Dianne Feinstein leading new study to release Gitmo prisoners
The idea of closing down Guantanamo Bay and transferring its detainee population to the United States was supposed to be a dead issue, but Congresswoman Dianne Feinstein is leading a group that doesn’t think so.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is working on a report identifying “policies, plans and procedures” for transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay and exploring Defense and Justice Department “facilities in the United States that are most likely to meet the requirements for housing Guantanamo Bay detainees.” …
A significant number of the men are believed to be Yemeni. President Barack Obama suspended further transfers to Yemen in January 2010, stating that conditions in the country were too “unsettled” to ensure that detainees wouldn’t return to or embark on terrorist activities.
“In the over two years since the [Guantanamo Bay Review] Task Force completed its status reviews, circumstances have changed such that the decisions by the Task Force approving detainees for transfer no longer warrant protection,” the DOJ lawyers wrote in their notice to the court (posted here).
“The efforts of the United States to resettle Guantanamo detainees have largely been successful – they have resulted in 40 detainees being resettled in third countries because of treatment or other concerns in their countries of origin since 2009. In addition, 28 detainees have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 2009. Consequently, the diplomatic and national security harms identified [by Fried in a 2009 court filing] are no longer as acute. In Respondents’ view, there is no longer a need to withhold from the public the status of detainees who have been approved for transfer.”
Why? The prisoners at Gitmo are the 9/11 murders, not US citizens. They should have been in front on a military tribunal years ago, then punished. Not housed on taxpayer dollars, and then have some senator ask to close Gitmo and stop their treatment. They are murders, and are not citizens, afforded Due Process. Shame on the senator, and whoever wrote this article.