The Obama administration is contemplating a hybrid courtroom-prison complex that would be run by the military, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to the Associated Press. The facility would be located on American soil, and would be a transfer point for the Guantanamo Bay detainees the administration intends to keep to put on trial, either on federal criminal charges or war crimes charges.
Reacting to the possibility that part of the facility will be used to house those detainees subject to a potential preventive detention policy, the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer said in a statement that:
Closing Guantánamo will be an empty gesture if we just reopen it on shore under a different name. While it's encouraging that the administration is attempting to meet the deadline for closing Guantánamo, any arrangement that allows indefinite detention without charge or trial will leave in place the problems that led President Obama to order the prison closed in the first place.
The administration will also likely face opposition from Congress, who are busy pretending we don't already have convicted terrorists locked up on American soil.
-- A. Serwer
