ACLU hammers White House for missing Gitmo deadline

The American Civil Liberties Union hammered the White House on Friday for failing to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison within the president's first year in office.

That self-imposed deadline passed today, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero pointed out in a statement. Consequently, 50 of the facility's 198 prisoners remain detained at the controversial camp without trial, he added.

"The Obama administration continues to insist that there is a substantial number of Guantánamo prisoners who are simultaneously too dangerous to release and too difficult to prosecute, but if there is credible evidence that these prisoners are dangerous, there is no reason why that evidence could not be introduced against them in criminal trials," Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project, said in a statement.

A number of administrative and political obstacles have prevented the Obama administration from closing the Gitmo camp as quickly as it intended.

The White House initially hoped to transfer some of its Guantanamo Bay detainees to domestic facilities, but a handful of lawmakers rallied against those plans, prompting a delay.

Additionally, fallout from the Flight 253 terror plot cast doubt on the long-standing White House policy of transferring detainees abroad, cutting off another means of empty the controversial prison.

Moreover, concerns about how to prosecute a handful of detainees led a presidential task force to declare some too dangerous for release yet too difficult to pursue legally. Those detainees in particular remain a prime concern at the Gitmo facility, ACLU lawyers lamented on Friday.

Together, those obstacles prompted White House officials to acknowledge this week they are unsure when they will be able to shutter the prison.

"I don't know when the process will be done," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Thursday. "There's been progress on issues of siting a new detention facility. The president won't meet the deadline he laid out a year ago, but the president, his national security team, our generals in Iraq and Afghanistan understand the support for al-Qaeda that Guantanamo provides them, in recruiting, in attracting those that seek to do us harm."

Not all, however, are disappointed with the Obama administration's missed Gitmo deadline. While the ACLU challenged the president to work harder to close the facility, House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) implored Obama to keep it open. He wrote in an op-ed that any other course of action would threaten U.S. security.

"Where we detain their fellow combatants — Guantanamo Bay, Cuba or Thomson, Illinois — does not change how they view us, but it does affect the security of the United States and the safety of American communities," Boehner said.

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