NY Times, January 22, 2010
Detainees Will Still Be Held, but Not Tried, Official Says
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided to continue to
imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay
military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has
concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too
dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.
However, the administration has decided that nearly 40 other
detainees should be prosecuted for terrorism or related war
crimes. And the remaining prisoners, about 110 men, should be
repatriated or transferred to other countries for possible
release, the official said, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the numbers.
There are just under 200 detainees left at the detention center.
President Obama established the task force shortly after his
inauguration last year as part of his administration’s effort to
deal with the detainee issues left behind by the Bush
administration. It was facing a deadline of Friday to complete its
work.
For the past year, national-security and law-enforcement officials
under the direction of Matthew G. Olsen, a Justice Department
lawyer, have been pulling together scattered files for each
detainee at Guantánamo. They evaluated any evidence against each
man, the perceived threat he might pose if released, and the
possibility of successfully prosecuting him.
The group made recommendations that were then evaluated by senior
administration officials, led by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
But the determination about which category to put each detainee in
leaves other questions unanswered. For example, of the roughly 110
detainees who are set to be transferred to other countries, about
30 are Yemenis, the official said. The administration recently
halted transfers to Yemen in the wake of the attempted bombing of
an airplane bound for Detroit on Christmas — a plot believed to
have been developed by an affiliate of Al Qaeda based in Yemen.
In addition, Mr. Holder is charged with deciding whether the
prisoners who are to be prosecuted should face a civilian trial or
a military commission. In November, he announced that five
detainees would face a military commission and five others —
including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — would be prosecuted in
federal court.
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