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GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Behind the scenes, the U.S. military is planning for nearly a half-billion dollars in new construction during the Trump administration, including a Navy request to build a $250 million, five-bed hospital here that has been singled out for study by a Senate committee. Despite President Donald J. Trump's campaign promise to reduce costs at the remote U.S. Navy base -- at one point he mused that his new Cuba policy might import cheap, local labor from across the minefield -- the Pentagon's appetite to spend at this outpost of about 5,500 residents and 41...

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would consider sending Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek national who plowed a rented truck through a bike lane full of cyclists and pedestrians on Tuesday, to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 'I would certainly consider that, yes. I would certainly consider that. Send him to Gitmo,' Trump said. Separately, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain, a Republican who has tangled with the president on taxes and Obamacare, said Saipov should be considered an 'enemy combatant' and denied Miranda rights by police. The president also declared that he is already moving...

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors should face a trial by a military commission. The court on Monday declined to take up the case of Saudi national Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri had sought to challenge the authority of a military commission in Guantánamo Bay hearing his case. But an appeals court ruled last year that al-Nashiri’s challenge would have to wait until after his trial. …

Canadians across the country have been reaching into their wallets to donate money to the family of an American soldier whom Omar Khadr is accused of killing in Afghanistan 15 years ago. The online fundraising effort – part political protest, part generosity – comes amid a furor over the $10.5 million sources said the federal government paid Khadr for breaching his rights while he was an American prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

The Trump administration appears to be making its first moves toward fulfilling a campaign promise to fill the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with “bad dudes.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the prison on Friday to get an update on current operations, the first concrete action the administration has taken on the facility since taking office. Up until now, Guantanamo has been running on autopilot; the executive order from former President Obama calling for the facility to be shut down is still technically the law of the land. But President Trump promised during the campaign...

It's an expensive thorn-in-the-side to the Castro regime. The moozlem prisoners cost a million bucks apiece per year to incarcerate. Rent is $5k/yr. I say turn it into a penal colony and staff it with foreign guards, including Cubans. Put those land mines back into place that Bill Clinton removed without reciprocation-the Cubans have their own mines still there. Prisoners can be the illegals(ms-13 types) waiting to finish out there terms in the continental US. Bring the navy ships and their families back home. Trump can thereby DEAL with the next Government for total withdrawal. The moozlems? Build the same...

An airstrike authorized by the Trump administration against an al Queda outpost in Yemen has killed a former detainee from the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba who was released in 2009."We can confirm the death of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, Yasir al Silmi," said Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.This means that President Donald Trump has killed a foreign combatant that was released under the authority of Barack Obama. . .

A British Islamic State fighter who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq this week is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid £1 million compensation by the government. Jamal al-Harith, a Muslim convert born Ronald Fiddler who detonated a car bomb at an Iraqi army base near Mosul, was released from the US detention camp in 2004 and successfully claimed compensation after saying British agents knew or were complicit in his mistreatment. He was freed following intense lobbying by Tony Blair’s Labour government.Al-Harith, who used the nom de guerre Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, entered Syria via Turkey in 2014 to...

A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees. Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003. The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army...

As his time in the White House winds down, President Barack Obama received an unusual piece of mail: a letter from accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Officials confirmed that the letter arrived at the White House to CBS News, but are declining to provide further details. Mohammed is awaiting his death-penalty trial at Guantanamo Bay, accused of planning and orchestrating the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. The Miami Herald, which first reported on the letter, says it was written in 2014, and was only delivered...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a bill on Tuesday that would declassify information about the terrorist activities of detainees at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba who have been released or transferred since Election Day. The move came after a report that the Obama administration recently struck a deal with Oman to transfer 10 detainees from Gitmo. The move brings the total number of detainees down to less than 50. Cruz and other Republicans have been heavily critical of Obama’s transfers and of his promise to close the facility before leaving office. Republicans point to a statistic that 30 percent...

The White House said Tuesday that the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba will still be open when President Barack Obama leaves office, conceding that a core campaign promise will go unfulfilled. Administration officials had long insisted that the president was continuing to work toward closing the facility even when it became obvious that it would no longer be possible for practical reasons before President-elect Donald Trump takes office Friday. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that the administration determined it wouldn’t happen when they realized they did not have enough time left to comply with the 30-day deadline...

Democratic lawmakers are calling for President Obama to close Guantanamo Bay because "Donald Trump must be deprived of the use” of the controversial prison. Representatives including New York City’s Hakeem Jeffries, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez and Jose Serrano signed a letter sent to the White House Wednesday. Obama promised during his first presidential campaign to close the facility on Cuban soil, which was filled with suspected terrorists during the Bush administration, some of whom have stayed there for years without a trial or charges. The White House has said that it is working to move the 18 inmates who remain...

Four Gitmo detainees are slated to be transferred to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours, the first of the final wave of up to 20 transfers expected before Inauguration Day, two U.S. officials tell Fox News. The identities of the four detainees are not immediately known. The transfers are proceeding despite renewed opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted on Tuesday: “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

Amnesty International is making a final push to convince President Obama to circumvent Congress and close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility before the end of his presidency. “On behalf of Amnesty International’s 1.2 million supporters in the United States, I write to make a final plea that you use all the powers of your office to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay,” Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA, wrote in a letter to Obama on Tuesday. “We are gravely concerned that if you fail to do so, President-elect Trump may attempt to bring dozens or even hundreds...

The Obama administration intends to transfer 17 or 18 of the remaining 59 Guantanamo Bay detainees before the president leaves office, the New York Times reported Monday night. The prisoners will go to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If the proposal goes through, Donald Trump would be left to deal with 10 men who were charged or convicted in military commissions, and 27 who were not charged but are deemed to dangerous to release. It is not clear if Trump will refuse to transfer detainees once he takes office. The president-elect has promised to keep Guantanamo...

An Al Qaeda operative incarcerated at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo has confirmed what Judicial Watch has been reporting for years, that a Saudi Arabian “rehabilitation” program that supposedly reforms jihadists is really a terrorist training camp. The U.S. has released dozens of Gitmo captives to the comical jihadist rehab and earlier this year considered sending another, senior Al Qaeda boss Ghassan Abdullah al-Sharbi, a dangerous Saudi national with a U.S. college education. During a hearing before President Obama’s Gitmo parole board, al-Sharbi said “you guys want to send me back to Saudi Arabia because you believe there is...

If President-elect Donald Trump decides to make good on his campaign pledge to "load up" the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with new domestic terror suspects caught in the US -- including American citizens -- legal experts say he is asking for an unprecedented constitutional showdown. Voters first received a peek at Trump's stance on Guantanamo Bay back in 2015 when talking points on various policy questions were leaked ahead of a Republican debate. On the issue of whether he would close the detention facility, the memo stated: "No. I would also take away the passports of Americans who...

Gitmo Prisoners ‘Thought It Was the End of the World’ on Election Night, Asked for Tranquilizers BY: Chandler Gill December 1, 2016 10:53 am Prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba “thought it was the end of the world” the night of the presidential election and asked their guards for tranquilizers and sleeping pills, CBS correspondent Margaret Brennan reported Thursday. David Remes, the lawyer of one of the prisoners at Guantanamo, recounted to Brennan what his client told him about election night. “He said that many detainees thought that it was the end of the world and felt...

Obama IRS Official Admits Cincinnati Office Targeted Groups Based on ‘Guilt by Association’ Judicial Watch Goes to Court For Records about Exchange of GTMO Prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Clinton Accountability Goes Forward Obama IRS Official Admits Cincinnati Office Targeted Groups Based on ‘Guilt by Association’ We know now, right from the horse’s mouth, how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has targeted Tea Party and conservative groups during the Obama administration. In the notes of a top IRS official, written down during a 2011 interoffice meeting, we discovered that Cincinnati office agents were targeting organizations requesting tax-exempt status based...