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Obama defends Guantanamo closure plan

President Barack Obama defends his intention to close the controversial Guantanamo military prison, calling the Cuban jail a "mess" that's jeopardizing national security by serving as a recruiting centre for al-Qaida.

Obama said some of the terror suspects held there would be brought to top-security prisons in the United States despite fierce opposition in Congress.

He insisted the transfer would not endanger Americans and promised to work with lawmakers to develop a system for holding detainees who can't be tried and can't be turned loose from the prison in Cuba.

"We're cleaning up something that is quite simply a mess," Obama said in Washington on Thursday, as he attempted to broker a consensus among officials who have rejected his plans to close Guantanamo.

"As commander in chief, I see the intelligence, I bare the responsibility of keeping this country safe and I categorically reject the assertion that these [the camp and military tribunal system] are the most effective ways of keeping this country safe," Obama said.

Obama stressed that efforts to reverse Bush-era policies such as Guantanamo had begun before he took office as president.

"In 2006, the supreme court invalidated the entire system," Obama pointed out in his speech, delivered at the National Archives in Washington.

He noted that roughly 500 detainees had already been released by the Bush administration and criticised Guantanamo and its military tribunals as endangering US citizens, saying they "alienate us in the world and serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists".

"They risk the lives of our troops ... and make it more likely our citizens will be miss-treated if captured in battle," he said.

During his campaign for the presidency, Obama pledged to close the camp, but his plans were dealt a blow on Wednesday when the senate voted to block any transfer of prisoners to facilities on the US mainland.

The senate also refused to sanction $80m sought for the shutdown of Guantanamo until Obama decides what to do with the facility's inmates.

Legislators rebelled largely over concerns that some of the Guantanamo inmates could be jailed, or even released, in the US and amid Republican threats to brand them as being "soft" on national security.

Attempting to defuse criticism that closing Guantanamo would endanger national security, Obama said: "We will be ill-served by the fearmongering that emerges whenever we discuss this issue."

He vowed to work with congress to develop a system for imprisoning detainees who could not be released and conceded that some would end up in US prisons, but insisted that those facilities were tough enough to house even the most dangerous inmates.

While most Democrats agree Guantanamo should be closed, the senate vote showed they were demanding a detailed plan before approving funds to launch the process.

In the first days of his administration, Obama won praise for banning harsh interrogation methods such as simulated drowning, known as waterboarding, and for ordering an end to secret CIA jails overseas.

But he has recently made a number of U-turns, blocking the release of photos of alleged detainee abuse and reviving the Bush-era military commissions - that he halted on becoming president - to prosecute suspects held at Guantanamo.

Guantanamo prison and the military tribunals were authorised by George Bush, his predecessor as US president, after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Trial in a civilian court

A suspected member of al-Qaeda accused of involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya will face trial in a civilian court in the United States, a US official has said.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who is alleged to have supplied equipment and support for the bombing, will be tried in a federal court in New York, the official told Reuters news agency.

Ghailani, a Tanzanian, will be prosecuted on charges that he played a role in the deaths of more than 200 people in the near simultaneous bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.

Eleven people died in the bomb attack in Tanzania and 213 people were killed in Kenya.

Ghailani will be the first detainee of the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to face trial before a civilian court.

Cheney defends US 'torture' policy

Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, has defended the interrogation methods used by the Bush administration which have been widely condemned as torture, calling them "justified" and "essential".

Speaking minutes after Barack Obama, the US president, denounced the methods as being based on fear, he said: "They were legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do."

"I was, and remain, a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation programme," he told the American Enterprise Institute, of which he is a trustee, in Washington DC on Thursday.

"In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralising as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists," he said.

He also defended the detention of "enemy combatants" in the Guantanamo Bay US prison camp in Cuba, and the use of harsh interrogation methods such as "waterboarding".

He said that the measures were driven by a need to prevent the 2001 September 11 attacks on the US by al-Qaeda, in which more than 3,000 people died, from becoming a prelude to even worse attacks. (AFP, RT, UPI, Reuters, Huffington Post, AP )

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