Guantanamo Bay: Obama fails on promise to close detention camp

He has less than five months left in office, but President Obama may not have given up on delivering on his pledge just yet.

The emptying out of the notorious US prison in Guantanamo Bay has been agonisingly slow. While this week has seen the single biggest transfer of detainees to a third country since Barack Obama took office in 2009 – involving 15 men – his pledge to close the facility has still gone unrealised. Unless he can pull off a miracle in the twilight of his second term, the failure to shut it down risks becoming one of the biggest blots on the president’s legacy.

What went wrong?

The blame is widely shared. After taking office in January 2009 and promising to close the camp within a year, Mr Obama thought he would have enough bi-partisan support to make it happen. Not so. The miscalculation was compounded by the White House putting all its energies into other policy goals, like passing health care reform. Meanwhile, parts of his own administration, notably the Pentagon, were ambivalent in the first place.

But it was primarily opposition on Capitol Hill that has stymied progress. Congress objected from the outset to plans to put five men accused in connection with the 9/11 attacks on trial in Manhattan and to build special super-max penitentiaries on US soil for detainees deemed too dangerous to transfer to other countries but who can’t be tried for lack of evidence or because evidence has been tainted by the interrogation or torture. Under Republican control for most of Mr Obama’s two terms, it passed laws preventing the allocation of funds to build such facilities.

It’s all about recidivism. This spring, in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill, an administration official confirmed that 12 men released from the camp had launched attacks against US or allied troops in Afghanistan, killing about six people. All had been released when George W Bush was president. Among those killed was a female aid worker in Afghanistan.

US intelligence believes that nearly 21 per cent of those released prior to 2009 engaged in terror activities subsequently with a lower rate for those released under Mr Obama.

Opponents of the transfer programme argue that the countries that receive detainees cannot be trusted to take the necessary steps to prevent recidivism. They point to the case of Abdallah al-Ajmhen, who was among eight men sent to Kuwait by the Bush Administration. He later drove a truck bomb onto an Iraqi Army base, killing thirteen Iraqi soldiers.

How many prisoners have been released from the camp already?

Since its opening in 2002, the complex on a remote, 45-square-mile parcel of land that has been leased from Cuba as a US Naval base since 1903 has held as many as 779 prisoners at one time. The bulk has either been sent back home or to third countries, including 532 who were released before Mr Obama came to office, when just 242 detainees remained.

Other countries that have agreed, under intense US coaxing, to take in Guantanamo detainees have included Serbia, Italy and Montenegro.

This week’s deal sending 15 detainees to the United Arab Emirates  reduced the remaining population at the facility by one-fifth, leaving only 61 men behind. Of those, 14 men are believed to be languishing in a special part of the prison called Camp 7. They are considered special high-value detainees and include five accused in connection with the 9/11 attacks. No reporters have ever been given access to Camp 7.

Who are the released men?

In the event he cannot close Guantanamo, Mr Obama wants at least to ensure that those men who have been approved for repatriation or release to third countries by a special parole review board are indeed shipped out. The deal for these 15 men gets him closer to that goal. They include 12 Yemenis and three Afghans. All had been held without trial for about 14 years.

Among those going to the UAE is an Afghan named Obaydullah. Arrested in 2002 and accused of hiding anti-tank mines for an insurgent cell, his case was especially problematic, notably after a 2012 report from his defence team insisting he had been wrongfully detained.

About 20 men who have been approved for transfer by the review board remain in the camp pending a deal with countries willing to take them.

Why are they going to the UAE?

On the one hand, the Gulf region is suitable because the detainees will fit in there – the culture and language is the same. More importantly, perhaps, the US believes the UAE have a sufficiently sophisticated security infrastructure in place to make sure they stay out of trouble.

Oman set the example by agreeing to accept 10 detainees already approved for transfer last year. Mr Obama subsequently made a personal effort to push other leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries to follow suit. The UAE agreed to resettle 5 Yemenis in November last year. In January, Oman took another group of 10. Saudi Arabia took nine in April. 

Qatar played a particularly controversial role accepting the five high-level Taliban-connected detainees who were released by the US in exchange for Sgt Bowe Bergdahl in 2014, who had been in Taliban custody. Those men are still in Qatar under close surveillance.

Who in Washington is unhappy with this latest release?

The Republicans. “President Obama is more focused on releasing hardened terrorists than capturing new ones – a reckless policy that is putting America and the West at risk,” the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Michael McCaul, said on Tuesday. “The Administration has admitted that Americans have been killed by these released detainees. And now the President is giving more terrorists a one-way ticket back to the battlefield.”