Guantanamo,+Obama+Closing

Jan 29th 2009 NO ONE will hear President Barack Obama let slip the words “war on terror”. His decision to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp within a year was intended to draw a clear line for all to see between George Bush’s efforts to consign foreign terrorist suspects to legal limbo and his own vow to restore America’s commitment to the rule of law. But Mr Obama still has to decide what to do not just with Mr Bush’s captives, but with any picked up on his own watch. He took an oath to keep America safe as well as free. After the applause for his Guantánamo decision, it emerged that he had left himself lots of room to work out how. The devil—and the disappointment for some—will be in the detail of other directives signed last week. Officials have 180 days to come up with “lawful” options for dealing with detainees, and just 30 days to ensure that all those held in American custody anywhere are treated humanely. They also have 180 days to decide whether the CIA needs, as some insist, to be able to use harsher interrogation techniques (still short, presumably, of unlawful torture) than are allowed in the Army Field Manual. Until then, the manual is law. Mr Obama knows that America will need a way to keep dangerous terrorist suspects off the streets, however well their jailers treat them. Of the 800 or so who have passed through Guantánamo since it opened in 2001, 242 are still stuck there. The number can be whittled down. Countries from Britain to Saudi Arabia have already taken back nationals or residents, including some potentially dangerous characters. Mr Bush had been pressing others to take in the roughly 60 who, though cleared for release, could not be sent home; an expedited review of cases will have Mr Obama pressing harder. Reports that at least 61 of the more than 500 detainees freed from Guantánamo thus far have reverted to violence will not help. Finding those “lawful” solutions for the too-dangerous-to-release lot will be even trickier. Human-rights campaigners want them to have their day in court—federal district court, tried under criminal law. Federal courts have a good record in trying terrorism cases, says a recent report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank. But even with “clean teams” collecting fresh evidence, untainted by accusations of past harsh treatment, few cases may go to trial this way; even where suspects were nabbed properly, especially in conflict zones, FBI-standard evidence-collection was not a priority. Those deemed ordinary fighters, such as Taliban picked up on battlefields in Afghanistan, could be held legally as prisoners-of-war until hostilities have ended. But in many cases standard laws of war may be too hard or too risky to apply: to those whose proper identities are unknown, for example, or who are suspected of loyalty not to tribal commanders but to al-Qaeda’s network of terrorist affiliates. The solution, argues Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution, another think-tank, is for Congress and the administration to devise a properly constituted, accountable detention system, one designed to protect sensitive information that can nonetheless be challenged by defence lawyers. A line under the past still, but not quite so clear.
 * Guantanamo, Obama Closing **