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Inmates May Get More Rights To Hasten Guantanamo Closure

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The New York Times

Published: November 4, 2007

WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials are considering granting Guantanamo detainees substantially greater rights as part of an effort to close the detention center and possibly move much of its population to the United States, according to officials involved in the discussions.

One proposal being widely discussed in the administration would overhaul the procedure for determining whether detainees are properly held by granting them legal representation at detention hearings and by giving federal judges, not military officers, the power to decide whether suspects should be held.

Although the Bush administration long has defended the legal protections afforded detainees at Guantanamo against strenuous criticism, some officials now say that moving them to U.S. soil would require giving them enhanced protections.

The Bush administration has insisted for more than five years that a central legal pillar of the war on terror is that the military alone has the power to decide which foreign terrorism suspects should be held and for how long, and backing away from that would be a sharp change of course.

Yet some officials say that enhancing detainees' rights also could help the administration strategically, by undercutting a case brought by suspects at Guantanamo that is now before the Supreme Court, which could wind up winning them even more power to challenge their detention.

Under current procedures at Guantanamo, military officers decide whether detainees are properly held as enemy combatants, and the suspects are not permitted lawyers in the detention hearings, known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

U.S. officials have said they would like to close Guantanamo. In recent interviews, officials said the discussion of detainee rights was not an acknowledgment that past policies were flawed, but rather an indication that the administration was trying to assess the legal and practical consequences of shutting the detention center and moving detainees to the United States.

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