Daniel Fried, envoy to close Gitmo reassigned, no replacement planned
The State Department on Monday reassigned Daniel Fried, the special envoy for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and will not replace him, according to an internal personnel announcement.
Then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried addressing the Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Parliament in April 2007. He spent not-quite four years as Barack Obama’s Guantanamo closure envoy. COURTESY DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Fried’s office is being closed, and his former responsibilities will be “assumed” by the office of the department’s legal adviser, the notice said.
The announcement that no senior official in President Obama’s second term will succeed Fried on the issue of relocating the detainees appeared to signal that the administration does not currently see the closing of the prison as a realistic priority, despite repeated statements that it still intends to do so.
Fried will become the department’s coordinator for sanctions policy and will work on issues including Iran and Syria.
The announcement came as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other Guantánamo Bay detainees facing death penalty charges before a military tribunal over the Sept. 11 attacks made their first public appearance since October on Monday, sitting quietly in a high-security courtroom at the naval base in Cuba as pretrial hearings resumed.
A closed-circuit feed of the proceedings was shown at Fort Meade.
