines, according to the American Medical
Association, the International Committee for the Red Cross and
the World Medical Association.
Meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Navi Pillay, recently called the continued operation of
the Guantanamo prison a “clear breach of international law.”
The prison camp is also, as Obama acknowledged on Tuesday,
costly for U.S. taxpayers. The U.S. government pays about
$800,000 per detainee per year to keep the 166 men imprisoned at
Guantanamo. In contrast, the secure imprisonment of a criminal
convicted in a U.S. federal court costs about $30,000.
Obama was right when he said on Tuesday that the situation
at Guantanamo is not sustainable. “The notion that we’re going
to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a
no-man’s-land in perpetuity,” he said, “even at a time when
we’ve wound down the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in
Afghanistan, we’re having success defeating the al Qaeda core,
we’ve kept the pressure up on all these trans-national terrorist
networks, when we’ve transferred detention authority in
Afghanistan – the idea that we would still maintain forever a
group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary
to who we are, it is contrary to our interests and it needs to
stop.”
The president also needs to stop blaming Congress for his
failure to do what is within his power: shuttering the prison.
Some lawmakers have certainly made it difficult for him to
make good on his pledge to close the detention center, but as he
acknowledged on Tuesday, there are steps he can take now to move
toward that goal.
(Daphne Eviatar is a senior counsel in the law and security
program of Human Rights First. She reported on legal issues,
focusing on terrorism, for The Washington Independent. Human
Rights First does not support or oppose candidates for public
office.)
(Daphne Eviatar)
