Guantanamo, Biden's forever 9/11 legacy

President Biden has found himself in a legal and security “quagmire” in his attempt to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, US sources say.The camp for captured terrorist suspects located on the southeast end of Cuba was described by seven members of a military jury panel at Guantanamo’s $12 million courtroom this week as a “stain on the moral fibre of America”. Biden wants to go down in history as the president who succeeded in shutting Guantanamo after nearly 20 years. However, the “thorough review” he set up almost nine months ago, involving the National Security Council (NSC), aided by the Pentagon, state and justice departments and the CIA, has yet to find any solution to the same challenges faced by President Obama who also pledged to close the camp. “The Biden administration is committed to closing the facility and the department of defence is fully supporting that effort,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Hoffman, said. America’s forever war in Afghanistan may have ended, albeit in an unseemly rush. But Guantanamo, one of the by-products of President George W Bush’s war on terror, is still absorbing millions of dollars of US taxpayers’ money ($540 million last year) and requiring hundreds of soldiers to guard a detainee community that has shrunk from 780 to 39. Some savings have been made this year after the decision to close Camp 7, the highly secret facility built for 14 of the “most prized” detainees who, since April, have been housed in the two other main jails, Camp 5 and 6. It has enabled the guard force of 1,800 soldiers to be cut significantly, although the new figure has yet to be made public. Guantanamo has been back in the headlines after self-confessed al-Qaeda terrorist Majid Khan, a 41-year-old Pakistani who pleaded guilty in return for cooperating with the FBI, received a 26-year sentence. Under the tell-all deal which has been running since he first appeared in a blue pin-striped suit in the Pentagon’s military commission Guantanamo courtroom in 2012, he could be freed as early as February next year. That will mean 38 detainees left for the Biden administration to sort out. The vast majority of the 780 were transferred to their countries of origin or to third-party nations willing or persuaded to help out the US government. “Thirteen of the detainees still in Guantanamo were approved for transfer but they’ve been waiting to leave for over ten years,” Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said. She insisted Biden had an obvious path forward for closing the camp: transfers for all those not charged and plea bargains for others awaiting trial “so that justice can be done”.It was during Khan’s sentencing that it emerged seven members of the jury panel had written a letter (obtained by The New York Times) condemning the harsh treatment he had suffered at the hands of his CIA interrogators in “black prisons” after his capture in Pakistan in March 2003. Khan, like many of the Guantanamo detainees endured physical and mental abuse, defined by Congress as torture, before they were transferred to the facility in Cuba. Khan had been charged with a number of terrorist crimes including acting as a courier for al-Qaeda and handing $50,000 to the Jemaah Islamiyah affiliated extremist group in southeast Asia who five months after his arrest carried out a suicide bomb attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia in August, 2003, killing 12 people and injuring 150. The terrorist-turned-informer case is one of the few success stories for the US military prosecuting authorities. Only one other Guantanamo detainee has been convicted. Fourteen of the 39 detainees are defined as “forever prisoners” who have never been charged and have no prospect of being brought to trial. But they are considered too dangerous ever to be released. The most challenging case of all for the Biden administration involves the five al-Qaeda suspects charged with financing and training the 19 hijackers who crashed passenger planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11 which led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. They face the death penalty if convicted . But every attempt to name a date for their trial at the military commission court at Guantanamo has been thwarted by never-ending legal arguments by defence counsel, hired and paid for by the Pentagon. The arguments have continued for years about the defendants’ rights and, most especially, about their treatment by CIA interrogators. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded (the simulated drowning technique) 183 times at a secret site in Poland. The FBI and military prosecutors have tried to build their case against them based on evidence that has to exclude anything the defendants might have said under torture. “We’re nearly 20 years on and nowhere near a trial. Everyone agrees that Guantanamo’s military commission system is broken and can’t provide justice,” Shamsi said. The Covid pandemic, hurricanes and frequent military judge rotations have exacerbated the delay in bringing the five alleged co-conspirators to trial. Now a new commander of US Southern Command, based in Miami, which has overall responsibility for Guantanamo, has taken over following a ceremony last week. US Army General Laura Richardson is the first woman to be given the role. If Biden succeeds in finding a way to close Guantanamo before the end of this four-year term of office, she will have the task of masterminding the end of what has been an unsavoury chapter in America’s history.