Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed to the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning that Gitmo will not be closed by the initial January 2010 deadline. Holder’s comments follow President Obama’s earlier announcement that the deadline will be missed. There are, according to published accounts, around 210 detainees or so still at Gitmo. Holder offered the following breakdown for these remaining detainees. “We have more than 100 detainees who have been approved for transfer,” Holder said. Who are these detainees? The Obama administration has not said. But this seems like an awfully high number. There were roughly 250 (or so) detainees at Gitmo when the Obama administration assumed power. The Obama administration is now saying that 100 of them (40 percent) are considered transfer-worthy. This may be in addition to the 25 detainees Holder said had already been transferred. If so, that would mean that 125 detainees (50 percent), in total, are either going to be transferred or already have been under the Obama administration. Concerned parties on the Hill should push for additional transparency on this. How is it that the Obama administration determined that so many detainees, who were considered a threat by the Bush administration and military officials, should no longer be held? This question takes on more urgency when you review the Obama administration’s previous transfer decisions. Binyam Mohamed was transferred to the UK in February, despite the fact that he admittedly trained at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and was originally detained because he was likely traveling to the U.S. to take part in an al Qaeda attack orchestrated by senior al Qaeda members in 2002. U.S. intelligence officials never backed down from that assessment. In June, the Obama administration transferred Ahmed Zuhair — a known al Qaeda terrorist and likely murderer of a U.S. diplomat — to Saudi Arabia. And the Obama administration has also approved Ayman Batarfi — a known al Qaeda doctor with troubling ties to al Qaeda’s anthrax program — for transfer as well. Batarfi has not been transferred as of yet (at least, there has been no public announcement of Batarfi’s transfer). The Bush administration made its own mistakes in transferring detainees. The Obama administration is posed to make additional mistakes and has, in fact, already made additional mistakes. Congressmen and senators should push for additional details concerning the Obama administration’s transfer decisions. Holder also noted that “more than 40 detainees have been referred for prosecution.” Thus far, the administration has only publicly commented on 10 of the detainees who have been referred for prosecution. Who are the other 30 detainees that have been referred for prosecution? And are they going to be prosecuted in federal courts or military commissions? Finally, who are the remaining dozens of detainees that the administration hasn’t made a final decision on? Attorney General Holder has only given the broad details concerning the administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo. The devil is in the details. It is up to Congress and the press to ferret out those details.
