Officials say Guantanamo transfers have killed Americans

[bananas]

Source: Associated Press

Americans have been killed by prisoners released from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior Defense Department official told lawmakers Wednesday, triggering sharp criticism from Republicans opposed to shuttering the facility in the wake of deadly attacks by the Islamic State group in Brussels and Paris.

Paul Lewis, the Pentagon's special envoy for Guantanamo detention closure, declined to provide the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee with details. He would not say whether the incidents occurred before or after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

<snip>

An Obama administration official said Lewis was referring to an incident that involved an Afghan prisoner released from Guantanamo while George W. Bush was president. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

<snip>

The committee's hearing marked the first open exchange between the Obama administration and Congress over the utility and future of the prison since Obama sent his plan for shutting it down to Capitol Hill last month. The proposal was greeted with firm opposition from Republicans, who declared his proposal to deliver an unfulfilled campaign promise a non-starter.

<snip>

The Director of National Intelligence reported this month that 5 percent of Guantanamo prisoners released since January 2009, when the U.S. began using the multi-agency screening process, have re-engaged in terrorism and 8 percent are suspected of it. That compares to 21 percent confirmed and 14 percent suspected under the earlier system.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_GUANTANAMO?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-03-23-12-58-40

[Jitter65]

1. Damn! I thought it was Hillary's fault. nt

[xocet]

2. Whatever is said, detention of people without due process is wrong. It is a dangerous precedent to

continue to allow the indefinite detention of people at Guantanamo. Guantanamo needs to be closed. Period

[ShrimpPoboy]

10. Guantanamo is just a symbol

If we close it, you can bet your ass we'll just be moving the detainees, probably to somewhere secret so it doesn't become another PR mess. I don't think any candidate running, including Sanders, will actually release or charge everyone there. The fear of headlines like this will keep that from happening.

Maybe I'm just being cynical though. Wouldn't be the first time.

[xocet]

11. Actually...

if potential detainees are "droned out of existence", there is no need to house them and is no need for Guantanamo. That might have been part of the plan to close Guantanamo. For example, why capture al-Awlaki if you can simply obliterate him and not need to worry about the optics of a US citizen being held at Guantanamo? Drones simplify the prisoner problem.

The Drone Papers
Jeremy Scahill
Oct 15, 2015

From his first days as commander in chief, the drone has been President Barack Obama’s weapon of choice, used by the military and the CIA to hunt down and kill the people his administration has deemed — through secretive processes, without indictment or trial — worthy of execution. There has been intense focus on the technology of remote killing, but that often serves as a surrogate for what should be a broader examination of the state’s power over life and death.

Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. While every president since Gerald Ford has upheld an executive order banning assassinations by U.S. personnel, Congress has avoided legislating the issue or even defining the word “assassination.” This has allowed proponents of the drone wars to rebrand assassinations with more palatable characterizations, such as the term du jour, “targeted killings.”

...

The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said.

...

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/

You are probably correct though about the charging of detainees and the transfering of the unchargeable ones. The ones who were tortured certainly won't be charged.

[Boxerfan]

3. It is a Fox News talking point to be sure-wonder what the objective posting it is??

Quote from above....

"Paul Lewis, the Pentagon's special envoy for Guantanamo detention closure, declined to provide the GOP-led House Foreign Affairs Committee with details. He would not say whether the incidents occurred before or after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. "

They occurred before for the learning impaired....

[angstlessk]

4. Transfers IN or transfers OUT?

That is the real question!

[bemildred]

5. Lying assholes. nt

[choie]

6. Well what the hell else

Did they expect to happen when we imprisoned and tortured people for years on end without due process? Of course some would harbor a hatred of the United States and become radicalized! That was fucking predictable. It's called blowback!!

[Little Tich]

7. What? Waterboarding and inhumane incarceration didn't reform these people? n/t

[silverweb]

8. So "5% reengaged in terrorism."

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]And 8% are "suspected." No mention of the vast majority, but the facility should remain open because of the 5% (or maybe 13%).

That makes a whole lot of xenophobic sense!

[Solly Mack]

9. SMH

[mike_c]

12. first, I don't know whether I believe them....

Second, years long imprisonment without trial and frequent torture, i.e. forced feedings, beatings, and "enhanced interrogation techniques", might itself be responsible for some former prisoners growing angry enough at Americans to seek revenge against them after release. I'd certainly want to make someone pay for that sort of mistreatment.

Finally, the later acts of prisoners transferred out of Guantanamo are completely irrelevant to the inconsistency of holding them indefinitely without trial and democratic values. We have laws and institutions devoted to interpreting and implementing them. If Guantanamo detainees are criminals then they should be fairly tried and convicted within our criminal justice system. Their indefinite detention without trial makes a mockery of democratic criminal justice and basic human rights.