| | |  Americas & Beyond | December 2008 
Group Requests Stay for Alleged 9/11 Plotters
 Associated Press
go to original
| | German Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (left). European nations are discussing taking Guantanamo prisoners as an overture to Obama. See article below. (Getty Images) | |
San Juan, Puerto Rico — A U.S. human rights group on Monday called for a stay of all war-crimes proceedings against five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged with orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks until after President-elect Barack Obama takes office.
Lawyers for the New York-based Human Rights First said they filed the friend-of-the-court brief because military prosecutors are likely to seek another hearing in Guantanamo's highest-profile case before Obama takes over Jan. 20.
"There is no legitimate reason to expend judicial resources prosecuting a capital case under a system that will be obsolete before the matter can be tried," the group's brief said.
Obama opposes the military war-crimes trials and has pledged to close the prison on a Navy base in southeast Cuba, which holds 250 men.
The defendants in the Sept. 11 case wrote a letter on Nov. 4 – the day Obama was elected president – saying they wanted to confess, presumably to plead guilty and face the death penalty. At least two of the men, including the self-described mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have said they want to be executed to achieve martyrdom.
But the formal confessions were delayed when a judge ruled this month that two of the defendants couldn't enter pleas until the court determines their mental competency. The other three said they would also wait.
The judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, has ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty without a jury trial.
European Governments Begin Detainee Discussions
Peter Finn - Washington Post
go to original
Nations may accept Guantanamo prisoners as overture to new US president.
European countries have begun intensive discussions both within and between their governments on whether to resettle detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a significant overture to the incoming Obama administration, according to senior European officials and U.S. diplomats.
The willingness to consider accepting prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries, because of fears they might be tortured there, represents a major change in attitude on the part of European governments. Repeated requests from the Bush administration that European allies accept some Guantanamo detainees received only refusals.
The Bush administration "produced the problem," said Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American Cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry, in a phone interview. "With Obama, the difference is that he tries to solve it."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has instructed officials to look into the political, legal and logistical aspects of his country accepting detainees, a ministry spokesman said today. A discussion paper on the issue has been circulating among ministries in Berlin for a number of weeks, German officials said.
European officials put out tentative feelers to the Obama team to see whether they were willing to discuss the issue, but the incoming administration has rejected holding even informal talks until after the inauguration, according to European and U.S. officials aware of the attempted outreach.
"President-elect Obama has repeatedly said that he intends to close Guantanamo, and he will follow through on those commitments as president. There is one president at a time and we intend to respect that," said Brooke Anderson, chief national security spokeswoman for the Obama transition team.
The Portuguese government pushed what had been private discussions in Europe into the open this month when Foreign Minister Luis Amado brought up the issue in a letter to his counterparts in other countries.
"The time has come for the European Union to step forward," Amado wrote. "As a matter of principle and coherence, we should send a clear signal of our willingness to help the U.S. government in that regard, namely through the resettlement of detainees. As far as the Portuguese government is concerned, we will be available to participate."
Amado said today in a phone interview that he planned to raise the issue at an E.U. foreign ministers meeting in late January. It will also be discussed at an E.U. General Affairs and External Relations Council meeting Jan. 26, he added.
"I believe the new [U.S.] administration will have the conditions to create a new dynamic of cooperation," Amado said. He noted that when he first raised the issue of Guantanamo at a E.U. foreign ministers meeting, about seven months ago, there was resistance from some countries to extending any assistance to the Bush administration.
"I assume the new administration will have someone on a plane to Europe within minutes of Obama being sworn in," said Sarah E. Mendelson, director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the author of a report on closing Guantanamo.
European officials who requested anonymity because their governments have not yet formulated a public stance on the issue said they expect the Obama administration to take a number of steps to secure European cooperation, some of which appear to be already under serious discussion by the Obama transition team.
The Europeans want a clear commitment to close Guantanamo and an acceptance of common legal principles in the fight against terrorism, including the treatment of captured suspected terrorists, European officials said. A series of meetings between the United States and the European Union on a legal framework for combating terrorism has considerably narrowed differences on the application of human rights law, refugee law and humanitarian law, according to Amado and John Bellinger, a legal adviser at the State Department.
The Europeans also want Obama to agree to transfer a small number of detainees to the United States before they attempt to sell a resettlement program to their own citizens.
"I believe that will happen," Amado said.
One likely group of detainees for settlement here is 17 Chinese Uighurs who have been held for years at Guantanamo. The Bush administration has acknowledged that the Uighurs are not enemy combatants, and in October a federal judge ordered them released into the United States.
In interagency discussions, the State Department has argued that the Uighurs be brought to the United States to help persuade Europe to resettle other detainees. But a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the departments of Homeland Security and Justice as well as officials in the White House considered resettlement in the United States a "red-line" issue.
The Justice Department has appealed the judge's order that the Uighurs be released.
"Secretary Rice and others at State argued for resettlement in the U.S. as a deal-maker," said one U.S. official. "But it's clear this administration is not going to reconsider the issue of resettlement."
There are currently about 250 prisoners at Guantanamo, according to the Pentagon. And some European officials said a number of governments are now considering the logistics of resettling a majority of the 60 prisoners already cleared for release by U.S. authorities.
The Pentagon has not identified those 60 prisoners, but a study released last week by the Brookings Institute found that as well as the Chinese Uighurs, the group includes detainees from Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and Palestine. The Brookings study found that these prisoners "concentrate at the less dangerous end of the spectrum."
The U.S. military no longer holds any European citizens at Guantanamo.
Thomas Steg, a German deputy government spokesman, said today that the United States would not be able to place any conditions on the handling of transferred detainees if they are accepted in Europe.
"One thing is clear, the Americans cannot ask for any special terms - no other agreements, swaps or other strings attached," Steg told reporters in Berlin.
He also said the issue would have to be discussed by all 27 members of the European Union. Countries such as Denmark have already signaled they will not accept any detainees, arguing that they are the sole responsibility of the United States.
"Why should they be taken into the much smaller Danish society," said Per Stig Moller, the country's foreign minister, last month. "None of these prisoners has anything whatsoever to with Denmark."
Some general agreement among E.U. members is required because of the freedom of travel within the union, but that prerequisite is not expected to block a resettlement deal because of the general desire in Europe "to please Obama," as one German official put it in an interview.
The Bush administration shopped lists of detainees to a number of European countries, including late last year when European officials were asked to take 16 of the 17 Uighurs, four Uzbeks, an Egyptian, a Palestinian and a Somali, according to U.S. diplomats and human rights groups.
"There was a big push last year," said Bellinger, the State legal adviser, who said that the administration has cabled approximately 100 countries seeking assistance on clearing out Guantanamo. "Some countries were willing to consider it but as part of a group. But no lead country emerged."
A number of civil liberties and human rights groups have also been holding talks with European governments with the quiet approval of the State Department, U.S. officials said.
"We have been saying to them that if you want Guantanamo to close, the [Obama] administration cannot do it without European assistance," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism program director at Human Rights Watch, who has talked with government officials in a number of European capitals.
Mariner declined to identify the governments she spoke with, but she said there has been "a clear change in attitude" since Obama's election.
"Before, they said, 'Why should we clean up Bush's mess?' but now they are asking deeper questions about the detainees and how they might integrate them," Mariner said. |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us