15 Terrorists released by Pentagon today

[41chevy]

Pentagon releases 15 more Gitmo detainees

Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY 7:47 p.m. EDT August 15, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

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Fifteen prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center were sent to the United Arab Emirates in the single largest release of detainees during the Obama administration, according to the Pentagon. USA TODAY

(Photo: USA TODAY/Tom Vanden Brook)

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has approved the release of 15 detainees from the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United Arab Emirates, a move derided Monday night by a leading member of Congress as reckless.

Rep. Ed Royce, the California Republican who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, called the released detainees "hardened terrorists" who will be a threat for years.

"In its race to close Gitmo, the Obama administration is doubling down on policies that put American lives at risk," Royce said in a statement. "Once again, hardened terrorists are being released to foreign countries where they will be a threat."

The Pentagon, in a statement, said an inter-agency review board considered their potential threat to security and unanimously approved six of the 15 for release, A consensus was reached on release of the remaining nine. There are 61 detainees remaining at Guantanamo.

According to the Pentagon, the 15 prisoners are Abd al-Muhsin Abd al-Rab Salih al-Busi, Abd al-Rahman Sulayman, Mohammed Nasir Yahi Khussrof Kazaz, Abdul Muhammad Ahmad Nassar al-Muhajari, Muhammad Ahmad Said al-Adahi, Abdel Qadir al-Mudafari, Mahmud Abd Al Aziz al-Mujahid, Saeed Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah Sarem Jarabh, Mohammed Kamin, Zahar Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun, Hamid al-Razak (aka Haji Hamidullah), Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed, Ayub Murshid Ali Salih, Obaidullah, and Bashir Nasir Ali al-Marwalah.

Six of the 15 — al-Busi, Sulayman, Kazaz, al-Muhajari, al-Adahi, and al-Mudafari — were unanimously recommended for release by the inter-agency Guantanamo Review Task Force, the Pentagon said.

The other nine were recommended for release by the periodic review boards monitoring Guantanamo prisoners, the Pentagon said.

When President Obama took office in 2009, there were 242 detainees still in the Guantanamo Bay prison, down from a high of almost 700. That number has dropped as the Pentagon has transferred lower-risk detainees to other countries — meaning that the prisoners who remain tend to be considered higher security risks.

Obama earlier this year announced a plan to close down the facilities at Guantanamo, arguing that the keeping them open was "contrary to our values."

The plan included transferring detainees to other countries, and imprisoning those who could not be moved to existing facilities in South Carolina, Kansas and Colorado or at new prisons at military bases.

Obama: 'We have to change course' on Guantanamo

 

The administration estimates that it would cost $290 million to $475 million for the Pentagon to renovate an existing state or federal prison, which would be dedicated to holding only detainees from Guantanamo. The Pentagon estimates housing the detainees in the United States could save $65 million to $85 million a year, recouping construction costs in about five years.

Law prohibits the president from transferring the Guantanamo Bay detainees to American soil where there are only a handful of maximum-security prisons deemed appropriate to house them.

Located on the eastern edge of Cuba, the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay has housed prisoners taken captive in war on terror since 2002. Since it exists on a base on Cuban soil but held by the United States under a 113-year-old lease, the prisoners are in what some human rights organizations call a "legal black hole."

[41chevy]

This is from the first release by Obama.

At least 12 released Guantanamo detainees implicated in attacks on Americans

 

 

 

 

An American flag flies behind the barbed and razor wire at the Camp Delta detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Brennan Linsley/AP)

By Adam Goldman and Missy Ryan June 8

The Obama administration believes that at least 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials.

In March, a senior Pentagon official made a startling admission to lawmakers when he acknowledged that former Guantanamo inmates were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas.

The official, Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantanamo issues at the Defense Department, provided no details, and the Obama administration has since declined to elaborate publicly on his statement because the intelligence behind it is classified.

But The Washington Post has learned additional details about the suspected attacks, including the approximate number of detainees and victims involved and the fact that, while most of the incidents were directed at military personnel, the dead also included one American civilian: a female aid worker who died in Afghanistan in 2008. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, declined to give an exact number for Americans killed or wounded in the attacks, saying the figure is classified.

Lewis’s statement had drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the violence against Americans as further evidence that the president’s plans for closing the prison are misguided and dangerous. They also describe the administration’s unwillingness to release information about the attacks as another instance of its use of high levels of classification to avoid discussion of a politically charged issue that could heighten political opposition to its plans.

One U.S. official familiar with the intelligence said that nine of the detainees suspected in the attacks are now dead or in foreign government custody. The official would not specify the exact number of detainees involved but said it was fewer than 15. All of them were released from Guantanamo Bay under the administration of George W. Bush.

The official added: “Because many of these incidents were large-scale firefights in a war zone, we cannot always distinguish whether Americans were killed by the former detainees or by others in the same fight.”

Military and intelligence officials, responding to lawmakers’ requests for more details, have provided lawmakers with a series of classified documents about the suspected attacks. One recent memo from the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which was sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Lewis’s testimony, described the attacks, named the detainees involved and provided information about the victims without giving their names.

But lawmakers are prohibited from discussing the contents of that memo because of its high classification level. A similar document provided last month to the office of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), a vocal opponent of Obama’s Guantanamo policy, was so highly classified that even her staff members with a top-secret clearance level were unable to read it.

“There appears to be a consistent and concerted effort by the Administration to prevent Americans from knowing the truth regarding the terrorist activities and affiliations of past and present Guantanamo detainees,” Ayotte wrote in a letter to Obama this week, urging him to declassify information about how many U.S. and NATO personnel have been killed by former detainees.

Here's what's stopping Obama's Guantanamo prison plan

President Obama sent his plan to close the Guantanamo prison to Capitol Hill, but the plan was met with immediate condemnation. (Jason Aldag, Julie Vitkovskaya/The WaRep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has also written legislation that would require greater transparency surrounding the transfer of Guantanamo Royce and Ayotte are among the lawmakers who opposed a road map for closing the prison that the White House submitted to Congress earlier this year. That plan would require moving some detainees to U.S. prisons and resettling the rest overseas.

 That plan would require moving some detainees to U.S. prisons and resettling the rest oversea“The administration is releasing dangerous terrorists to countries that can’t control them, and misleading Congress in the process,” Royce said in a statement. “The president should halt detainee transfers immediately and be honest with the American people.”

Just under 700 detainees have been released from Guantanamo since the prison opened in 2002; 80 inmates remain.

Secrecy about the top-security prison, perched on an inaccessible corner of Cuba, is nothing new. The Bush administration for years refused to provide a roster of detainees until it was forced to do so in a Freedom of Information Act case in 2006. To this day, reporters have never been able to visit Camp 7, a classified facility that holds 14 high-value detainees, including the five men on trial for organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations have provided only limited information on current and former detainees; most of what the public knows about them comes from defense lawyers or from documents released by WikiLeaks.

According to a 2012 report from the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Intelligence Agency ended the practice of naming some suspected recidivists in 2009 when officials became concerned that it would endanger sources and methods.

National Security Council spokesman Myles Caggins said it was difficult to discuss specific cases in detail because the information was classified.

“But, again, we are committed to being forthcoming with the American people about our safe and responsible approach to Guantanamo detainee transfers, including about possible detainee re-engagement in terrorist activities,” he said.

One Republican aide who has reviewed the classified material about the attacks on Americans said the information has been “grossly overclassified.”

Administration officials say that recidivism rates for released Guantanamo inmates remain far lower than those for federal offenders. According to a recent study, almost half of all federal offenders released in 2005 were “rearrested for a new crime or rearrested for a violation of supervision conditions.” Among former Guantanamo detainees, the total number of released detainees who are suspected or confirmed of reengaging is about 30 percent, according to U.S. intelligence.

Nearly 21 percent of those released prior to 2009 have reengaged in militancy, officials say, compared with about 4.5 percent of the 158 released by Obama.

Human rights activists say the statistics are suspect and cannot be verified because the administration provides almost no information about whom it is counting and why.

Most of those suspected of re-engagement are Afghan, reflecting the large numbers of Afghans detained after the Sept. 11 attacks and the ongoing war there. More than 200 Afghan prisoners have been repatriated from the prison.

Officials declined to identify the woman killed in Afghanistan in 2008. But there are two female aid workers killed that year who might fit the description.

Cydney Mizell, a 50-year-old employee of the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation, was abducted in Kandahar as she drove to work. Her body was never recovered, according to a former colleague who said he was told about a month later that she had died.

Another woman, Nicole Dial, 30, a Trinidadian American who worked for the International Rescue Committee, was shot and killed the same year south of Kabul, along with two colleagues.

Relatives of Mizell and Dial said they have not been in touch with the FBI for years. Dial’s brother said he was unaware of a former Guantanamo detainee being involved in his sister’s killing.

Mizell’s stepmother said she was never told the exact circumstances of her daughter’s death or who abducted her.

“She was definitely killed,” Peggy Mizell said. “I figured she was shot.”

 

Julie Tate contributed to this story.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 21, 2016 by 41chevy

[41chevy]

Obama: 'We have to change course' on Guantanamo

 

Gregory Korte, USA TODAY

 

President Obama lays out a plan to officially close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay and move prisoners to a new location inside the U.S. VPC

(Photo: MANDEL NGAN, AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Tuesday that closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay would not only make America safer and save taxpayer money, but also "uphold the values that bind us as Americans."

"The plan we're putting forward today is not just about closing the facility at Guantanamo," Obama said. "This is about closing a chapter in our history."

Addressing a small group of reporters at the White House Tuesday, Obama renewed his call for Congress to close the facility as the Pentagon sent a report to Capitol Hill about what top do with the remaining 91 detainees held there.

That report, required by an act of Congress last year, required the Defense Department to identify "the specific facility or facilities that are intended to be used" to transfer the Guantanamo detainees. But the Pentagon stopped short of doing that, saying only that it looked at 13 unidentified possible sites.

"We are not identifying a specific facility today in this plan," Obama said. "We are outlining what options look like."

But despite congressional opposition, the White House also would not rule out Obama closing the prison by executive order.

"I'm not going to stand up here and unilaterally take any options off the table when it comes to the president utilizing his executive authority," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. He said if Congress approves the plan that the administration put forward, "that would make any kind of discussion about the president's executive actions obsolete."

Obama himself acknowledged that "the politics of this is tough," and said he would work to close the prison for the remainder of his presidency, fulfilling a campaign promise and giving the next president a clean slate.

"I don't want to pass this problem off to the next president. whoever it is," he said. "And if as a nation, we don't deal with this now, when will we deal with it? Are we going to let this linger on for another 15 years? Another 20 years? Another 30 years?"

At least one would-be successor said he doesn't want the help. "We should not be releasing the people who are there now," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told supporters Tuesday in Las Vegas. "They are enemy combatants."

Former Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders said he has consistently called for the prison to be closed. "Others, including my opponent, have not always agreed with me," he said, referring to Hillary Clinton's 2007 vote to keep it open

The ramifications of closing Guantanamo Bay raise a number of legal, diplomatic and security questions about what to do with the remaining 91 detainees.

Of those, 35 have been approved for transfer to a third country — but are awaiting a country willing and able to house them securely and humanely. Ten have been charged in a military court and are awaiting trial, a process Obama called costly, time-consuming and in need of reform.

"This type of use of military commission should not set a precedent for the future," Obama said. While the administration has concluded that moving the detainees to U.S. soil would not necessarily change their status as enemy combatants, Obama wants to transfer future cases to civilian courts, which he said "have an outstanding record of convicting some of the most hardened terrorists."

The remaining 46 detainees are still being evaluated. Obama said he wants to accelerate that evaluation process through what's known as a Periodic Review Board. One such board meeting is happening today, Pentagon officials said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Congress has already decided that Guantanamo Bay should remain open — and that after seven year, Obama has yet to make a compelling case to the contrary.

"It is against the law — and it will stay against the law — to transfer terrorist detainees to American soil. We will not jeopardize our national security over a campaign promise,” Ryan said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.,  was only a bit more open to even discussing the issue.

"We will review President Obama’s plan, but since it includes bringing dangerous terrorists to facilities in U.S. communities, he knows that the bipartisan will of Congress has already been expressed against that proposal," he said in remarks to the Senate Tuesday.

[41chevy]

19 more are scheduled to be released soon, to Slovakia and UAE. The balance left, the president wants to transfer to Federal Prisons in the  North-Eastern U.S. and return Guantanamo to Cuba before December 2016.    Paul

Edited August 16, 2016 by 41chevy

[david wild]

And I keep asking if liberals are stupid or just have a mental defect ??????

[41chevy]

4 hours ago, david wild said:

And I keep asking if liberals are stupid or just have a mental defect ??????

both.

[kscarbel2]

If the US was certain that these prisoners were guilty of killing one or more Americans in the US or abroad, they should have been discretely interrogated, and then executed, without it being made public knowledge.

[41chevy]

Four had definite ties to Osma Binladin. His Justice Department and State Department do not consider them threats. It is nothing more than the President keeping election promise and for his legacy. Nothing more, nothing less. He sees no threats or anything else. With 19 more due for release,  that will only leave 19 incarcerated there. With Andrew Coumo's tentative agreement to put some in Ossining (Sing-Sing) , the President will eliminate the "need" to keep it open. All part of the "plan".

Edited August 21, 2016 by 41chevy