Guantanamo prisoners won’t be moved to US: White House

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prisoners from Guantanamo Bay will
not be moved to U.S. soil or tried in civilian courts and are
in a “holding pattern” after a Supreme Court ruling against a
military tribunal system, the White House said on Monday.

The Bush administration is trying to determine how to
proceed after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the tribunal
system it set up to try the terrorism suspects was illegal.

Most of the inmates have been held for more than four years
without charges at the detention facility built in Cuba after
the September 11 attacks.

Bush has said the high court’s silence on the use of
Guantanamo as a prison signaled acceptance of his decision to
hold prisoners at that facility.

Criticism of the treatment of detainees has led to
international calls to close Guantanamo, where three prisoners
committed suicide on June 10. The White House says Guantanamo
cannot be closed until its prisoners are either repatriated or
tried.

“We are not going to move them into places on American soil
and to the civil justice system,” White House spokesman Tony
Snow said.

“There are no plans at this point to move them into another
facility except to the extent to which we are able to
repatriate those who might, in fact, be tried and cared for
elsewhere,” he said.

The White House has interpreted the high-court ruling to
mean that it must go to Congress to authorize a system for
trying the prisoners. Congress planned to hold hearings this
week.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said he was consulting
with the White House and planned to reach out to Democrats to
craft legislation that likely will be on the floor in
September.

“This does give us an opportunity to update our laws to
respond to new realities of a post 9/11 world,” the Tennessee
Republican told reporters.

Frist said he expected Congress would address Geneva
Convention issues on prisoners’ rights as it worked on
legislation, “and I think that is going to take a lot of
debate.”

Snow said the prisoners were in “a holding pattern to the
extent that those who are not being repatriated are going to be
staying there.”

The White House argues that the terrorism suspects held at
Guantanamo Bay are different from prisoners taken in a war
between armies of two countries and thus need to be handled
differently.

“How do you bring those properly to justice?” Snow asked.
“In some cases, it means repatriating and in some cases it’s
going to mean finding a proper way, acceptable to the Supreme
Court, to conduct trials.

“I think there’s a lot of head-scratching going on,” he
said. “And people really are trying to figure out what exactly
does the Supreme Court opinion imply about the way in which we
can proceed forward.”