Attorney general opposes Obama's plan for closing Guantanamo
US President Barack Obama is facing opposition again from within his administration over his plans to close the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a report.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was appointed as the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) by Obama two years ago, is opposing a White House-backed proposal that would allow detained terrorism suspects who plead guilty to terrorism charges to serve their sentences in a third-country prison, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The proposal would allow Guantanamo detainees to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court by videoconference, according to senior administration officials.
The plan would thus bypass a congressional ban on transferring detainees to US soil, which has left dozens of prisoners in long-term confinement in Guantanamo.
Over the past three months, Lynch has twice intervened to block White House proposals on the issue, objecting that they would violate longstanding rules of criminal-justice procedure.
“It’s been a fierce interagency tussle,” said a senior Obama administration official, who supports the proposal and asked not to be identified.
“There were some frustrations,” said a White House official who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “The top lawyer in the land has weighed in, and that was the DOJ’s purview to do that.”
Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo before the end of his presidency. But while he has overseen the release of some 160 detainees from the facility, the prison still detains 80 prisoners.
Congress opposes the transfer of prisoners to other countries, over concern that released prisoners will return to militant activities.
At its peak, some 800 detainees were held at the notorious prison at the US naval base in Cuba, which was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The Guantanamo prison and its associated military commissions cost the Pentagon $445 million in fiscal year 2015. That means each of prisoner left at the facility today costs more than $5.5 million per year.
Thirty of the remaining detainees have been approved for transfer to foreign countries.
The US State Department says the transfer will be done this summer.
A Senate report in December 2014 revealed that the CIA has used a wide array of torture techniques as part of its interrogation methods against Guantanamo prisoners.
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