Key US lawmakers assail Obama on detainees

Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, in 2010 © AFP/File Paul J. Richards

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Top Republican US lawmakers on Tuesday assailed President Barack Obama’s policy for detaining suspected terrorists and his decision to bring a suspected Somali extremist to trial on US soil.

The chairs of the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Judiciary Committee, Intelligence Committee, Homeland Security Committee, and Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to Obama to urge him to clarify his approach.

“Our overarching concern is the lack of a comprehensive detention system to incapacitate and interrogate terrorists captured outside of Afghanistan,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

They asked Obama for a briefing on his policies on “detention, interrogation, or trial of terrorists captured outside Afghanistan and an explanation as to why detention at Guantanamo Bay is considered ‘off the table.'”

The lawmakers expressed concerns about the administration’s decision to try Somali national Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame in a New York court on charges of providing material support to both the Shebab and Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based branch of the Islamist terror group.

They said they worried the case showed Obama had abandoned the option to use the controversial Guantanamo Bay facility for “non-criminal detention for future captures and prosecution by military commission” and hinted at a legislative response.

“The facilities at Guantanamo, which are state-of-the-art and the result of millions of US taxpayer dollars, make it unnecessary to bring terrorists to the United States,” they said.

© AFP — Published at Activist Post with license