Trump issues executive order to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open

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                               (World Today Wednesday 31 January 2018)

    Trump issues executive order to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open

A guard tower at Camp Delta detention block at the Guant‡namo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

Photo: The New York Times

Updated 31 January, 2018

WASHINGTON — United States President Donald Trump has signed an order to keep open the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay after his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, tried unsuccessfully to close the prison that has drawn international condemnation.

In his first State of the Union address to Congress, Mr Trump made clear he was fulfilling a campaign promise to keep operating the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the US military base at Guantanamo, Cuba.

"I just signed, prior to walking in, an order directing (Defence) Secretary (James) Mattis ... to re-examine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay," Mr Trump said.

The executive order authorised the US military to add detainees and suggested the possibility that captured Islamic State militants could be sent there for the first time.

Mr Obama signed an order on his first full day in office in 2009 ordering efforts to shutter Guantanamo within a year, but his plan was thwarted by mostly Republican opposition in Congress. Instead, his administration reduced the inmate population to 41 from 242 during his eight years in office.

The prison, which was opened by President George W. Bush to hold suspected militants captured overseas after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, came to symbolise harsh detention practices that opened the United States to accusations of torture.

As a presidential candidate, Mr Trump vowed "to load it up with some bad dudes." Since he became president a year ago, there is no indication any new prisoners have arrived.

"In the past, we have foolishly released hundreds and hundreds of dangerous terrorists, only to meet them again on the battlefield - including the ISIS leader, (Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi, who we captured, who we had, who we released," Mr Trump said in the speech, referring to the Islamic State militant group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in July that Baghdadi had been killed. Americans captured him in the beginning of the war in Iraq, and released him a year later, thinking he was a civilian agitator rather than a military threat.

Civil liberties groups immediately denounced the executive order, and the Center for Constitutional Rights said it would file a legal challenge.

"In trying to give new life to a prison that symbolises America's descent into torture and unlawful indefinite detention, Trump will not make this country any safer," said Hina Shamsi, a director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

But Mr Trump defended his decision, saying that "evil terrorists" must be annihilated. 

"When necessary, we must be able to detain and question them. But we must be clear: Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas, they should be treated like the terrorists they are." 

In his speech, he also sketched out an ominous view of America’s international role, emphasising adversaries over allies, threats over opportunities, and a world to be pacified rather than elevated.

Be it Iran or the Islamic State, Mr Trump promised that the US would vanquish rivals and stand up for those who fight for freedom. He took credit for the military campaign against the Islamic State, which he said had liberated “almost 100 percent of the territory once held by the killers in Iraq and Syria.”

Vowing to rebuild the nation’s nuclear arsenal, Mr Trump said, “perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons.”

“Unfortunately, we are not there yet, sadly,” he said.

But the president saved his longest foreign policy passage, and strongest words, for North Korea, whose “reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons,” he said, “could very soon threaten our homeland.”

“We are waging a campaign of maximum pressure to prevent that from happening,” he said. “Past experience has taught us that complacency and concessions only invite aggression and provocation. I will not repeat the mistakes of past administrations that got us into this dangerous position.”

Mr Trump did not, as he has before, issue specific threats of a military strike on the North. But he outlined an unrelenting case for what he called the North Korean government’s “depraved character,” echoing a speech he delivered to the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul in November.

The president drew on the stories of two victims of North Korean cruelty: an American college student, Otto F. Warmbier, who fell into an irreversible coma while in detention in Pyongyang, the capital, and later died; and a North Korean man who lost his leg while searching for food for his starving family. He later defected.

Gesturing to Mr. Warmbier’s parents, Fred and Cindy, who watched from the visitors’ gallery in the House, their eyes wet with tears, Mr Trump said, “You are powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world, and your strength truly inspires us all.”

In his speech, Mr. Trump made no mention of the Winter Olympic Games. Nor did he mention a budding détente between North and South Korea, which have agreed to march their teams into the opening ceremony under a single flag and to field a unified women’s ice hockey team.

For the president, cataloging the horrors inflicted by North Korea was part of an exercise that he called “restoring clarity about our adversaries.” He said he had stood up for antigovernment demonstrators in Iran and asked Congress to fix the flaws in the “terrible” nuclear deal that world powers brokered with the country in 2015.

The president also said the US had imposed sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, though he made no mention of new penalties against Russia, which lawmakers had passed in a lopsided majority but which the administration has so far declined to impose.

Mr Trump said much less about America’s role in alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And he barely mentioned China or Russia, two countries his own administration identified as the nation’s greatest geopolitical adversaries in the recent National Security Strategy.

While he mentioned his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Mr Trump said nothing about his administration’s effort to broker a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians. That effort seemed more elusive than ever, given Palestinian outrage over Jerusalem.

Rather than talk about peace, Mr Trump emphasised his determination to punish countries that split with the US over what he called “America’s sovereign right to make this recognition.”

“That is why, tonight, I am asking Congress to pass legislation to help insure American foreign-assistance dollars always serve American interests, and only go to America’s friends,” he said. AGENCIES