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U.S. lawmakers to work on closing Guantanamo prison: report |
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07:25, July 10, 2007 |
U.S. lawmakers plan to push for an end to funding for the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and to grant detainees the right to challenge detention, when Congress returns this week, the USA Today newspaper reported Monday.
Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told the newspaper he would propose that funding for the prison, pegged at 150 million U.S. dollars a year, be phased out and that most of the estimated 375 detainees be brought to the United States and tried in civilian or military courts.
He will also propose that the government be permitted to hold a small number of the "worst of the worst" detainees without bringing charges, the paper said.
The proposals will form part of a defense spending bill the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up Thursday or Friday, Moran said.
Moran has been the most active House Democrat pushing plans to either close the detention facility or transfer some of its detainees. In late June, he wrote to President George W. Bush urging him to close the center.
Moran's letter was also signed by 140 other representatives; all but one was a Democrat, the paper said.
In the Senate, Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, planned to make an amendment to a defense spending bill that would grant detainees the right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions, spokesman David Carle was quoted as saying.
A law passed by Congress last year scrapped habeas corpus rights for detainees. The defense bill is expected to be taken up by the full Senate Tuesday or Wednesday.
Two other Democratic senators, Tom Harkin, of Iowa, and Dianne Feinstein, of California, had filed bills that would close Guantanamo, Harkin's spokeswoman Jennifer Mullin said.
The Bush administration had revealed it might close the camp if the authorities could continue holding dangerous detainees "who should never be released and who may or may not be able to be put on trial," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on June 29.
But the administration needs a deadline to focus on a situation that has "dragged on way too long," Moran said.
The United States opened the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002, and it was designed to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.
The Bush administration determined the detainees were not entitled to prisoner-of-war status because they did not wear uniforms and attacked civilian targets. Most of the approximately 375 still being held there have been detained for about five years and only about 10 have been charged.
Housing prisoners outside the United States has made it harder for them to challenge their detention in U.S. courts, and the International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly criticized the States over the legal status of the Guantanamo Bay's detainees.
Source: Xinhua
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