Obama to Bring Gitmo Detainees to US Courts, Associated Press Says
In a potential move that could change the landscape of the nation’s criminal justice system, president-elect Barack Obama reportedly has asked his advisers to put together a plan to close the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bring detainees who are not released here for trial.
While many of these detainees who aren’t released presumably would be tried in a standard criminal court setting, “a third group of detainees—the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information—might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases,” reports the Associated Press.
The article cites as its sources unnamed Obama advisers and Democrats who are involved in the discussions.
The move follows a new advertising campaign in the New York Times by civil liberties lawyers who are urging Obama to close the Gitmo detention facility on Jan. 20, immediately after he is inaugurated, reports a McClatchy Newspapers article.
Presently, the government is beginning to hold military tribunals at Gitmo concerning a number of the detainees, who are alleged to have been involved in terrorism-related activities and/or to have acted as unlawful “enemy combatants.”
These tribunals, as discussed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts, have been controversial, because they do not include all of the constitutional protections for defendants provided in the standard U.S. criminal justice system, even though some of the tribunals potentially could involve the death penalty.
