Guantanamo's Yemeni Detainees Epitomize a U.S. Security Concern

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2008; A16

www.washingtonpost.com

The single biggest opportunity -- and potential difficulty -- for the incoming administration's plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, comes from the same group of Yemeni prisoners, who make up fully 40 percent of the detainees still held there.

Despite intensive diplomatic discussions in recent months, and the Yemeni government's promise to put released prisoners through a rehabilitation program, the Bush administration remains unconvinced that the impoverished Arab nation is capable of absorbing a group of men that officials believe includes hardened extremists.

Administration officials said President-elect Barack Obama will face the same daunting array of concerns about Yemen, a country where the terrorist threat from al-Qaeda is escalating and where extremists already have escaped prison and returned to the fight. Some have strong ties to Guantanamo detainees.

"There are still, I think, significant concerns throughout the U.S. government, amongst all the agencies, about the Yemenis' capacity to absorb and process any significant number of returned detainees," said a senior administration official who, because of the sensitivity of the issue, spoke on the condition of anonymity. "And then there are simply logistical and financial issues involved in setting up a rehabilitation center, which could take quite a long period of time."

The Yemeni government rejects U.S. criticism of its record of combating terrorism and insists that it can successfully handle the Yemeni detainees, who make up the largest national contingent at Guantanamo Bay.

"We are ready to receive all of them, and we hope President-elect Obama and the next administration will send them to Yemen," said Mohammed Albasha, a spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington. "It is not to our benefit to simply let these people go free. Anybody who we see as a threat to Yemen or its people, and our allies, will be dealt with in an appropriate way."

In an interview with "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Obama said: "I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that." But he has provided few details on how prisoners will be either prosecuted or released.

Of the 250 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, 101 are Yemenis, including two who have been convicted in military commissions and two who are charged with war crimes for participation in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The remaining 97 are an eclectic group of intentional unrepentant combatants and accidental warriors," according to a forthcoming report in the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. "Yet separating the detainees into two groups and determining where different individuals fall on a spectrum of past and potential violence is a nearly impossible task."

Lawyers for the detainees, who note that only four of the 101 Yemenis at Guantanamo have been charged with any crime, said the United States should either prosecute or release the others. Much of the information about the detainees remains classified.

"The U.S. treats the Yemenis as a homogenous group of dangerous people; in fact they are not," said David H. Remes, a lawyer who represents 18 Yemeni detainees. "Having met the men and their families, we have not found any of them to be a threat to the U.S. or to be aiming to harm the United States."

Albasha said the Yemen government has formulated a rehabilitation program, including psychological counseling, religious dialogue and technical education, in which every returning detainee from Guantanamo Bay would be required to participate. The Yemeni government said detainees also would be subject to post-release monitoring, backed by guarantees from the leaders of their tribes that they would not pose a danger to either Yemen or its allies.

But the program, modeled on a successful rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia, is still only a concept and lacks financing and personnel, including religious scholars capable of engaging and mitigating extremist ideologies.

Moreover, according to the Combating Terrorism Center study, a previous rehabilitation program in Yemen "now appears to be a failure." A total of 354 individuals participated in that program, largely a religious dialogue run by a Yemeni Supreme Court justice, and were then released. But there was almost no post-release support such as helping the detainees find jobs and wives, key elements of the Saudi initiative.

A number of graduates returned to the fight, including three of the seven men identified as participants in the September bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. Also adding to U.S. concerns, 23 terrorism suspects, reportedly with inside help, broke out of a Yemeni prison in 2006 and went on to spearhead a surge in violence. The Yemeni port of Aden was the site of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, which killed 17 service members.

"Yemen is another country of concern, a place where al-Qaeda is strengthening," CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech last week. "We've seen an unprecedented number of attacks this year, 2008, including two on our embassy. Plots are increasing not only in number but in sophistication, and the range of targets is broadening.

"Al-Qaeda cells are operating from remote tribal areas where the government has traditionally had very little authority, and they're being led or reinforced by veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Among those held at Guantanamo who have not been charged are the brother of the deputy commander of al-Qaeda in Yemen. Four other detainees are brothers of al-Qaeda suspects who were part of the 2006 jailbreak, according to the Combating Terrorism Center.

Albasha said the country's first rehabilitation program was "an initial experiment, and, like most experiments, things go wrong." But he said he hopes the Obama administration will at least partially fund a new, more systematic program, which the current administration estimates could cost $10 million to $20 million.

"The costs of finding a solution to this problem are far cheaper than the costs of maintaining the status quo," the Combating Terrorism Center concluded.

Or, as Albasha put it: "If you solve the Yemeni issue, you solve the Guantanamo issue."

Issue of Terrorists' Rights to Test Obama's Pledge
Closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay will test the Obama administration's pledge to work with Congress on both sides of the aisle.

AP
www.foxnews.com
Sunday, January 25, 2009

President Barack Obama's pledge of bipartisan cooperation with Congress will be tested as he tries to fulfill a campaign promise to close Guantanamo Bay and establish a new system for prosecuting suspected terrorists.

The undertaking is an ambitious one. Fraught with legal complexities, it gives Republicans ample opportunity to score political points if he doesn't get it right. There's also the likelihood of a run-in with his former rival, Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war who before running for president staked his career on overhauling the nation's detainee policies.

"We look forward to working with the president and his administration on these issues, keeping in mind that the first priority of the U.S. government is to guarantee the security of the American people," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

The statement seemed aimed at putting Obama on notice that he must deal with Congress on the matter.

In his first week in office, Obama ordered Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba to be closed within a year, CIA secret prisons shuttered and abusive interrogations ended.

So far, Obama's team has given every indication it will engage lawmakers, including Republicans, on the issue. Graham and McCain were among several Republicans briefed last week by White House counsel Greg Craig and handed drafts of the executive orders.

But once the two sides begin delving into details, there will be ample room for dispute.

Among the unknowns is how many of the 245 detainees now at Guantanamo Bay will be prosecuted.

Administration officials said that, pending an internal review, federal and military courts may be used. But, the officials added, a version of the secretive military tribunals, as established under President George W. Bush with the help of McCain, remains an option, too.

Officials say the tribunals may be needed to prosecute suspected terrorists who are too dangerous to release but whose cases would otherwise fail, either because evidence was coerced or trying them in a less secretive court would expose classified information.

Obama could take a page from the Bush administration and try to revamp the system on his own, through executive order. But that approach failed for Bush, who angered members of his own party and wound up seeking congressional approval anyway after the Supreme Court in June 2006 ruled his tribunal system was unconstitutional.

Obama's other option is to seek legislation on the issue, potentially exposing his administration to a bruising fight with Republicans on how to handle the most dangerous of terrorism suspects.

A narrow majority of Americans supports shutting down Guantanamo Bay on a priority basis. But people are likely to become much less sympathetic to detainee rights if there is another terrorism attack inside the United States or if the new system is portrayed as too lenient on suspected Al Qaeda members.

Republicans already are trying to portray Obama's review of detainee rights as soft on terrorism. House Republicans on Friday mobilized a "rapid response team" of lawmakers to speak out against the president's plans.

"The Guantanamo Bay prison is filled with the worst of the worst -- terrorists and killers bent on murdering Americans and other friends of freedom around the world," said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. "If it is closed, where will they go, will they be brought to the United States and how will they be secured?"

Democrats have suggested they expect to be important players in the debate.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the panel planned to hold back on legislation "for a time" to allow the administration to complete its own assessment. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would like "to at least have an advisory role" on the final plan.

In 2006, the question of detainee trials and interrogations enveloped Congress and exposed Republican infighting. McCain, Graham and now retired Sen. John Warner, R-Va., sharply challenged Bush's handling of detainees. In the end, the two sides emerged with complex legislation that outlined the inner workings of military tribunals and defined what constitutes a war crime, effectively banning specific interrogation techniques seen as too harsh.

Human rights groups and Democrats said the system still gave too much power to the president. But now, Republicans are worried Obama will swing too far in the other direction.

Graham, a colonel in the Air Force Reserves assigned to the service's Judge Advocate General School, said he is concerned that Obama will wind up giving civilian courts too heavy a hand in dealing with terrorists handled by the military and CIA.

"Federal judges in my opinion should not be making battlefield decisions. ... I don't want to lose sight of the fact that we are at war," he said.

EU: US must show Guantanamo detainees pose no risk
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 56 minutes ago
www.googlenews.com
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — European Union leaders said Monday they are willing to take prisoners being released from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay — but only after detailed screening to ensure they don't import a terrorist.

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc discussed the fate of up to 60 Guantanamo inmates who, if freed, cannot be returned to their homelands because they would face abuse, imprisonment or death. The prisoners come from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose nation played a lead role in Monday's discussions on Guantanamo, said the European Commission will draft a formal plan in coming weeks defining a common course for EU members to pursue with the new U.S. administration of President Barack Obama. In his first week in office, Obama ordered Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba to be closed within a year.

Kouchner said the European plan was likely to include a formal EU request for legal and security experts to visit the prison — and interview potential immigrants about where they wanted to resettle and why.

But Kouchner said Europe still had far too many unanswered questions to commit to accepting any particular prisoners. He said the U.S. and EU had yet to nail down whether prisoners would be legally treated as refugees or asylum-seekers, whether they would face heavy security restrictions in their new homes — and whether some prisoners were simply too dangerous to come to Europe at all.

"Yes, of course this is risky," Kouchner told The Associated Press in an interview. "So we have to think about each case, and not to accept anything or anyone easily. It will be a long process." He said France would accept released prisoners "under extreme, precise conditions only."

"Legally this is difficult. Each of the 27 nations, they have different positions and different legal frameworks to accept or to refuse such people," he said.

While the French appeared keen to press other EU members on the issue, their successors as EU president — the Czechs — admitted that most nations were hoping to minimize their involvement with Guantanamo's homeless.

"Nobody is hot about it, that's perfectly true," said Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, referring to Monday's informal lunchtime talks about taking Guantanamo prisoners.

"We have to clear (up) a lot of things with the other side, too," he said, referring to the Obama administration.

The U.S. Defense Department says that, of the more than 240 prisoners currently in Guantanamo, about 100 are considered too dangerous to be released from U.S. custody; about 80 could face criminal charges in U.S. courts but could be freed if acquitted; and about 60 have been cleared for release — but cannot be sent home because their own countries would likely harm them.

Of those 60, only 19 — chiefly ethnic Uighurs from China — have been reclassified as civilians, while the rest remain "enemy combatants."

A report in Monday's Washington Post said many case files of Guantanamo inmates were in disarray, suggesting that any candidates for resettlement in Europe could be months away from security vetting.

Some EU foreign ministers said their own countries — long critical of the Bush administration's operation of Guantanamo — would be accused of hypocrisy if they didn't take at least one ex-prisoner and were seen to be helping Obama with the shutdown.

"There is no question that chief responsibility to do with solving the problem of this detention center lies with those who set it up, the Americans themselves," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "But it is also a question of our credibility — of whether we support the dismantling of this American camp or not."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Britain had its plate full in dealing with its own nationals in U.S. custody and ruled out taking ex-prisoners from other nations.

He said Britain had already taken nine British nationals and three foreigners who have British residency rights, while the cases of two others still in Guantanamo were being processed.

"We feel that is already a significant contribution," Miliband said. "We're happy to offer our experience to other European countries, as they think about what steps they want to make, to help in the closure of Guantanamo Bay."

Finland's foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, emphasized the widespread view that the U.S. administration was not yet in position to clear any terror suspects.

"We are jumping the gun here a little bit, because the Americans haven't given us an offer or required us to take anyone on board," Stubb said.

Part of SSC c/p>>>

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc discussed the fate of up to 60 Guantanamo inmates who, if freed, cannot be returned to their homelands because they would face abuse, imprisonment or death. The prisoners come from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.<<<

A question??

if they are suspects and prisoners of War why should we care what each of their countries do to them?

also I don't read or watch Fox news

Fox news reports the same news the others do.

Gypsy if these detainees are felt to be so dangerous ,to be released in any counrty spells disaster.

9/11 Families Push Obama on Gitmo Trials
January 26, 2009 4:12 PM
www.abcnews.com
The parents of three firefighters who died at the World Trade Center on Sep. 11, 2001, have written to President Obama expressing concern about his recent executive orders and presidential memoranda dealing with national security which, among other actions, ordered the closing the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay.

Specifically, the families want to meet the president to appeal his decision to suspend the trials of five detainees in Gitmo who have admitted they have some part in the terror attacks, a ruling the president made so as to determine the best way to move forward with prosecutions.

"We cannot understand why it has taken so long for the prosecution of the detainees in cases where substantial evidence exists of direct or indirect involvement in the Terrorist Attacks at the WTC, Pentagon and Shanksville ... We have seen first hand -- the admission of guilt by individual detainees, and have heard their statements indicating they are proud of what they did to our loved ones on 9/11," read a statement from the families accompanying the letter. "We would like a firm commitment that the delays and confusion that have occurred in the past concerning these prosecutions does not happen in the future."

The parents include Retired New York Fire Department Deputy Chief Jim Riches and wife, Rita, Retired Sgt. Al Regenhard and wife Sally, and Retired FDNY Deputy Chief Al Santora and wife Maureen. They are among the families of 343 firefighters who died at the World Trade Center.

"Seven and a half years is a very long time for 3,000 families to wait," said Maureen Santora at a meeting with reporters at their attorney, Normal Siegel's, office on Sunday. Siegel is a former director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"The families strongly believe these prosecutions should be open and fundamentally fair," said Siegel. "The family members respectfully are requesting a meeting with President Obama to discuss in greater details the issue regarding their concerns surrounding the prosecution of detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

Siegel added that the group had not received a response from the White House as of Monday afternoon.

-- Huma Khan and Jake Tapper

I was talking about the 60 detainees in your c/p..why not let their country have them and do whatever they want with them.. we don't have to feed and care for them out of tax payers money..send them back to their own countries.
I think the booger who said he was behind or was the head honcho in 9/11 needs hung and all the ones who for certain are terrorists, that is what the question is who are..a lot of them want to die, we should oblige,, My husband has a solution, but I better not put it here:).

If you have read any about the detainees, then you surely know many claimed residence in certain countries just as a coverup, the problem now being those countries are where they may be headed back to although they were never truely citizens, thus leaving the country to secure and monitor these people. Not many seem willing to do this for security reasons.

gypsy,, sending them back to their contry , it would be a muslim country , and basically would be like turning them loose, the leaders of some countrys, like the royal family in saudi arabia , they walk a fine line with being a friend of sorts to the US , and the radicals that would like to end the royal family and control saudi arabia themselves. so i would not expect any arab county to punish any of these ppl, thats probably what happened to the 61 that went back to being terrorist, they were released to their country ...

Bomber's Martyrdom Tape Renews Fears Over Consequences of Closing Gitmo
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
www.foxnews.com

Terrorist Abdallah Ali al-Ajmi talks about his time at Guantanamo Bay in this martyrdom tape obtained exclusively by FOX News.
As President Obama pushes for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison, the debate over where to house the terror detainees being held there is heating up.

An exclusive video of a former Gitmo detainee's martyrdom tape, obtained by FOX News, is a reminder of the concerns that terror suspects — who have been held but released from Guantanamo Bay — are increasingly returning to the fight against the United States and its allies.

Abdallah Ali al-Ajmi was transferred back to his home country of Kuwait after his release from Guantanamo in 2005. Last April he blew himself up in a homicide attack that killed 12 people in Mosul, Iraq.

Al-Ajmi, known in Guantanamo as Detainee 220, made his martyrdom tape before the attack.

"In the name of Allah, most compassionate, most merciful and prayers and peace be upon our Prophet," al-Ajmi says in the video. "I thank Allah, Lord of the Worlds, who freed me from Guantanamo prison and, after we were tortured, connected me with the Islamic State of Iraq [ISI]. And it is the gift of Allah to follow the path of this nation, the ISI."

In the video, translated by the NEFA Foundation, a non-profit that tracks terror groups, al-Ajmi mentions Guantanamo Bay right away. For many jihadists, having served time at Guantanamo is seen as a badge of honor.

Al-Ajmi's attack is one of the most well known and well documented cases of an ex-Gitmo detainee returning to the battlefield as a homicide bomber. His video renews concerns of many in the intelligence community of the potential consequences by releasing these prisoners.

Sixty-two detainees released from the U.S. Navy base prison in Cuba are believed to have rejoined the fight, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, citing data from December. That's up from 37 as of March 2008, Morrell said.

The new figures come as President-elect Barack Obama issued an executive order last week to close the controversial prison. It's unlikely, however, that the Guantanamo detention facility will be closed anytime soon as Obama weighs what to do with the estimated 250 Al Qaeda, Taliban or other foreign fighter suspects still there.

FOX News' Catherine Herridge and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

January 27, 2009 www.nytimes.com
Afghan Prison Poses Problem in Overhaul of Detainee Policy
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — For months, a national debate has raged over the fate of the 245 detainees at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

But what may be an equally difficult problem now confronts the Obama administration in the 600 prisoners packed into a cavernous, makeshift prison on the American air base at Bagram in Afghanistan.

Military personnel who know Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site as tougher and more spartan. The prisoners have fewer privileges and virtually no access to lawyers. The Bush administration never allowed journalists or human rights advocates inside.

Problems have also developed with efforts to rehabilitate former jihadists, some of whom had been imprisoned at Guantánamo. Nine graduates of a Saudi program have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups, Saudi officials said Monday.

President Obama must now decide whether and how to continue holding the men at Bagram, most of them suspected of being Taliban fighters. Under the laws of war, they are being held indefinitely and without charge. He must also determine whether to go forward with the construction of a $60 million prison complex at Bagram that, while offering better conditions for the detainees, would also signal a longer-term commitment to the American detention mission.

Mr. Obama tried last week to buy some time in addressing the challenges Bagram poses even as he ordered Guantánamo closed. By a separate executive order, Mr. Obama directed a task force led by the attorney general and the defense secretary to study the government’s overall policy on detainees and to report to him in six months.

But human rights advocates and former government officials say that several factors — including expanding combat operations against the Taliban, the scheduled opening of the new prison at Bagram in the fall and a recent federal court order — will probably force the administration to deal with the vexing choices much sooner.

“How the Obama administration plans to deal with detention in Afghanistan is an open question,” said Tina M. Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, a human rights organization in New York. “How will this administration differ from the Bush administration in its conduct of detention in Afghanistan?”

The population at Bagram has increased nearly sixfold over the past four years, driven not just by the deepening conflict in Afghanistan but also by the fact that the Bush administration in September 2004 largely halted the movement of prisoners to Guantánamo, leaving Bagram as the preferred alternative to detain terrorism suspects.

Bush administration lawyers argued this month that the Bagram detainees were different from those at Guantánamo. Virtually all of the Bagram prisoners were captured on the battlefield and were being held in a war zone, the lawyers contended, and they could pose a security threat if released. On Thursday, Judge John D. Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia gave the Obama administration until Feb. 20 to “refine” the government’s legal position with respect to four men who are seeking to challenge their detention at Bagram under habeas corpus, a right that the Supreme Court has granted for detainees at Guantánamo.

The four plaintiffs were taken to Bagram from outside Afghanistan and have been imprisoned there without access to any legal process, many of them for over six years, said Ms. Foster, who is representing the detainees.

Judge Bates issued his order after Mr. Obama signed his directives on Thursday, and the judge cited the presidential orders as “indicating significant changes to the government’s approach to the detention, and review of detention, of individuals currently held at Guantánamo Bay.” He noted that “a different approach could impact the court’s analysis of certain issues central to the resolution” of the Bagram cases as well.

At a White House briefing about the executive orders last Thursday, a senior administration official was asked whether terrorism suspects captured by American authorities would continue to be sent to Bagram. The official said not to expect any changes to existing policies in Afghanistan for at least six months, pending the completion of the task force’s review.

A Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, declined to comment on Judge Bates’s order, saying that government lawyers were studying it.

The challenges confronting the Obama administration at Bagram do not extend to the much larger American detention operations in Iraq, where the United States now holds about 15,000 prisoners. Under a security agreement with the Iraqi government, the United States will begin next month to release up to 1,500 detainees a month. Fighters captured and imprisoned in Iraq are afforded legal protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Human rights advocates are already pressing the administration to revamp the review process for releasing or transferring the Bagram detainees, all but about 30 of whom are Afghans. This process, which the military calls “unlawful enemy combatant review boards,” involves reviews of the status of each prisoner every six months. Human rights lawyers criticize the process as a sham and have called for a return to the longstanding battlefield reviews called for by the Geneva Conventions.

More broadly, Mr. Obama’s move away from the Bush administration’s aggressive detention policies will have to be reconciled with his plans to increase combat operations in Afghanistan, a step that will almost inevitably generate new waves of detainees.

“The decisions about detention in and around Afghanistan are linked to strategic decisions Obama needs to make on the Afghanistan war,” said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School who served in the Department of Defense overseeing detainee policies under the Bush administration. “Does a proposed ‘surge’ in Afghanistan, for example, include an expanded detention mission? How does detention fit within a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan?”

Mr. Waxman said one approach the Obama administration might consider is whether it can defend a narrower definition of enemy combatant than the broad one asserted by the Bush administration.

In 2005, the Bush administration began trying to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan, mainly by transferring Bagram prisoners to an American-financed high-security prison outside of Kabul guarded by American-trained Afghan soldiers.

The American military has handed over about 20 to 30 detainees a month since 2007, or more than 500 detainees in all, according to Lt. Col. Mark Wright, a Defense Department spokesman.

But United States officials conceded more than a year ago that the new Afghan prison could not absorb all the Bagram prisoners. The officials have also acknowledged serious problems in the security-court system in Afghanistan in which the transferred detainees are being tried.

Another question confronting the Obama administration is whether to go ahead with the construction of a 40-acre detention complex to replace the existing prison. After the prison was created in early 2002, it became a primary screening site for prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Harsh interrogation methods and sleep deprivation were used routinely, and two Afghan detainees died there in December 2002 after being beaten by American soldiers and hung by their arms from the ceiling of isolation cells.

Conditions and treatment have improved markedly since then, but there are still only minimal areas for the prisoners to exercise. The new detention center at Bagram is supposed to incorporate some of the lessons learned by the United States in Iraq. Classrooms will be built for vocational training and religious discussion, and there will be more space for recreation and family visits, officials said.

“The tragedy is, the U.S. is spending tens of millions of dollars building better detention facilities, but still has no process in place to handle these guys,” said Sam Zarifi, director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific program, which is based in London.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.