US President Barack Obama is to announce this week that he is reviving controversial military trials for suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, US officials said.
But Obama, who sharply criticized the use of military commissions to try extremists under former US president George W. Bush’s administration, could ask lawmakers to expand legal protections for detainees, the officials said on Tuesday, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Obama was scheduled to meet in the Oval Office yesterday with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the panel, in addition to congressional leadership.
The president could push Congress, which created the military commissions in 2006, to curb the use of hearsay evidence, ban coerced testimony and allow suspects to choose their defense counsel, one source said.
The move would affect, among others, five detainees charged with having played key roles in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, including the plot’s self-proclaimed mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Republicans have fiercely assailed Obama’s order to close the detention facility at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by late January next year and Democrats have rejected a White House funding request to shutter the prison.
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