New detainees show Bush has no plans to close Guantanamo Bay

The announcement of the transfer of a new detainee to Guantanamo Bay on Friday was the latest signal sent by the Bush administration that it was not committed to any plan to close the detention facility. More than suggesting that Guantanamo will remain open, the announcement showed that the CIA had re-opened its system of secret prisons.

But while the Bush administration moves to continue its detention programs, members of Congress have plans of their own to shut down Guantanamo.

'No inclination' to close Guantanamo Bay, says Senator

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced legislation on Monday to close Guantanamo Bay. The bill would require the shuttering of the detention facility within a year of its enactment.
"The President himself has said that he would like the detention facility closed. Yet it is clear that the Administration shows no inclination to close it," the Senator said in a statement she released Monday.

She added, "We must recognize the sustained damage this facility is doing to our international standing. We are better served by closing this facility and transferring the detainees elsewhere.”
Feinstein's spokesman, Scott Gerber, told RAW STORY that the statements of President Bush and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that they want the base to close rang hollow.
"Bush and other members of his administration have stated that as a wish, but there does not appear to be any action," Gerber said Tuesday. "Senator Feinstein is taking action where the administration has failed to do so."

While Secretary Gates has stated a desire to close Guantanamo Bay, another Defense Department official made it clear that Pentagon planners had no real intention of shutting the prison down.

"To abandon this carefully crafted system and attempt to transplant the trials of enemy combatants into the civilian courts would be ill-advised, as would be transplanting the commissions themselves from the secure facility at Guantanamo to some unspecified location in the United States," Daniel Dell'Orto, a Defense Department lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last Thursday.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), who chairs that committee, declined to comment to RAW STORY on Dell'Orto's remark.

But in the House of Representatives, a powerful subcommittee will take up the question of closing Guantanamo.

"We're going to look at what's going on down there, and there are a lot of questions coming out that need to be answered," said Austin Durrer, a spokesman for Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA).
The Congressman will hold a hearing on May 9 looking at how to close Guantanamo Bay next year. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, has asked Moran to take the lead in examining the question.

Durrer added, "We're looking forward to exploring these issues and finding out what's going on, why they're adding more prisoners, and what the administration is looking at in the long-term."
New Guantanamo detainee second added this year.
Durrer's reference to the new prisoners at Guantanamo was occasioned by Friday's announcement that a new detainee had been taken into custody by the Defense Department at Guantanamo Bay.

Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was described in a Defense Department press release as "one of al-Qaida’s highest-ranking and experienced senior operatives." The Pentagon also noted that "As a result of this latest transfer, there are now approximately 385 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."
Al-Iraqi is the second new detainee to be sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2007. In late March, the Pentagon announced the transfer to the facility of Abdul Malik, a detainee accused of being involved in terrorist activities in East Africa.

Dell'Orto, the Pentagon legal counsel, explained in the previous week's Senate hearing why the Pentagon was holding detainees like Malik and Al-Iraqi at Guantanamo Bay.
"Since the war in Afghanistan began, the United States has captured, screened, and released approximately 10,000 individuals. Initial screening has resulted in only a small percentage of those captured being transferred to Guantanamo," Dell'Orto explained. "The United States only wishes to hold those who are enemy combatants who pose a continuing threat to the United States and its allies."

The Pentagon's screening process is ongoing. The Washington Post wrote on April 29 that 82 detainees at Guantanamo have been informed that they will be sent home as soon as possible.
"Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions," wrote Craig Whitlock.
Still, Whitlock noted that the Pentagon would not free all of the Guantanamo detainees.
"Of the roughly 385 still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest," he added.

New detainee shows CIA secret prisons re-opened

But even as the Pentagon appeared to be winnowing down the number of detainees who would stay at Guantanamo indefinitely, new prisoners appeared to be emerging from secret CIA prisons that President Bush had previously promised were closed.
"Prior to his arrival at Guantanamo Bay, he was held in CIA custody," the Pentagon's news release acknowledged.

Various news reports referred to an e-mail sent to CIA staff by Director of Central Intelligence Michael Hayden on Friday, saluting the CIA's interrogation programs.
"In an E-mail message to CIA employees hailing the arrest as a 'triumph,' CIA director Michael Hayden said the agency's interrogation program was vital and legal. 'The information it has produced has prevented terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives,' he wrote," according to an item at the News Desk blog, produced by US News and World Report.
The revelation of continued CIA detention of terror suspects triggered strong condemnation from one member of Congress.

"Last September when the president announced that he was moving detainees from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo, he left the distinct impression that his Administration was discontinuing their secret prison program," Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) said in a statement sent to RAW STORY. "Unfortunately, we learned this past weekend that the Administration never saw an error in their ways and that secret CIA prisons are still operating outside the law and outside the public eye."

Human rights groups were also alarmed by the announcement.

"In the absence of clear knowledge about how al-Iraqi was detained and treated, there have to be serious red flags raised everywhere as a result of this announcement," said Hina Shamsi, deputy director of Human Rights First's Law and Security Program. "Even as the rules governing CIA interrogation are being debated, it appears that the CIA program has continued. Congress should demand to know under what rules these detentions and interrogations may be operating."

The group Human Rights Watch also accused the President of misleading the public.
"We’re skeptical that President Bush was telling the whole story when he said the CIA prisons were empty," said Joanne Mariner, the group's terrorism and counterterrorism director. "It’s quite possible that his claim was based on legal niceties: that while detainees were in the custody of other countries, the CIA had the power to determine their fate."
Human Rights Watch believes at least 38 additional detainees who were at one time held in the CIA's secret prisons still cannot be accounted for.

Rep. Markey has sponsored the "Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act" to restrict the ability of the CIA and other agencies to cooperate with other countries for extra-legal detentions and interrogations.

Source: TheRawStory.