US may reduce prisoners at Guantanamo, transfer them to overseas jails

The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the US State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at...

The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the US State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials.

The transfers would be similar to the renditions, or transfers of captives to other countries, carried out by the CIA, but they are subject to stricter approval within the government, and face potential opposition from the CIA as well as the State and Justice Departments, the officials said.

Administration officials say those agencies have resisted some previous handovers, out of concern that transferring the prisoners to foreign governments could harm American security or subject the prisoners to mistreatment. A Feb. 5 memorandum from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls for broader interagency support for the plan, starting with efforts to work out a significant transfer of prisoners to Afghanistan, the officials said. The proposal is part of a Pentagon effort to cut a population at Guantanamo that stands at about 540 prisoners by releasing some detainees outright and by transferring others for continued detention elsewhere.

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The proposal comes as the Bush administration reviews the future of the naval base at Guantanamo as a detention center, after court decisions and shifts in public opinion have raised legal and political questions about the use of the facility.

The White House first embraced using Guantanamo as a holding place for terrorism suspects taken in Afghanistan, in part because the base was seen as beyond the jurisdiction of US law. —NYT