Trump admin pursues rethinking of national security policy
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s embrace of Guantanamo Bay as a jail for terror suspects represents a repudiation of the Obama administration’s longtime push to prosecute captured militants in the U.S. court system.
A draft order spelling out a tougher line in the fight against terror dramatically rethinks how the U.S. should detain and prosecute terrorist suspects. It would reverse Obama’s efforts to close the military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and reopen the idea of establishing CIA detention facilities outside the United States.
In its support of Guantanamo the document is likely to renew a debate, which the Obama administration considered closed, about whether military tribunals offshore or civilian trials in American courts offer a fairer and more efficient path to justice.
“To take a step backward would be both practically misguided and morally indefensible,” said Eric M. Freedman, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University and a legal consultant for Guantanamo detainees.