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Obama to Seek Closing Amid Hunger Strike at Guantánamo Obama to Seek Closing Amid Hunger Strike at Guantánamo
(about 7 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday recommitted to his years-old vow to close the Guantánamo Bay prison following the arrival of “medical reinforcements” of nearly 40 Navy nurses, corpsmen and specialists amid a mass hunger strike by inmates who have been held for over a decade without trial. WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Tuesday that he would recommit himself to closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, a goal that he all but abandoned in the face of Congressional opposition in his first term and that faces steep challenges now.
“It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “The notion that we’re going to keep 100 individuals in no man’s land in perpetuity,” he added, made no sense. “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?” “It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference. “The notion that we’re going to keep 100 individuals in no man’s land in perpetuity,” he added, makes no sense. “All of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this? Why are we doing this?”
Citing the high expense and the foreign policy costs of continuing to operate the prison, Mr. Obama said he would try again to persuade Congress to lift restrictions on transferring inmates to the federal court system. Mr. Obama was ambiguous, however, about the most difficult issue raised by the prospect of closing the prison: what to do with detainees who are deemed dangerous but could not be feasibly prosecuted. Describing the prison as a waste of taxpayer money that has had a damaging effect on American foreign policy, Mr. Obama said he would try again to persuade Congress to lift restrictions on transferring inmates. He also said he had ordered a review of “everything that we can do administratively.”
Mr. Obama’s existing policy on that subject, which Congress has blocked, is to move detainees to maximum-security facilities inside the United States and continue holding them without trial as wartime prisoners; it is not clear whether such a change would ease the frustrations fueling the detainees’ hunger strike. But there is no indication that Mr. Obama’s proposal to close the prison in Cuba, as he vowed to do upon taking office in 2009 after criticizing it during the presidential campaign, has become any more popular. Mr. Obama remarked that “it’s a hard case to make” because “it’s easy to demagogue the issue.”
Yet at another point in the news conference, Mr. Obama appeared to question the policy of indefinite wartime detention at a time when the war in Iraq has ended, the one in Afghanistan is winding down and the original makeup of Al Qaeda has been decimated. “The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried,” he said, “that is contrary to who we are, contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.” The plan for Guantánamo he proposed — moving any remaining prisoners to a Supermax-style prison in Illinois — was blocked by Congress, which barred any further transfers of detainees onto domestic soil. A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and one of the leading opponents of closing the prison, said on Tuesday that “there is wide, bipartisan opposition in Congress to the president’s goal of moving those terrorists to American cities and towns.”
But in the short term, Mr. Obama indicated his support for the force-feeding of detainees who refused to eat. Mr. Obama made his remarks following the arrival at the prison of more than three dozen Navy nurses, corpsmen and specialists to help deal with a mass hunger strike by inmates, many of whom have been held for over 11 years without trial. As of Tuesday, 100 of the 166 prisoners were officially deemed to be participating, with 21 now being force-fed a nutritional supplement through tubes inserted in their noses.
“I don’t want these individuals to die,” he said. “I don’t want these individuals to die,” Mr. Obama said.
As of Tuesday morning, 100 of the 166 prisoners at Guantánamo were officially deemed by the military to be participating in the hunger strike, with 21 “approved” to be fed the nutritional supplement Ensure through tubes inserted through their noses. Both conservatives and civil libertarians said that under existing law, Mr. Obama could be doing more to reduce the number of low-level detainees held at the prison.
In a statement released earlier, a military spokesman said the deployment of additional medical personnel had been planned several weeks ago as more detainees joined the strike. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon, Republican of California, noted that the Obama administration had never exercised the power it has had since in 2012 to waive, on a case-by-case basis, most of the restrictions lawmakers have imposed on transferring detainees to countries with troubled security conditions.
“We will not allow a detainee to starve themselves to death, and we will continue to treat each person humanely,” said Lt. Col. Samuel House, the prison spokesman. “For the past two years, our committee has worked with our Senate counterparts to ensure that the certifications necessary to transfer detainees overseas are reasonable,” Mr. McKeon said. “The administration has never certified a single transfer.”
The military’s response to the hunger strike has revived complaints by medical ethics groups that contend that doctors — and nurses under their direction — should not force-feed prisoners who are mentally competent to decide not to eat. Human rights groups also urged Mr. Obama to direct the Pentagon to start issuing waivers, and said he should appoint a White House official to run Guantánamo policy with the authority to resolve interagency disputes. For example, because of disagreements over evidence tainted by torture, the administration has missed by more than a year a deadline to begin parole-style hearings by so-called Periodic Review Boards.
“There’s more to be done, but these are the two essential first steps the president can take now to break the Guantánamo logjam,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Another group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents detainees, urged Mr. Obama to lift his self-imposed ban on repatriations to Yemen, where a branch of Al Qaeda is active. Of the 86 low-level detainees who were designated in January 2010 for potential transfer but remain incarcerated, 56 are Yemenis.
Asked for greater details about Mr. Obama’s intentions, a National Security Council spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, said the president was “considering a range of options for ways that we can reduce the population there,” including “reappointing a senior official at the State Department to renew our focus on repatriating or transferring” lower-risk detainees. The administration reassigned the previous diplomat charged with that task in January and has not replaced him.
“We will also work to fully implement the Periodic Review Board process, which we acknowledge has not moved forward quickly enough,” she added.
Mr. Obama was ambiguous about one of the most difficult problems raised by Guantánamo: what to do with dozens of detainees deemed too risky to release but not feasible to prosecute. His policy has been not to release those prisoners, but to continue to imprison them indefinitely under the laws of war — just somewhere else.
Yet at another point, Mr. Obama appeared to question that policy at a time when the war in Iraq has ended, the one in Afghanistan is winding down and the original makeup of Al Qaeda has been decimated.
“The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried,” he said, “that is contrary to who we are, contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.”
The Obama administration has said little about Guantánamo for months. But recent developments have forced the issue.
Military officials who oversee the prison have requested $200 million, amid budget cuts, to replace deteriorating facilities with permanent structures. And in February, after years of relative quiet, the detainees began protesting, beginning a hunger strike that has involved more and more prisoners.
In response to what the military said were attempts to block surveillance cameras, guards in early April raided the cellblocks where formerly compliant detainees had been living communally for years, locking them in individual cells. The move generated wide publicity.
Two weeks ago, the military allowed several reporters to visit the prison, where they said calm had returned, and gave a detailed account of what they said were efforts to restore order. But during the same visit, a Muslim cultural adviser to the military predicted to reporters that detainees would soon succeed in committing suicide; there were at least two attempts by detainees to hang themselves in April.
The adviser said the only thing that would persuade detainees to settle down would be the transfer of an inmate out of the prison, which would give the others hope.
The military’s response to the hunger strike has revived complaints by medical ethics groups that say doctors should not force-feed prisoners who decide not to eat, reviving a similar clash over Guantánamo detainees from the Bush administration.
Last week, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating “core ethical values of the medical profession.”Last week, the president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating “core ethical values of the medical profession.”
“Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” Dr. Lazarus wrote.“Every competent patient has the right to refuse medical intervention, including life-sustaining interventions,” Dr. Lazarus wrote.
He also noted that the A.M.A. endorses the World Medical Association’s Tokyo Declaration, a 1975 statement forbidding doctors to use their medical knowledge to facilitate torture. It says that if a prisoner makes “an unimpaired and rational judgment” to refuse nourishment, “he or she shall not be fed artificially.” Ramzi Kassem, a City University of New York law professor who represents several detainees, said he had talked last week to a Yemeni client, Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, who said a guard had shot him with rubber-coated pellets at close range during the raid.
The military’s policy, however, is that it can and should preserve the life of a detainee by forcing him to eat if necessary. Since then, Mr. Kassem said he had been told, the prisoners have been denied soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and their legal papers. A client told him, he said, that he had not eaten in 80 days and that he had stopped drinking after the raid and was now being force-fed twice a day after being tied to a restraint chair.
“In the case of a hunger strike, attempted suicide or other attempted serious self-harm, medical treatment or intervention may be directed without the consent of the detainee to prevent death or serious harm,” a military policy directive says. “Such action must be based on a medical determination that immediate treatment or intervention is necessary to prevent death or serious harm and, in addition, must be approved by the commanding officer of the detention facility or other designated senior officer responsible for detainee operations.” He quoted Mr. Alwi as saying: “I do not want to kill myself. My religion prohibits suicide. But I will not eat or drink until I die, if necessary, to protest the injustice of this place. We want to get out of this place.”
On Monday, Colonel House also said that some detainees on the “enteral feeding” list were drinking the supplement. Mr. Obama’s remarks about the prison came in an otherwise sedate news conference, and at times he appeared almost anguished.
“Just because the detainees are approved for enteral feeding does not mean they don’t eat a regular meal,” he said. “Once the detainees leave their cell and are in the presence of medical personnel, most of the detainees who are approved for tube feeding will eat or drink without the peer pressure from inside the cellblock.” “This is a lingering problem that is not going to get better,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to fester.”
Medical ethicists and the Pentagon also clashed during the Bush administration over hunger strikes at Guantánamo.
The current protest began in February and escalated after a raid this month in which guards confined protesting detainees to their cells. The impetus for it is disputed. The prisoners, through their lawyers, cite a search for contraband on Feb. 6, during which they say Korans were handled in a way they found offensive. The military says the Koran search followed routine procedures.
But both sides agree that the root cause is frustration over the collapse of President Obama’s effort to close the prison, which drew Congressional resistance, and the fact that no prisoners have been transferred because of restrictions on where they can be sent.
Congress has restricted the repatriation to countries with troubled security conditions, helping to jam up 86 low-level detainees who were designated for potential transfer three years ago; most are Yemeni. But since 2012, lawmakers have given the Pentagon the ability to waive most of those restrictions on a case-by-case basis, and it has not done so.
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama said he “I’ve asked my team to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantánamo, everything that we can do administratively.” It was not clear whether that was a signal that the administration may be considering using the waiver power to revive the transfer of low-level detainees.
Ramzi Kassem, a City University of New York law professor who represents several detainees, said he had talked to a Yemeni client, Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, who said a guard had shot him with rubber-coated pellets at close range during the raid. Since then, Mr. Kassem was told, the prisoners have been denied soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and their legal papers.
Mr. Alwi said he had not eaten in 80 days and stopped drinking after the raid, Mr. Kassem said. He also said he was being force-fed twice a day after being tied to a restraint chair.
Mr. Kassem also quoted Mr. Alwi as saying: “I do not want to kill myself. My religion prohibits suicide. But I will not eat or drink until I die, if necessary, to protest the injustice of this place. We want to get out of this place. It is as though this government wishes to smother us in this injustice, to kill us slowly here, indirectly, without trying us or executing us.”
In his statement on Monday, Colonel House said the prisoners would not be allowed to die.
“Detainees have the right to peacefully protest, but we have the responsibility to ensure that they conduct their protest safely and humanely,” he said. “Detainees are given a choice: eat the hot meal, drink the supplement or be enteral fed.”