Holder Pleads With Europeans to Take Gitmo Detainees - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com
It's more than just a tough sell for Attorney General Eric Holder this week to persuade European allies to accept Guantanamo detainees.
"It's a 'Mission Impossible' for him, I think," one German analyst said ahead of Holder's arrival in London on Sunday.
President Obama has set a goal of closing the U.S. military detention facility in Cuba by this coming January, and his administration is edging toward taking some prisoners to the U.S., most likely to Virginia. They are Muslims from western China known as Uighurs. Their supporters claim say they never should have been at Guantanamo in the first place.
It's more than just a tough sell for Attorney General Eric Holder this week to persuade European allies to accept Guantanamo detainees.
"It's a 'Mission Impossible' for him, I think," one German analyst said ahead of Holder's arrival in London on Sunday.
President Obama has set a goal of closing the U.S. military detention facility in Cuba by this coming January, and his administration is edging toward taking some prisoners to the U.S., most likely to Virginia. They are Muslims from western China known as Uighurs. Their supporters claim say they never should have been at Guantanamo in the first place.
Anti war protesters dressed as poisoned terrorist from Guantanamo
A Pentagon review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, which President Obama ordered, was prepared by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been delivered to the White House. It concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions but that prisoners in the highest-security camp should be allowed more religious and social interaction.
(The video, uploaded on a terrorist Web site, shows the mutilated bodies of two men dressed in Army camouflage uniforms. The video shows the terrorists hoisting the severed head of one of the soldiers and makes the other soldier's identity clearly recognizable.
Terrorists know the value of videos like this, U.S. military officials in Baghdad said. They noted that snipers in Iraq often have videographers taping their murders and that people can buy DVDs of the murders in stores in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.)
Another aspect of the closure of Getmo-- what to do with the approximately 245 detainees. If returned to their homelands, the detainees could face prison or torture. Europe is considering how they would be screened and which countries would take them — and under what conditions.
"The Americans will have to explain what kind of risks these people pose, why they can't be allowed to enter [the] U.S., why they have to go to Europe, why they can't be sent back to their home countries — and the U.S. has to sort of give a, not a guarantee but almost a guarantee, that these people do not pose a threat any more,"
(The video has a logo of a man waving a flag, and a picture of Osama bin Laden, and there is someone ranting in Arabic, while religious chanting fills the background of the soundtrack. Pte Menchaca's body is face down, the backs of his legs have strips taken from them. The body
of Pte Tucker is decapitated, but his blood soaked head is still recognisable. His lower body is virtually naked, what is left of it.
One of his arms has been removed. But his chest has been opened up, so that his ribs are exposed, and organs appear to have been removed. The flesh around the exposed ribs appears to have been burned. The video camera pans around, grotesquely looming in on the profile of Pte Menchaca's pulped face as he lays on his front. A jihadist lifts up Pte Tuckers severed head, then places it down on his corpse. Another jihadist places his foot on Pte Menchaca's shoulder and presses down, crunching the face further into the tarmac, on what appears to be a bridge.)
Of the 245 detainees now at Guantánamo, 21 are accused of war crimes. But it is not clear how many could be charged in the federal court system, a process that could move them out in stages and spread them around the nation. Some analysts have pointed to New York and Virginia as possible locations for federal trials. If found guilty, federal convicts could join other terrorists at a ''supermax'' in Florence, Colo.
If set free where will they go? A Saudi man, sent home from Guantánamo in 2007, had emerged as a leader of an al Qaeda cell with suspected links to a deadly bombing at a U.S.
Embassy in Yemen.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs agreed it should be left to the attorney general to decided about prosecutions. The president has decided it's up to Attorney General Eric Holder, whose former law firm has defended 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees, to determine who -- if anyone -- should be prosecuted for harsh interrogation methods.
Not to prosecute the terrorist but to prosecute our soldiers.
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