Obama signs legislation barring Gitmo prisoners being transferred to US prisons

Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016 legislation without fanfare today, the day before Thanksgiving; few people and news services took notice. Thus is a typical "trick" of Washington politics when to minimuze attention to an event. Why today? By signing the legislation, Obama breaks a campaign promise to close Gitmo by agreeing not to transfer prisoners to prisons in the USA. Read his comments:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/11/25/obama-signs-bill-expanding-guantanamo.htm

Of course, that doesn't stop the relocation (read release) of prisoners to foreign countries. Can't make this stuff up.

I suppose the best news is, by signing this legislation it will keep Gitmo prisoners out of the American judicial system. If Gitmo prisoners were in American courts, defense lawyers could make the case for dismissal of charges on the basis that defense evidence could not be collected (even if such still existed) from war-torn zones of Middle Eastern countries.

 

I suppose the idea is upholding democratic processes or something...which seems a rather quaint notion these days, if you ask me...

 

Scooby Snack, putting fighters captured abroad into the USA judicial system would be a distortion of due process in our legal system intended for residents of the USA and territories. Military tribunals are designed to deal with those captured in wars et al.

 

That's a good idea. We don't want the prison population to be rife with some of these terrorist detainees. It would be the perfect recruiting grounds.

 

While it's a good thing to bar Gitmo prisoners from being transferred to US prisons the fact that they can be released to some foreign country is rather disconcerting because these people can [if they were transferred to another prison] escape or be freed [corruption could get it done] and they can again plan terrorist attacks.

 

If those prisoners in Guantanamo will be tried by military courts then they should not be moved to US prisons since, from what I understand, US prisons are reserved for prisoners being tried or convicted by US courts. So if those so called Gitmo prisoners are not under the jurisdiction of the US courts then they should remain where they are or maybe they can be relocated to some other prisons outside the US territory. This is another issue that shows how America meddles with so many concerns outside of their territorial area.

 

Usually the opposite is what happens. They are transferred to some ally third-world country where they can be tortured and held without any legal process and interrogated by ex-CIA operatives. It is the reason Obama made this pledge to begin with as misguided as it was.

There are some problems with the opinions in this thread, but again this is all very muddled water, mainly because these guys are NOT foreign fighters who would be protected under the Geneva conference. They definitely should not get to enter the US Courts system, but at the same time, they also are not able to go through a military tribunal system or be classified as POWs because they are not represented by a country we are fighting against.

I think the problem the liberals have with Gitmo is that these guys have had no legal process at all. Yes, if you want to go all redneck and say ´islamic terrorists´ should never see a US courtroom, I would agree with you... but the problem is that there has been no legal process at all to determine if the people in Gitmo ARE islamic terrorists. And it comes back to the Geneva conference... they need to be claimed by a country in order to have military tribunal rights as described in the Geneva conference.

It is a very similar situation to what happens with US citizens who are working as independant contractors in Iraq and Syria. They are afforded no protection under foreign court systems, neither are they protected under the Geneva conference. If they are captured by the enemy, they have absolutely no rights for any legal due process.

If you follow the legalities of it all, it really is an issue that the United Nations should have ´fixed´ since the French Foreign legion was created, which is basically the same thing as we are talking about here.. an organized army that is neither claimed, nor protected by any country.

My guess Obama flipped on this issue after he became president and had a chance to read some of the intelligence that came out of Gitmo. It must be a b*tch of a delima to know what you think is the right thing to do, and then see how many terrorist attacks might not have been stopped if you had actually released those prisoners.

 

Probably what Petesede said. It's good that you guy aren't letting them into US prisons.. but IF (big IF) gitmo is closed down I have no doubt that a similar facility will pop up in another country somewhere...

Though Pete is actually wrong about the french foreign legion: while certainly most of them are not French they are a part of the French army and fall under the same rules and conventions as any soldier within the French armed forces.