WASHINGTON - After months of negotiations with a bipartisan group of six senators, the White House is reportedly close to a deal to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison where Canadian terror suspect Omar Khadr has been behind bars for years.
The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that White House counsel Robert Bauer and Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama's chief of staff, are near an agreement on closing the infamous post-911 prison following talks with a group of senators from both parties, headed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
In exchange for congressional support from Republicans to close down the prison, sources told the Journal, the administration has agreed that more detainees will be tried before military tribunals, a stark reversal of previous Obama policy and something that amounts to a dismissal of Attorney General Eric Holder's stance on the issue.
The deal means the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his co-conspirators and several other prominent terror suspects will appear before revamped military commissions, and not be tried in civilian court.
There are currently about 200 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including Khadr, who was taken prisoner by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in July 2002, when he was 15. He was later charged with war crimes for allegedly tossing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier.
Khadr is the last Westerner at Guantanamo Bay; Canadian officials have refused to repatriate him until the U.S. deals with their charges against him. He's scheduled to face a U.S. military trial this summer.
The Obama administration's earlier intention to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York City courtroom was widely criticized in the city and beyond, and was considered a major misstep for the new president in a country where the trauma of 9-11 remains an open wound.
The new military tribunals are aimed at giving defendants more rights than they had under George W. Bush's administration, although fewer than they'd have in civilian court.
As recently as Tuesday, Holder argued before a congressional hearing that the men behind the 9-11 attacks and other terrorists should be given civilian federal trials, saying the notion that only military tribunals can effectively prosecute them "tends to get my blood boiling."
One of the Obama administration's first acts in office, in fact, was to suspend the Bush-era military commissions.
But since the discussions began between the White House and Graham's group, Justice Department officials have said they've not been consulted. Graham wants civilian court cases to be reserved for low-level al Qaida terrorists and terrorist financial backers.
Any deal achieved between the White House and Graham's group of legislators will still be subjected to the vagaries of Congress. Graham will have to deliver Republican support to break a filibuster that could stop the deal dead in its tracks, but that doesn't mean progressive Democrats won't hold up any legislation on closing Guantanamo Bay in exchange for more military tribunals.
Those Democrats have long pointed out the success of civilian courts to bring terrorists to justice. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 300 people have been convicted of terrorism-related offences in civilian courts, versus only three in military tribunals.
"The world will respect the legitimacy of civil court verdicts, making it more likely that countries will hand over suspects and intelligence to the United States," William Yeomans, a one-time Justice Department official who served as the late Ted Kennedy's chief counsel on the Senate judiciary committee, wrote in a piece on the Politico.com website on Friday.
"By contrast, military tribunals are more likely to be regarded as irregular courts, created for the purpose of dispensing watered-down justice. Other countries could, therefore, be less likely to co-operate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts."
The White House hopes to shut down Guantanamo soon and move it to an abandoned facility in Thomson, IL. The Illinois jail will also host the military commissions and house indefinitely the 48 prisoners among the Guantanamo detainees who cannot be convicted, but are deemed too dangerous to set free.
