Trump will keep Guantanamo Bay open and may add new detainees

  Obama never was able to follow through on his promise to  close the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. In his presidential campaign far from promising closure Donald Trump promised to keep the detention center open. Trump appears to be taking action to keep his promise.

In March, Trump asked Congress for additional funding for the facility. A request for $115 million to be incorporated in a 2018 spending bill is under consideration.The money would build a new military barracks for US troops but it also contains language that prevents the facility from being closed and also bans the transfer of any detainees to the United States mainland.

In his campaign in February of 2016 Trump said of Guantanamo: "We're going to load it up with bad dudes." The acting Pentagon comptroller John Roth said that it did not seem as if the facility would close anytime soon. Trump has not as yet sent any new detainees to Cuba but Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that he saw no legal problems with sending more detainees to the facility. Sessions said in a radio interview this March: "I've been there a number of times as a senator, and it's just a very fine place for holding these kind of dangerous criminals. We've spent a lot of money fixing it up, and I'm inclined to the view that it remains a perfectly acceptable place."

While Obama did not close Guantanamo he vastly reduced the population. Trump said in January of this year that there should be no further releases from Gitmo because the detainees were extremely dangerous and should not be allowed back on the battlefield. There are only 41 detainees left. A majority 26 are being held without charge, three have been convicted, and seven others face charges. There are another five recommended for transfer  in spite of Trump claiming they are all dangerous.

David Rivkin, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of  Democracies, who served under both President Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the Justice Department said: “We have taken off the table the silly ideas that the previous administration had about Guantanamo.” After Trump's inauguration there were various draft executive orders floating around that would have revoked Obama's executive order that the facility be closed and suspend any existing transfers pending a review. The orders also called for the facility to continue to operate to hold members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces including those of the Islamic State. But for some reason none of the orders have yet been signed. Perhaps Trump is too busy playing golf. The issue of Guantanamo appears to be off the press radar for the most part.

Wells Dixon, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents some detainees says that business is going ahead as usual at the facility although no one new has been cleared for transfer. A US Department of Justice spokesperson, Ian Prior said of a visit by officials to the facility: “In addition to the Department of Justice's role in handling detainee-related litigation, it is important for the Department of Justice to have an up-to-date understanding of current operations...Keeping this country safe from terrorists is the highest priority of the Trump administration. Recent attacks in Europe and elsewhere confirm that the threat to our nation is immediate and real, and it remains essential that we use every lawful tool available to prevent as many attacks as possible.” Sessions has claimed there is plenty of space for new prisoners at Guantanamo and it is well equipped to handle them. Experts have pointed out that the authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that is used to justify the indefinite detention of suspected Al Qaeda members etc. does not mention the Islamic State. Dixon said any arrival of a suspected IS member would face a legal challenge.

The election of Trump has led to loss of hope for many detainees who fear they will never be released. Dixon said: “The men are very aware of fact that no one has left Guantanamo since end of the Obama administration, and that takes a tremendous psychological toll,” he said. “It is torture by any reasonable measure.”

15th anniversary passes of Guantanamo Bay prison with no sign of closure in sight

On January 11, 2002 Guantanamo Bay detention center opened its cells to retain terror suspects. The facility became infamous for torture and indefinite detention without any charges being laid in many cases.

The facility was first opened under president George Bush in 2002 after the 9/11 attacks in September of 2001. At the time of its establishment its purpose was described as follows: "... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the prison camp was established to detain extraordinarily dangerous people, to interrogate detainees in an optimal setting, and to prosecute detainees for war crimes. In practice, the site has long been used for indefinite detention without trial."

During his 2008 presidential campaign Obama said of Guantanamo that it was "a sad chapter of American history" and promised to close down the prison next year. Obama repeated his promise on 60 Minutes and the ABC program This Week after he was elected. From the very start, Obama tried to close the base but was always stymied mostly by the U.S. Congress that passed motions that forbade him from transferring any Guantanamo prisoners to U.S. soil. In January of 2009 he issued a request to suspend the operations of the military commission for 120 days and shut down the facility within the year. Of course, it never closed then nor in subsequent years.

Over the years the facility has held up to 800 prisoners who in some cases were tortured, with the overwhelming majority never having been charged. The euphemistically named "enhanced techniques" included water-boarding and being stripped naked and being confined in dark cells for long periods. A November 2016 study, by the Afghan Analysts network, found that many prisoners were retained on the basis of scant evidence. The group claimed that the eight longest-serving prisoners were being held on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations. Nine prisoners have died in custody, seven from apparent suicides. Over the years many prisoners have been cleared for release and Obama has been attempting to release all he can before his term is up on January 20th. Only 55 prisoners now remain and of those 19 have been cleared for release, five of them as long ago as 2009. The facility has housed at least fifteen children including Omar Khadr who was picked up in Afghanistan in 2002. Khadr is now back in Canada. He is a Canadian citizen. He returned to Canada in September of 2012 where he will serve out his sentence.

Omar Khadr is shown in an undated handout photo from the Bowden Institution in Innisfail, Alta.

Bowden Institution

Mohammed el Gharani was 14 when sent to Guantanamo. He was accused of fighting for the Taliban and being a member of a London-based Al-Qaeda cell. It turns out that Gharani has never been to the U.K. or to Afghanistan. He was finally released in 2009 after seven years in prison. There are many cases where supposed evidence turns out to be incorrect. Mustafa al-Shamiri has spent 14 years in Guantanamo. In a case of mistaken identity he was taken to be a senior Al-Qaeda trainer in Afghanistan. He was finally cleared for release more than a year ago but is still being held.

In July 2002 U.S. military forces raided a compound in Logar province Afghanistan. They were looking for a suspected fighter who went by the alias Abdul Bari who had ties to an Al-Qaeda bomb maker. They did find an Abdul Bari whose real name was Abdul Zaric with Bari just being his nickname. When captured the U.S. forces claimed he possessed unknown substances including a white powder, that were initially thought to be chemical or biological agents. He did work as a translator for the Taliban government to support his family. According to a 2015 report the substances in his possession were salt, sugar and petroleum jelly.

A Guantanamo detainee wears an orange jump suit at the Guantanamo Naval Base on January 17, 2002

Roberto Schmidt, AFP/File

President-elect Donald Trump has said that there should be no further releases from Guantanamo. He says they are extremely dangerous people who should not be allowed back on the battlefield. Trump has vowed to keep the prison open and load it up with some 'bad hombres'. The other day Obama announced the transfer of four detainees to Saudi Arabia perhaps the last to be released before September 20. Even if every detainee cleared for transfer is released there would still be about forty held at the prison.

There is a deep uncertainty among Guantanamo inmates as to what will happen in the future as Donald Trump becomes president. Pardiss Kebriaei, lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Right, that represents the prisoners said: “There is a great deal of anxiety and fear.”

Obama will break his promise to close Guantanamo Bay

Obama's top counterterrorism adviser appears to have ruled out any last minute dramatic move by the president to close down Guantanamo Bay before he leaves office.

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Obama has continually promised to close the facility since he has become president but Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Counter-terrorism and Homeland Security, said:

"At the end of the day, the domestic transfer restriction remains in place, so until Congress lifts that we’re not able to bring detainees here even to serve a life sentence, even to undergo prosecution to render a life sentence, so those restrictions remain in place. There will be some number that remain, absent an ability and a lifting of the Congressional restrictions to bring them to the Unuted States, they will remain in Guantanamo."She made the remarks at a discussion promoted by the Christian Science Monitor. This in effect acknowledges that prison at Guantanamo Bay will not be closed during Obama's term as president in spite of his continual promises that it would be.

Some advocates of closure have claimed that Obama can use his executive authority to transfer the remaining prisoners to the US, including two lawyers who had worked on the issue for Obama. They claim he can simply ignore the Congressional ban on transfers. Obama is expected to sign into law a defense spending authorization bill that will maintain a prohibition to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to the US, as well as put limits on transfers abroad as well. Republicans in Congress were concerned that Obama might use his executive powers to override the ban but Monaco said that Obama has no intention of doing so even though he disagrees with the restrictions.

Monaco said that the Obama administration would continue to try to shrink the prison population at Guantanamo. It has shrunk from 240 when Obama became president to 59 now. Monaco said that Obama would transfer as many as he could before leaving office on January 20th. Monaco complained that the Congress would not act on the Obama plan to close Guantanamo submitted in February of this year.

The most recently planned transfer is of a prisoner accused of bombing an Israeli hotel in Kenya. However, the transfer is being held up by the refusal of US authorities to release documentation used to show his guilt. The prisoner is being transferred to Israel to be prosecuted and Israel obviously wants evidence the US has of his guilt.

Far from closing Guantanamo Bay, President-elect Trump might even make it bigger. Trump's pick for head of Homeland Security is retired general John Kelly. Kelly was opposed to Obama's plans to close the base while he was in command of the area of which Guantanamo Bay was part. Under Trump Guantanamo Bay could thrive. Obama's plans would still have retained the worst feature of Guantanamo, imprisoning people indefinitely without benefit of any trial and with no charges being laid. Instead of injustice being perpetrated in Guantanamo Bay it would occur within the US itself.

Over $600 billion US defence bill bans Guantanamo inmates from US.

The US Senate on Tuesday approved a $607 billion defense spending bill that includes provisions that will make it difficult for Barack Obama to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

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While Obama had vetoed an earlier version of the bill, the new version passed by a 370 to 58 vote in the House of Representatives and 91 to 3 in the Senate. Bernie Sanders, who is running to be the Democratic presidential candidate, was one of the three senators voting against the bill.

Even the new bill has provisions in it that would ban transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. The administration has been studying possible locations for prisoners in the U.S., includeing a "Supermax" facility in Florence, Colorado, designed for very dangerous inmates. The restrictions in the bill would prevent transfer of detainees to the U.S. even for prosecution as well as continued detention. There are also tighter restrictions on transferring detainees to other countries. Obama's plan was to transfer 53 of those remaining in the facility to other countries and to send the 61 remaining prisoners to the U.S. In spite of the roadblocks put in place by the U.S. Congress, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, insisted the Obama administration would continue to work towards closing the prison. Closing Guantanamo has been a key unfulfilled promise of Obama from the beginning of his term of office. Earnest was optimistic:“I don’t think this has any material impact on our ability to put together and send to Congress a thoughtful, carefully considered plan for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and a plan that we believe merits the strong support of both Democrats and Republicans.”Senate Republicans such as Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire were critical and warned Obama against any attempt to circumvent Congress saying: “Even when the Democrats controlled the Senate, there have been provisions that have prohibited the transfer of the terrorist detainees at Guantánamo to the United States of America. So this discussion that you’ve seen from the administration to say that the president is contemplating an executive order on this issue clearly would violate the law.”

Josh Earnest commented on the executive order issue:"I'm not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president's executive authority to accomplish this goal. But I certainly wouldn't, as I mentioned last week, take that option off the table."The new bill cuts less than 1 percent from the previous bill. There was bipartisan agreement that the U.S. needed to spend the money to maintain and upgrade U.S. military capacities due to threats against American interests throughout the globe. As Republican Senator John McCainput it: “We must champion the cause of defense reform, rigorously root out Pentagon waste, and invest to maintain our military technological advantage, and that is what this bill is about."

Among the specific expenditures authorized were $300 million for military aid in Ukraine. The bill also grants a request from Obama for $715 million to be used to fight the Islamic State in Iraq. There was also a further expenditure of $80 billion in a separate bill that passed 93 to 0. The bill was for veteran's programs and military construction projects. The White House has affirmed that Obama will sign the bill in spite of the retention of provisions that make it difficult for him to close Guantanamo as well as minimal spending reductions. Both houses have sufficient votes to overcome a veto in any event.

Even if Guantanamo prison closes US will not return Guantanamo to Cuba

In a recent speech, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the U.S. intends to keep Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba whether or not the prison closes down.

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Carter said it "would be nice" if the U.S. can close the detention centre at Guantanamo and move the remaining detainees somewhere within the U.S., but even if the prison is closed the U.S. will keep the base in spite of objections by the Cubans.

According to Wikipedia Guantanamo Bay Naval Base:... is located on 45 square miles (120 km2) of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which the United States leased for use as a coaling and naval station in the Cuban–American Treaty of 1903 (for $2,000 until 1934, for $4,085 since 1938 until now).

The lease is in perpetuity and can only be cancelled by the agreement of both parties. The Cuban government has protested consistently against the U.S. presence at Guantanamo and claims it is illegal under international law and was originally imposed upon Cuba by force. In 2013 at the UN Human Rights Council Cuba demanded that the U.S. return the base and other "usurped territory" it took when the U.S. invaded Cuba during the Spanish-American war of 1898.

Guantanamo Bay is the oldest overseas US naval base, being occupied for over 110 years. It has been used as a detention center since 2002. Even with the recent establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the U.S. has made no promises to return the base but has promised only to "discuss" the issue. Perhaps the U.S. might at the very least offer a more reasonable payment for the lease. The Cubans have refused to accept the checks that the U.S. faithfully sends each year.

Carter said that Guantanamo Bay base was "strategically located" : “We’ve been operating for a long time and that’s going to stay important. I don’t see us changing that.” Although Cuba insists that for complete normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations, the U.S. would need to return the base to Cuba, the Obama administration insists that currently the matter is not even being discussed. The return of the base to Cuba seems even more unlikely than the closing of the prison complex in the near future.

Despite thaw with Cuba, US will retain possession of Guantanamo Bay

A sure sign that Guantanamo Bay will remain in American hands for the foreseeable future is the continued investment in the facility. The most recent investment is a very expensive school.

Guantanamo Bay has the most expensive prison on the globe. Now it will have one of the most expensive schools as well. Although the cost of running the prison is huge it needs large continuing investments just to keep the facilities in decent shape as parts of the prison need repair in the worst way. An article from the New Republic sums up the situation: At a cost of $2.8 million per prisoner per year, Guantánamo is the most expensive prison in the world. (The costliest prison in the U.S., the Colorado Supermax, at $78,000 per prisoner per year.) And the costs will continue to rise as facilities that were built to be temporary, like the Camp America Dining Facility, deteriorate. In addition to the dining facility repairs, the 2015 defense budget also calls for $11.8 million to upgrade a medical clinic that was never built to serve an aging population of prisoners. Congress earmarked another $69 million to renovate Camp 7, the top-secret facility that holds the 15-high value detainees who were tortured in CIA black sites prior to their transfer to Guantánamo. In March, The Miami Herald reported that the ground below the facility had shifted, causing the floors and walls of the building to crack.

 The new school at the base will cost $65 million but will house at most 275 children from kindergarten to high school. The cost works out to around a quarter-million dollars per student. In Miami-Dade county in contrast a new school would cost around $30,000 a student. There are about 6,000 residents in Guantanamo Bay. In all, there are 243 students at Guantanamo at present. The prison is run by 2,000 plus temporary troops and private contractors. As part of expenditures meant to bring the base up to par with other government agencies the Pentagon announced that it would install a $40 million fiber optic cable between the U.S. mainland and Guantanamo.

 While legally Guantanamo Bay is still part of Cuba, it has been leased by the U.S. since 1903. The annual cost of the least is just over $4,000 a year but since the Castro revolution of 1959 the Cuban government refuses to cash any of the checks issued in payment by the US. The Cuban government does not recognize the legitimacy of the contract which is in perpetuity and can only be terminated by the agreement of both parties. One reason the prison was built at Guantanamo is that it is not US territory and hence U.S. laws regarding prisoners held in the US would not apply. 

 As part of the recent negotiations to establish diplomatic relations, Cuba apparently asked for the return of Guantanamo but the U.S. declined. According to McClatchy DC the White House said that the status of Guantanamo Bay will not be affected by re-engagement of the U.S. with Cuba.

 This year the pace of prisoner releases from Guantanamo has picked up with 28 being released so far this year, the largest number since 2009. More than half of the remaining prisoners are from Yemen but the U.S. refuses to release any there in spite of the demands of the Yemeni president who is a firm ally of the U.S. Six prisoners were recently released to Uruguay and even more recently five to Kazakhstan. However, given the investment that is being made both on the base and the prison, as well as the restrictions placed by Congress on the transfer of prisoners, it seems unlikely that either the prison let alone the base will be closed in the near future.