Inside Biden’s effort to shut down Guantanamo Bay
by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter |
January 16, 2023 05:00 AM
Joe Biden vowed to shut down the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay when he was running for president.
Two years into his presidency, however, the facility is still open, and even as he tries to shutter it, news of his administration's push for plea deals with the 9/11 plotters suggest the prison could be here to stay and demonstrate the fraught political minefield he is attempting to walk across.
Pretrial hearings for the yet-to-start trial have been repeatedly canceled as the Biden administration seeks to strike a deal with the al Qaeda members. Negotiations between the prosecutors and defense attorneys, which began in March 2022, could reportedly result in plea deals in which capital punishment would not be a possible punishment for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants.
Top Republicans have criticized any deal that would take the death penalty off the table.
Biden has continued his efforts to shut the prison down. But even if plea deals were secured with Mohammed and his co-conspirators, Republicans would seek to block those men from ever leaving the facility.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/inside-biden-complicated-effort-shut-down-prison-gitmo
