2 Panels to Miss Deadline on Detainees
WASHINGTON — An Obama administration panel will miss a Tuesday deadline to report on its efforts to meet President Obama's directive to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by January, administration officials said on Monday.
The officials said that a task force reviewing detention policy would need another six months to complete its report and a second group, reviewing interrogation policy, would need two more months to finish its report to Mr. Obama.
Senior administration officials said at a briefing for reporters that the missed deadlines did not mean the administration was bogged down in its effort to close the prison, which now holds 229 men suspected of terrorism.
Still, the missed deadlines seemed to underscore the gravity and complexity of the legal, political and policy problems confronting the administration as it tries to put into place new interrogation rules and figure out what to do with the detainees.
The Tuesday deadline was set by executive orders signed by Mr. Obama shortly after taking office that gave the two panels six months to report on their progress. The administration has started work on important parts of the new system. The interrogation committee is thought to be nearing completion of its work since Mr. Obama has largely abandoned the use of harsh techniques allowed by the administration of President George W. Bush.
But some elements of Mr. Obama's plan are unresolved, including whether the administration will adopt hotly debated steps like indefinite detention for some high-risk detainees. These would be a small category of detainees who the government determines are a significant security threat but cannot be tried because of the lack of usable evidence.
Administration officials said on Monday that there was no decision on such a step but that if it were proposed, it would include Congressional and judicial review as well as periodic review by federal authorities.
The administration is also backing a newly designed military commission model to try some detainees who cannot be tried in civilian criminal courts; a measure that has bipartisan support is now pending in the Senate.
At a briefing on Monday, Obama administration officials blamed the Bush administration, saying it had left them with unsolved problems.
The official, and several others, spoke at the briefing on the condition that they not be identified by name.
The Obama administration officials said they were reassessing "fundamental policy issues," and had concluded that some of those policies required "fundamental change."
The goal, one senior administration official said, is to build a "durable and effective" framework for dealing with the detainees at Guantánamo and future detainees captured in the fight against terrorists. The officials said they were on track to review the current detainees' cases to determine who could be transferred overseas and who could be tried in military or civilian courts in the United States.
In an interim report released Monday by the detention policy committee, officials described for the first time how they would decide whether to send detainees to a military or civilian court.
The government will attempt to try detainees in civilian courts if possible, but some of the factors that could affect the decision include "the nature of the offenses to be charged," the seriousness of the conduct underlying the offense, the identity of victims and the location in which the offense occurred.
More than 50 detainees have been approved for transfer overseas, the officials said, expressing optimism about the process. But some countries have been reluctant to accept detainees, and the task is complicated by requirements that foreign governments provide assurances that they be treated humanely and subject to security procedures.
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Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
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