CSP Announces Release of Occasional Paper “Keep Gitmo Going”

(Washington, D.C.): Against the backdrop of President Obama’s insistence on proceeding with closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility despite rising opposition from American citizens and their elected representatives, the Center for Security Policy (CSP) has announced the release of the latest in its Occasional Paper Series, Keep Gitmo Going: The case for retaining the vital detention and interrogation facility at Guantánamo Bay.

The white paper identifies the national security, public safety, and legal and economic challenges associated with closing Guantánamo and transferring detainees to the United States or to foreign custody.  Anywhere from 10-20 percent of the nearly 500 detainees released from Guantanamo have returned to the battlefield in some capacity.  These were the “benign” detainees, one can only imagine the rate of recidivism of the 240 hardened terrorists still detained at Guantánamo.

Among those still held at Guantánamo are: Khaled Sheikh Mohammad, the self-confessed mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and the murder of Daniel Pearl; Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a key facilitator of the 9/11 attacks and lead operative in a plot to crash aircaft into Heathrow Airport; and Abdal al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing in 2002.

The transfer of such detainees to facilities within the United States will raise the risk of a terrorist attack on American soil.  The facility at Guantánamo was chosen because it was the most secure location at which to house detainees, and therefore better ensure the safety of the American public..  There are multiple levels of security that need to be addressed before a detainee could be transferred to a facility within the United States.  As the paper indicates:

You can’t commingle them [Guantánamo detainees] with military detainees, so you’d have to set up a separate wing or clear out the facility…[a]nd you would have to address secondary and tertiary [security] concerns within the town, the county and the state…”-  Charles “Cully” Stimson, former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Detainee Affairs (Dan Ephron, “The Gitmo Dilemma,” Newsweek, Nov. 7, 2008) [1]

The paper goes on to note that the potential release of detainees into the United States also presents troubling legal questions:

• With respect to the attempt to release up to 17 terrorist-trained Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) into the United States:

In 2005, Congress amended Section 1182 of Title 8, United States Code, to provide that an alien is “inadmissible” to the United States if s/he has “engaged in a terrorist activity”; “is a member of a terrorist organization”; or “has received military-type training…from or on behalf of any organization that, at the time the training was received, was a terrorist organization.” Because the Uighur detainees in question are affiliated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an al-Qaeda offshoot formally designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, their transfer into the U.S. would violate several provisions of the foregoing statute – as would the transfer of other Guantánamo detainees for similar reasons. [2]

• With respect to trying detainees in civilian courts:

Because these detainees were captured during the course of battlefield hostilities, the government’s case against them necessarily includes evidence that is classified, circumstantial, or otherwise acquired in ways that might make it inadmissible in an American civilian court. The U.S. government would therefore be forced to make an impossible decision: either disclose the evidence in full, which would in turn involve disclosure of military and intelligence sources and methods, or decline to disclose such evidence, and risk the release of the detainees as a result. [3]

For additional information on the closing of Guantanamo, visit the Coalition for Terror-Free Communities website, at: www.terrorfreecommunities.org.  It is regularly updated with the latest news, reports, legislation and analyses of information related to the risks associated with the closure of Guantanamo and transfer of detainees to the United States.

-30-

NOTES

[1] See Kimball, E.J. and Lerner, Benjamin. Keep Gitmo Going: The Case for Retaining the Vital Detention and Interrogation Facility at Guantanamo Bay.  CSP Occasional Paper, 28 May 2009, p. 3 (available at: https://204.96.138.161/upload/wysiwyg/center%20publication%20pdfs/Kimball%20&%20Lerner%20-%20Keep%20Gitmo%20Going%20FINAL.pdf

[2] Ibid. p. 4-5

[3] Ibid. p. 6