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Obama concerned about justice for terror suspects
Yeah, I wanted to start my weekend pissed off...WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, preparing Friday to meet with families of terror victims, is concerned that Guantanamo Bay detainees have been held for years without trial. Obama wants to close the detention center in Cuba, and has signed an executive order to do so within a year. He has invited relatives of Americans killed in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the next year to the White House for a meeting Friday afternoon. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says Obama will discuss his plans for Guantanamo Bay with the terror victims' families. Many of those families disagree with the president's plan to close the detention center. ...and I have invited them here, to the White House, to pay them lip service. Obama "wants to discuss his plan to bring about changes in Guantanamo that he believes will make this country safer and bring about the very same swift justice that they desire on behalf of those that they know that have been killed," Gibbs said. "The main concern that the president has is the military commission's failure to bring those in detention to swift justice," he said. Anybody got any suggestions on the "swift justice" thing? Obama is now reviewing the system, and likely to scrap it, to make sure the 245 suspects who remain there are given international and U.S. legal rights. Rights that they in fact don't have and don't deserve. That review largely will determine whether the terror suspects should be tried in courts in the United States or released to other countries. About 15 victims' relatives are to meet mid-afternoon with Obama, many of whom are upset about over his Jan. 22 order to halt legal action on the Guantanamo cases. The meeting was scheduled for the day after a senior Pentagon judge dropped charges against an al-Qaida suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of masterminding the 2000 USS Cole bombing and is being held at Guantanamo. A legal move late Thursday by Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, marked the last active war crimes case there. Family members say they've already waited too long to see the alleged attackers brought to court. Retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold, the commanding officer of the Cole when it was bombed in Yemen in 2000, said he would be among family members of Cole and 9/11 victims who are meeting with Obama at the White House on Friday afternoon. "I was certainly disappointed with the decision to delay the military commissions process," Lippold, now a defense adviser to Military Families United, said in an interview. "We have already waited eight years. Justice delayed is justice denied. We must allow the military commission process to go forward." Seventeen U.S. sailors died on Oct. 12, 2000, when al-Qaida suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the Cole, a guided-missile destroyer, as it sat in a Yemen port. The Pentagon last summer charged al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian, with "organizing and directing" the bombing and planned to seek the death penalty in the case. New charges against al-Nashiri could be brought again later, and he will remain in prison for the time being. Maybe he can get sent to Saudi Fingerpainting School? Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he was concerned about the order to suspend charges against al-Nashiri. Smith said al-Nashiri had "orchestrated the mass murder of American soldiers" and must be punished. I urge them to reinstate the charges as quickly as possible and in a manner that ensures justice for the families and victims," Smith said in a statement Friday. Last year, al-Nashiri said during a Guantanamo hearing that he confessed to helping plot the Cole bombing only because he was tortured by U.S. interrogators. The CIA has admitted he was among terrorist suspects subjected to waterboarding, which simulates drowning, in 2002 and 2003 while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons. Did they pee on his Koran too? Posted by: tu3031 2009-02-06 |
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