The Guantanamo Bay facility, which has so far been used to hold terrorists, will now also house illegal immigrants with criminal records.
Human rights organisations have been alleging that the Guantanamo Bay military prison, set up by Bush Administration in 2002, was being used to detain and question terror suspects with harsh interrogation measures. The prison camp currently holds about 245 inmates. The executive orders in this regard were signed by Obama at a White House ceremony during his meeting with the retired military officials on Thursday.
"We are exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America. What we don't want to do is to let out somebody that comes back and harms us," Bush said.
President Barack Obama may not be able to fulfill his promise of closing down infamous Guantanamo Bay by the end of his term because of political opposition and "inertia" on part of the administration, a media report said on Saturday. The initial date for shutting down the detention facility was 2010 but there has been considerable resistance to the proposal that the prisoners be shifted to a prison in Illinois, according to the New York Times.
Philip Alston, a United Nations human rights expert has said that the trial of six 'alien unlawful enemy combatants' at the Guantanamo Bay under the Military Commission Act fails to meet the basic due process standards required for a fair trial under international humanitarian and human rights law.
"The Guantanamo issue is a sensitive issue for people. I very much would like to end Guantanamo. I very much would like to get people to a court," he told German TV station ARD.
The motion, made at the instance of Obama and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is expected to be considered early on Wednesday local time by the military judge hearing into the case against five men charged in 9/11 terror attacks and against Omar Khadr, a Canadian who is accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan in 2002
The decision is seen as a stinging blow to the US administration
The US president announced the move during his first State of the Union address, reversing his predecessor Barack Obama's decision to close the controversial site "as soon as practicable".
The military trainers who came to Guantanamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure," the New York Times said. All these methods were once described by the Americans as torture.
United States President Barack Obama has appointed Cliff Sloan, a high-powered lawyer with extensive experience in all three branches of the government, as his special envoy for the closure of the much-criticised terrorist detention centre at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
United States President Barack Obama is still committed to closing down the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention centre, a promise he had made during his presidential campaign, his spokesman said on Tuesday after his government's U-turn over trial of the 9/11 accused."We remain committed to closing Guantanamo because it's in our national security interest," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters during an off-camera briefing.
Showing up for a hearing at the United States military court in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is an ordeal for the detainees and a logistical burden for the American military, which has to transport the terror suspects from the detention facility to 'Camp Justice' inside the US Naval base in Cuba.
United States President Barack Obama on Tuesday lifted the freeze on military trials for Guantanamo Bay terror suspects by signing an executive order that will create a formal system of indefinite detention of such prisoners. Within hours of his taking over as the President, Obama announced a freeze on Guantanamo Bay trials along with a vow to shut down the infamous camp within a year.
The lawyer of Julian Assange, the founder of whistleblower website Wikileaks, has said that the journalist faces the threat of the death penalty or detention at Guantanamo Bay if he is extradited to Sweden on accusations of rape and sexual assault. "Indeed, if Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty," his lawyer said.
A Human Rights Watch report says the US abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan has given other nations an excuse to torture terror suspects.\n\n
David Hicks, an Australian citizen, had allegedly fired hundreds of bullets on Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in the year 2000.
The Guantanamo detention centre has a major medical facility and a large airstrip both of which could be used in the coming days, State Department spokesman P J Crowley said. The major hospitals in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince have been damaged and the airport is being run by the US army on an emergency basis.
United States President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order, within his first week in office, to close down the infamous American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, a media report said on Tuesday. The order, however, would not immediately close the prison, the Wall Street Journal said, citing two people with knowledge of the plan. It is the first step in what is expected to be a long process of determining what to do with the approximately 250 prisoners.
The US Defence Department has said it would like to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on the Cuban island but, it cannot be done until a statutory status for the detainees are found.
The US has released a London-based Saudi national, the last British resident to be incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, after nearly 14 years in detention at the infamous military prison in Cuba without being tried for any terror-related offence.
At least 35 terrorists incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated by "extremist preachers" in mosques, particularly the one at Finsbury Park in Britain, according to documents leaked by WikiLeaks.
Some Indian students, many of the from Andhra Pradesh, have fallen victims of the Guantanamo Bay mindset of the United States authorities which permits them to use demeaning and dehumanising methods against suspects under investigation or detention in order to prevent them from escaping and to locate them by using the Global Positioning System if they manage to escape.
Chinese-American Muslim James 'Yusuf' Yee, a former US Army Chaplain, talks about his harrowing experiences at Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has agreed to enter a plea deal with the Joe Biden administration that could pave the way for him to avoid imprisonment in the United States, according to recently filed federal court documents, CNN reported.
"We have not made any decisions with regard to releases," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told media persons when asked about news reports regarding release of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo as part of the reconciliation process.
United States President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the nomination of popular Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth, 44, as his defence secretary.
Osama bin Laden's former cook, Ibrahim al Qosi, has pleaded guilty at a trial in Guantanamo Bay to conspiracy and providing support for terrorism, representing the first conviction of the Barack Obama administration at the controversial war crimes court. According to the BBC, the 50-year-old man from Sudan has admitted that he had worked as bin Laden's bodyguard in Afghanistan and helped him avoid capture by US forces. Qosi was detained in Afghanistan in 2001.
Despite widespread efforts to shut it down, Guantanamo Bay, the infamous extrajudicial detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located in Cuba, completes a decade of existence on Wednesday.
The United States will continue to focus on the Asia-Pacific region and shape a future of greater security, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday, even as he vowed to veto any Congressional bill imposing new sanctions on Iran to give "diplomacy a chance to succeed".
The United States on Wednesday charged Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks, along with four alleged plotters, vowing to seek the death penalty in a much-awaited military trial.
Pakistan's Inter-Services intelligence facilitated terrorists to cross the border to carry out strikes on Indian targets chosen by the Pakistan Army, several detainees at the Guantanamo Bay facility told US interrogators, according to a fresh set of American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
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