You remember what “Gitmo” is, and who’s there, right?
Okay, let’s review.
“Gitmo” is shorthand for the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It houses terrorists, including detainees from the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
It’s still in operation, and some “9/11” detainees are still there, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of those attacks.
They’re held offshore to keep them outside the jurisdiction of federal civilian courts; the plan (initiated by President G. W. Bush) has always been to try them in special military tribunals.
But those trials likely are still many years away, because of pretrial complexities. On top of that, “Charges against many of the remaining inmates may not be possible, experts say, either because the evidence is too sensitive,” i.e. highly classified, “or the torture they experienced has tainted the case beyond repair,” NBC News says.
To bring you up to date, there are still 39 prisoners from “9/11” at Gitmo, down from more than 700 originally. It costs taxpayers $13 million per year, per prisoner, to keep them there, the New York Times estimates. That likely will increase as what began as a jail evolves into a nursing home.
Meanwhile, the inflow of new prisoners has stopped, because it’s “easier to kill terror suspects with drone strikes than for America to capture and hold them,” NBC News says.
Read story here.
It is long past time to bring the boys and girls in Cuba home. Time to return the base to the Cubans. Time to close down the prison and either try the Prisoners in our courts or let them go. These individuals deserved speedy trials and that has not happened and they should be freed no matter their crimes. [Edited comment.]