Obama says U.S. to redouble efforts to close Guantanamo
Source: Reuters
BERLIN | Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:05am EDT
(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the United States would step up its attempts to close Guantanamo Bay prison.
"Even as we remain vigilant about the threat of terrorism, we must move beyond the mindset of perpetual war and in America that means redoubling our efforts to close the prison at Guantanamo," Obama said in a speech in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate.
"It means tightly controlling our use of new technology like drones, it means balancing the pursuit of security with the protection of privacy," he added.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton, editing by Gareth Jones)
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/19/us-germany-obama-guantanamo-idUSBRE95I0LY20130619
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- Well, I for one wish the ''United States'' all the luck in the world in its endeavors to close its unconstitutional kidnapping facility.
FOIA suit reveals Guantánamo’s ‘indefinite detainees’
Miami-Herald
By CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@miamiherald.com
6 • 17 • 13
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The Obama administration Monday lifted a veil of secrecy surrounding the status of the detainees at Guantánamo, for the first time publicly naming the four dozen captives it defined as indefinite detainees — men too dangerous to transfer but who cannot be tried in a court of law.
The names had been a closely held secret since a multi-agency task force sifted through the files of the Guantánamo detainees in 2009 trying to achieve President Barack Obama’s executive order to close the detention center. In January 2010, the task force revealed that it classified 48 Guantánamo captives as dangerous but ineligible for trial because of a lack of evidence, or because the evidence was too tainted. They became so-called “indefinite detainees,” a form of war prisoner held under Congress’ 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force.”
The Defense Department released the list to The Miami Herald, which, with the assistance of Yale Law School students, had sued for it in federal court in Washington, D.C. The Pentagon also sent the list to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on Monday, a Defense Department official said. According to the list, the men designated for indefinite detention are 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, 3 Saudis, 2 Kuwaitis, 2 Libyans, a Kenyan, a Moroccan and a Somali. Human rights groups denounced the existence of such a list.
*snip*
Two men on the list are deceased. Both Afghans, one committed suicide with a bedsheet in a recreation yard at Guantánamo’s Camp 6 for cooperative captives and the other died of a heart attack, also in Camp 6. So now the 166 captives at Guantánamo actually include 46 indefinite detainees.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/17/3456267/foia-suit-reveals-guantanamos.html
