NYT: Seeking an Exit Strategy for Guantánamo

[spindrifter]

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: June 18, 2006

IF an enemy devised a diabolical plot to darken America's image, it is hard to imagine anything operating more efficiently toward that end than the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And last week, after the suicides of three inmates intensified condemnation at home and abroad, President Bush mused about whether the camp should be closed.

"I'd like to close Guantánamo," the president told a press conference Tuesday, and acknowledged what even close allies like the British have argued for some time: "No question, Guantánamo sends a signal to some of our friends — provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they're trying to encourage other countries to adhere to."

Yet Mr. Bush insisted that some Guantánamo prisoners are too dangerous to set free, and even the camp's fiercest critics admit that shutting Guantánamo and deciding what to do with the remaining 460 prisoners would not be easy. Still more problematic is deciding the fate of as many as three dozen so-called "high value" Al Qaeda prisoners held in overseas jails overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency.

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The challenges include gauging how dangerous it would be to set a particular Islamist radical free; devising trials that offer a measure of military justice but not the full protections of civilian courts, and deciding whether to transfer prisoners to countries that might free a hardened jihadist or torture a political dissident.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/weekinreview/18shane.html?hp&ex=1150603200&en=d94814b91e0ec321&ei=5094&partner=homepage