GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, CUBA— It’s the worst kept secret at Guantanamo Bay: The detainees, in all likelihood, much prefer the detention center here to the conditions faced at a federal facility.
On Wednesday, the White House rejected the Pentagon’s plan for an alternative to the Guantánamo Bay military facility on mainland U.S. soil because it could cost $600 million to implement and was deemed too expensive.
The Senate-passed, $607 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would, among its other provisions, ban the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay to mainland American prisons. This would effectively checkmate President Obama’s plans to close the Guantanamo detention facility.
The Pentagon is scheduled to release its list of alternative facilities for holding former Guantánamo Bay prisoners after President Obama closes the facility, over the objections of Congress and a hefty majority of the American people.
With only one year left in President Obama’s tenure, the White House continues to hint at the possibility that the President may use his executive powers to unilaterally shut down Guantánamo Bay prison without the consent of Congress.
Among the most recent transferred detainees from Guantanamo Bay was 45-year-old Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz, sent home to Mauritania after 13 years in U.S. custody.
Obama’s strong stand on Gitmo underscores two vital points. First, President Obama does not fear defunding America’s national security. Second, Obama does not fear Republicans in Congress.
As the Associated Press notes, the defense policy bill “is one of the few bipartisan measures in Congress that has readily become law for more than a half-century,” but President Obama is threatening to veto this one, with Senate Democrats standing behind him.
Thursday afternoon in Columbia, South Carolina, former Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) joined Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) for a “Presidential Town Hall” series that Scott is hosting with the Republican presidential candidates.
The Obama administration, while the Senate debates halting transfers out of the Guantanamo Bay detention center and keeping the prison operable indefinitely, is planning to free up to 10 detainees, possibly in June, Defense One has learned.
Lloyd Levin and Michael Bonner, principal advisors behind the Oscar-nominated Paul Greengrass-directed films United 93 and Green Zone, have optioned film rights of Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir.
Rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight would be more suited to await trial in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where detainees have better living conditions, his attorney claimed Thursday.
The nation of Uruguay is struggling to properly integrate the six former Guantánamo Bay prisoners they accepted from the United States into society. Two of the men were forced into hotel housing after a heated “political and religious dispute,” while a third has traveled to Argentina to demand that the Southern Cone nation take in more prisoners from Gitmo.
ARLINGTON, VA — Representatives for a Guantanamo Bay prisoner argued before Obama’s Periodic Review Board (PRB) on Tuesday that the al-Qaeda linked detainee should be reunited with his family in Yemen where the U.S.-backed government collapsed last week.
WASHINGTON — Obama’s Periodic Review Board (PRB) held a hearing on whether an experienced bomb maker linked to al Qaeda should remain in custody at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Friday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” in speaking about President Barack Obama’s attempts to clear terrorists out of Guantanamo Bay, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said, “I don’t understand the White House position at all, and I think neither does
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, coming a step closer to reaching its goal of shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison, has released five Yemenis from the detention center.
According to the Obama administration, the five Guantanamo terrorists they traded for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl are “no longer a threat to U.S. national security.” That’s what former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel concluded when he signed the document setting
President Barack Obama said on Sunday he is eager to redouble his efforts to release the remaining 131 suspected terrorist inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility so he can close Gitmo’s doors forever. “I’m going to be doing everything I
A former Guantánamo prisoner had been using the cafeteria of Madrid’s largest mosque to recruit Islamist extremists to join the Islamic State in waging jihad in the Middle East, an investigation following his June arrest has revealed. Spanish law enforcement
Zacarias Moussaoui, also known as the “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, asked a South Florida federal judge Wednesday for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Associated Press reported. Moussaoui is serving a life sentence
In the wake of Tuesday’s release of the CIA memo detailing Bush-era interrogators’ methods that extracted information from enemy combatants, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Breitbart News the Obama administration is mirandizing terrorists that the U.S. military is capturing on
The Obama administration released six Guantanamo Bay detainees and sent them to Uruguay for resettlement as refugees amid the president’s renewed efforts to close down the facility. Upon taking office, President Obama pledged to close down the U.S. military
On June 4, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned that President Barack Obama could face “impeachment” if he continued to release terror detainees from the military prison facility at Guantánamo Bay without Congress’s explicit approval. On Thursday, however–the same day that
(Washington, D.C.)–Three Guantanamo Bay detainees have been transferred to the Country of Georgia, according to the Pentagon. On November 20, the Department of Defense announced the transfers of Salah Mohammed Salih Al-Dhabi, Abdel Ghaib Ahmad Hakim, and Abdul Khaled Al-Baydani.
Senior U.S. intelligence and Defense officials told Fox News that to up to 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees may have returned to the battlefield, surmising that they have formed an alliance with Islamic State and other jihadist organizations including Al
On Oct. 11, The Daily Beast released an article entitled “The Resurrection of Kristen Stewart” in which Stewart commented on the alleged mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba while promoting her newest film, Camp X-Ray. The following day, Breitbart News
In advance of the release of her most recent film project, Camp X-Ray, Kristen Stewart conducted an interview with The Daily Beast which was, in turn, covered here at Breitbart News, which, in turn, was covered by The Daily Beast
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) is threatening to “shut down the Senate” if President Obama uses executive power to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and bring its terrorist prisoners to the U.S. “I stopped him once from trying
MSNBC Terrorism Analyst Evan Kohlmann said that ISIS terrorists waterboarding American hostages was “the price of Abu Ghraib and … continuing the camp in Guantanamo” on Friday’s “Ronan Farrow Daily” on MSNBC. “We shouldn’t be surprised about this. Unfortunately, that’s
A report published Thursday by the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Defense violated the law twice when it transferred 5 prisoners from Gitmo without providing notice to Members of Congress. The five prisoners were part of a
The new trailer for Camp X-Ray may feel like a blast from Hollywood’s recent past. The film industry cranked out a series of films critical of both President George W. Bush and his conduct of the War on Terror during
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg plans on staying on the U.S. Supreme Court for the time being, creating the possibility that her seat will be a factor in the 2016 presidential election. On July 30, Ginsburg sat down with Katie Couric
Monday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a military court’s conviction of Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul for conspiracy to commit war crimes. However, the court also vacated two other convictions against Bahlul
The Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI) has uncovered a tweet containing a photo of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl standing and smiling with a Taliban commander. Bergdahl became the center of intense media scrutiny when stories of his desertion and sympathy
Over the weekend terrorists declared the formation of an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria. In Afghanistan, the New York Times recently reported that the Taliban was responsible for “one of the most significant coordinated assaults on the government in
FNC’s “Justice” host Jeanine Pirro last night went after President Barack Obama’s “feckless week foreign policy” creating chaos in the middle east. Pirro called the president a “clueless a paper tiger” who didn’t “have the balls” to prosecute the five
On June 16 Spain’s interior ministry said they had arrested eight persons, including a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, “for allegedly recruiting militants to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS). The recruited militants had “already been sent
Some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists at Guantanamo love watching World Cup soccer. In fact, it is the most popular program among the 149 detainees accused of some of the most ruthless acts of terror. “Right now, it’s the
Johnny Micheal Spann’s daughter Alison was nine years old when he was murdered by rioting Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan in 2001, making him the first American to die in the war. 13 years later, she got to watch Barack Obama