Future of Guantanamo in Biden's hands

A FULLER VERSION OF MY STORY IN THE TIMES TODAY: The Pentagon is to review options for closing Guantanamo after President Biden indicated he wanted the detention camp for suspected terrorists in Cuba to be shut. Retired General Lloyd Austin, the new US defence secretary, has also said he plans to end the Guantanamo era after 20 years of incarcerating hundreds of suspects defined by the US as enemy combatants, the majority of whom were never charged. “A review of the closing of Gitmo [Guantanamo] will proceed once guidance is provided by the Biden administration,” a Pentagon spokesman told The Times. There are only 40 detainees out of the peak figure of 780 inmates left in the camp. But they include 14 “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects such as the five held for allegedly organising the 9/11 terrorist atrocity in the US in 2001. Pentagon prosecutors have said that these high-value detainees should never be released. All of them were interrogated by the CIA in secret “black” prisons in Europe, the Far East and North Africa, using methods that included the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. Previous attempts to close Guantanamo and transfer the remaining detainees to maximum-security jails in the US for trial in the federal justice system have failed because Congress prohibited it. President Obama signed an executive order to shut the camp on his first day in office in January 2009. Although 197 detainees were transferred to other countries under his eight-year administration, the camp stayed in business. Under President Trump only one detainee was repatriated. More than 500 were sent home or to third countries under President George W Bush. Nine have died. Only eight have been convicted at Guantanamo military tribunals. As the Pentagon waits for a decision from the White House, the military legal supervisor for the 40 detainees remaining at the camp has authorised the trial of three suspects charged with the Bali bombing which killed 202 people more than 18 years ago. The timing of the trial announcement by Colonel Jeffrey Wood who is responsible as “convening authority” for fixing dates for military tribunals at the Guantanamo courthouse took detainee defence counsel by surprise. Colonel Wood announced the day after Mr Biden had been inaugurated that he had approved charges of conspiracy, murder and terrorism against three Guantanamo detainees who have been held for 17 years. “Generally the decision to refer a case to trial is exclusively within the discretion of the convening authority by military justice rules of procedure,” the Pentagon spokesman said. “The timing sure looks like someone is trying to make it hard on the incoming secretary of defence to close Guantanamo,” Denny LeBoeuf, a Guantanamo specialist lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said.