Orders to close Guantanamo facility drafted, officials say
Story Highlights
NEW: Order expected to call for closing facility within a year, review of all cases
Earlier, military judge granted Obama's request to stay cases for 120 days
Among cases stayed is that of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (CNN) -- The Obama administration is drafting executive orders calling for the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, two administration officials said.
The revelation coincided with a judge's decision on Wednesday to halt the September 11 terrorism cases at the behest of President Obama. On Tuesday, he directed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ask prosecutors to seek stays for 120 days so terrorism cases at the facility can be reviewed, according to a military official close to the proceedings.
The officials say the White House is expected to call for:
• Closing the detention facility within a year.
• A systematic review of detention policies and procedures and a review of all individual cases.
• A policy requiring the Army field manual for interrogations to apply to all people in U.S. custody. This is aimed at closing any potential loophole that might allow the CIA to engage in what many say are coercive interrogations.
It was not clear who would conduct the review, although the White House, the Defense Department and the Justice Department are expected to be deeply involved, the officials said. Watch experts debate the Gitmo dilemma »
The Pentagon has been reviewing the possibility of sending detainees who are not released or sent back to their home countries to Camp Pendleton in California; the Navy brig at Charleston, South Carolina; and Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
There has been significant opposition from members of Congress in these states to such a plan.
Obama, who assumed office at noon Tuesday, appeared to be moving quickly on his campaign promise to close the controversial facility.
There are five defendants in the September 11 terrorist attacks case, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed organizer of the operation. The other defendants are Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Aziz Abdul Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.
A different judge granted a prosecution request for a continuance in the case of another detainee at Guantanamo, an official said.
That case involves Omar Khadr, a Canadian charged with the murder of Sgt. Christopher Speer in Afghanistan and providing material support for terrorism. Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured in July 2002. His trial was set to begin next week. Watch what may happen to Gitmo's inmates »
"The defense did not oppose the prosecution's request for a continuance, so Presiding Judge Pat Parrish has granted the motion for a 120-day continuance," said Joe DellaVedova, a military commissions spokesman.
Prosecutors in all ongoing cases were expected to file requests for stays Wednesday, a military official said.
The camp holds about 245 detainees. Twenty-one of them have been charged with crimes, and 60 others have been cleared for release, but no country has agreed to take them.
Josh Colangelo, an attorney who represents some detainees through the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, said the 120-day stay would affect only people charged with crimes.
"For the majority of detainees who never have been and never will be charged with crimes, this doesn't have any particular meaning," Colangelo said.
"Taking a step back, though, it shows that the Obama administration knows what virtually the rest of the world has known for quite a long time, which is that these military commissions are unfairly constituted and beyond that are perceived as being show trials by most of the world."
Among the remaining detainees, it should be determined who should be prosecuted and who should be released, said Sarah Mendelson, director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
For some, FBI agents and prosecutors will need to build cases with untainted evidence, not information gained from torture, according to a column Mendelson co-wrote with a former FBI special agent for The Washington Post about two months ago. Watch former detainee describe conditions at Guantanamo Bay »
Gabor Rona, an observer for Human Rights Watch, also called the order "a first step."
"The very fact that it's one of his first acts reflects a sense of urgency that the U.S. cannot afford one more day of counterproductive and illegal proceedings in the fight against terrorism," said Rona, who was in Cuba to watch the proceedings scheduled this week.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, has introduced legislation that would close the Guantanamo detention facility. It calls for detainees' cases to be disposed of in the following ways: charge the detainees with crimes and try them in the United States through the federal courts or military justice system, transfer them to an international tribunal, send them to their homeland or to the custody of another country, hold them as prisoners of war or release them.
Her legislation, co-sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, would also reform detention and interrogation practices, ending the "indefinite and secret detention and coercive interrogations that have been used by the CIA and at Guantanamo since 2002."
CNN's Susan Candiotti and Laurie Ure contributed to this report.
