To close Gitmo, courtroom-prison complex in U.S. eyed

Washington Times ^ | August 3, 2009 | Lara Jakes

[La Lydia]

The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison. Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is considering a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum-security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site...

The officials outlined the plans - the latest effort to comply with Obama's order to close the camp by Jan. 22 and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terrorism suspects on American soil...the White House considers the courtroom-prison complex as the best among a series of bad options, an administration official said. The facility would operate as a hybrid prison system jointly operated by the Justice Department, the military and the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration's plan calls for:

Moving all the Guantanamo detainees to a single U.S. prison. The Justice Department has identified between 60 and 80 who could be prosecuted, either in military or federal criminal courts. The Pentagon would oversee the detainees who would face trial in military tribunals while the Bureau of Prisons, an arm of the Justice Department, would manage defendants in federal courts.

Building a court facility within the prison site where military or criminal defendants would be tried. Doing so would create a single venue for almost all the criminal defendants, ending the need to transport them elsewhere in the U.S. for trial.

Providing long-term holding cells for a small but still undetermined number of detainees who will not face trial because intelligence and counterterror officials conclude they are too dangerous to risk being freed.

Building immigration detention cells for detainees ordered released by courts but still behind bars because countries are unwilling to take them....

[La Lydia]

So instead of just using the perfectly fine facility we have in Cuba, we have to bring these pukes here and pay another small fortune to build a facility to hold them. And if they are acquitted, they are loose on American soil. And we still are going to be holding the ones we can't set loose. Could this be stupider?

[domenad]

We’re going to need one of these anyway, might as well build it and get it over with. That’s stimulus.

[aShepard]

Gee, what a wonderful idea.

Let’s walk away from a new facility on the island of Cuba that we spent probably hundreds of millions to build a few years ago, so that we can build a new one in the US.

Was this part of the porkulas plan?

Maybe it would have been cheaper to ship a few of those left over Katrina trailers to Gitmo, and set up a court complex.

[combat_boots]

Really, now. Terrorists from GITMO on trial by juries recruited from Dearbornistan? Slick. Hey, Detroit even has empty buildings and $1 houses they can buy once they’d be ‘acquitted’ and are released in the US.

[Uncle Hal]

You are absolutely right. Gitmo is the perfect place for these guys. But Obama has made a promise to his liberal buddies and it is going to cost us millions.