President Donald Trump on Tuesday revoked Obama’s order to close the detention centre here and declared the prison of 41 captives open to new detainees. At the same time, his Executive Order on the topic didn’t rule out the possibility of detainee releases. “The United States may transport additional detainees to U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay when lawful and necessary to protect the nation,” according to the text of the Executive Order posted on the White House website.
The order also gave Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis 90 days to develop a policy “governing transfer of individuals” to the U.S. Navy prison in collaboration with the Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence and others.
“The United States remains engaged in an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces, including with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” it said, using language that suggested the Trump administration wanted a policy to send ISIS captives to the detention center that was set up for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban members and affiliates.
It made no mention of interrogations but declared “detention operations” at the base “legal, safe, humane, and conducted consistent with the United States and international law.”
The president announced that he had signed the order in his State of the Union address, prefacing it with a remark that earned applause from members of Congress: “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.”
Of the 41 captives, 10 are charged with war crimes at military commissions, the war court President George W. Bush created and President Barack Obama reformed after signing the prison closure as a first act of his administration.
The Center for Constitutional Justice, Reprieve and other lawyers filed a petition on January 11 challenging the continued detention of the prisoners at Guantanamo on the basis it is unconstitutional.
"The US has had 16 years to build a case against these men, and yet 28 of 41 prisoners are held without charge or a trial of any kind – a shocking violation of America's founding principles," Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, a Reprieve attorney representing several Guantanamo inmates, said in a statement at the time.
