The Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday approved legislation that would effectively bar further releases of detained terrorists from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the rest of the Obama administration.
The bill by Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., approved on a 14-12 vote, would bar the release or transfer of any detainees judged to be medium- or high-risk — the vast majority of the 122 who remain at Guantanamo — and would require greater justification for any other release or transfer. It also would bar transfers of any Guantanamo prisoner to Yemen, home country of the largest group of remaining detainees and where the recent collapse of the government amid factional fighting has set back U.S. anti-terrorism efforts.
Senators also adopted an amendment by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., requiring the administration to justify its contention that the prison is a valuable propaganda and recruitment tool for extremist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The simmering dispute over Guantanamo detainees has heated up in recent months amid a surge of releases — 44 over the past 18 months after a period of more than a year in which no one left — that Republican lawmakers see as putting national security at risk to fulfill a political promise by President Obama. Among those released are known al Qaeda fighters who had been considered high-risk but had been cleared by a later review process created after Obama took office.
In that process, each detainee’s case is reviewed by the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with unanimous agreement required for a transfer or release.
A companion bill by Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., is pending in the House Armed Services Committee, where lawmakers Thursday got a classified briefing from administration officials on recent releases, amid a demand from Republicans for greater transparency about the process.
The Obama administration has said the president would veto any such bill.
In a brief public session beforehand, officials from the Defense and State departments defended the accelerated pace of transfers by repeating Obama’s contention that closing the prison is an urgent national security priority because of its propaganda value to extremist groups.
Of the 122 remaining detainees, 54 have been cleared for release by the review process, and the administration will continue to try to place them with countries that agree to take them, with appropriate safeguards, said Paul Lewis, the Pentagon’s special envoy for Guantanamo closure.
“We take the responsibility of re-engagement very seriously,” he told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. “Detainees transferred from Gitmo by no means receive a free pass to re-engage. Their activities are watched.”
He noted that the rate of those who have re-engaged after being released is low. According to the latest report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued in September, 107 of 620 detainees released from Guantanamo, or 17.3 percent, had been confirmed as returning to terrorism as of July 15, and another 77, or 12.4 percent, were suspected of having done so.
But Republicans are concerned that the recent jump in terrorist threats such as the rise of the Islamic State in the past year may change that dynamic and increase the risk. Since information about each case remains classified, it’s difficult to independently assess those concerns, and GOP lawmakers have called for increased transparency in releases.
For example, Pentagon officials said a U.S. airstrike on Monday in Afghanistan killed Abdul Rauf Khadim, a former Taliban commander who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. He had been released from Guantanamo in 2007 and returned to the Afghan government, which released him in 2009.
“We expect consistency between the Obama administration’s public testimony and their classified testimony. The decisions we make about detained terrorists have serious implications for the American people and they have a right to understand these security risks,” subcommittee Chairwoman Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., said in a joint statement with House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, before the hearing.	
