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 |  Subject: Obama’s Stinking Legacy: Leaving Indefinite Military Detention Regime Intact  Tue Dec 20, 2016 10:00 pm | |
| President Barack Obama’s administration will come to an end next month, but the administration will pass on a legal regime that enables President-elect Donald Trump to indefinitely hold alleged terrorism suspects in military detention away from any battlefield.
The administration embraced the concept of “preventive detention,” and in 2012, the authority for indefinite military detention without charge or trial was codified in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Obama’s administration also designated a class of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military prison as individuals, who were too dangerous to release even though the government lacks evidence to charge them with a crime. Plus, Guantanamo prison remains open, despite the fact that the administration released dozens of prisoners over the past seven years.
On December 5, a report [PDF] was released summarizing the “legal and policy frameworks” the administration relied upon in pursuing war. The second half of the report particularly focuses on “targeting efforts,” which include policies involving the capture and detention of terrorism suspects.
Under the guise of transparency, the Obama administration’s report presents policies as constrained and legal in order to guard against concerns that the administration will bear some responsibility when Trump abuses this executive power. However, the administration had an opportunity to completely do away with an indefinite detention regime setup by President George W. Bush’s administration, and instead, the Obama administration incorporated the regime into its counterterrorism policy.
Officials further entrenched indefinite detention in government. They claimed the power to engage in targeted assassinations against alleged terrorism suspects placed on kill lists. They moved away from capturing and torturing detainees in secret CIA prisons and military detention facilities and instead employed lethal force to “counter terrorism.”
Killing Alleged Terrorism Suspects Who Could Have Been Captured
The “legal and policy frameworks” report asserts the administration followed “presidential policy guidelines” that prioritize “capture operations over lethal action.” Drone or airstrikes are to be taken to “prevent terrorist attacks against U.S. persons only when capture of an individual is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively.” It later states “lethal force” is no substitute for “prosecuting a terrorist suspect in a civilian court or a military commission.”
Yet, according to the Office of Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) [PDF], U.S. counterterrorism strikes outside areas, where the U.S. has declared war, killed 2372-2581 “combatants” from January 20, 2009, to December 31, 2015. That means in at least 2372 cases—over the past six to seven years—the Obama administration could not “feasibly capture” alleged terrorism suspects.
On average, the Obama administration killed over 300 alleged terrorism suspects each year because officials could not “feasibly capture” them.
There apparently is no widely cited figure for how many terrorism suspects were captured by the Obama administration, but by and large, the Obama administration rarely found it “feasible” to capture terrorism suspects.
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report [PDF] from 2013 highlighted multiple cases where alleged al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leaders, who could have been captured, were killed. In Wessab on April 17, 2013, suspected local AQAP leader, Hamid al Radmi, was killed by two drones that launched “at least three Hellfire missiles” at a car. His driver and two bodyguards were killed. Radmi regularly met with security and political officials.
Lt. Col. Adnan al Qadhi, who was an “officer in an elite Yemeni army unit” and a suspected local AQAP leader, was killed in Beit al Ahmar along with a bodyguard on November 7, 2012. “In April 2013, AQAP issued a video in which an 8 year-old boy, held with his father, a soldier, ‘confessed’ that military officers instructed him to plant a tracking device on al Qadhi,” according to the report.
As noted in “The Drone Papers” series published by The Intercept, Bilal el Berjawi was a British citizen stripped of his citizenship. British and U.S. intelligence tracked Berjawi with surveillance for “several years as he traveled back and forth between the U.K. and East Africa.” However, Berjawi was not captured. U.S. forces launched a drone strike and assassinated him in Somalia in 2012.
Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, insisted the U.S. government could have had the Yemeni government capture his son after he was killed in a drone strike in September 2011. Anwar was previously detained by Yemeni authorities.
In rare instances where the Obama administration chose to pursue capture over a kill operation, FBI agents and other forces involved often violated a country’s sovereignty. For example, the capture of Benghazi suspect Abu Khattala in Libya was apparently carried out under “law enforcement authority.” Libya did not consent to the operation. To the extent that the administration emphasizes the lawfulness of its actions, it was likely a violation of international law.
https://shadowproof.com/2016/12/20/obamas-legacy-leaving-regime-indefinite-military-detention-intact/
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