It's Gitmo up north

It's Gitmo up north

Moving the remaining detainees from Guantánamo to an empty prison in Illinois won't solve President Obama's problems

Once again, President Obama has managed to anger both the right and the left. This time, it's not his contentious plans to overhaul the US healthcare system, a new costly economic stimulus or the deployment of yet more troops to Afghanistan that has Washington up in arms. This time it is his decision to send some 100 Guantánamo detainees to an empty prison in his home state of Illinois that has unleashed a political firestorm.

In bringing dozens of terror suspects from Guantánamo Bay – that US naval base in Cuba now infamous around the world – to a town 150 miles west of Chicago, Obama has made a provisional solution become a permanent one.

Liberals and rights groups denounced the news, blasting the president for creating "Gitmo North," a place where prisoners could still, in some cases, be held indefinitely without charge or trial. That's according to war powers George Bush and now Obama claim Congress granted the commander in chief after the September 11 attacks, for detainees considered ineligible for prosecution or too dangerous to release. Some could still be tried using the planned military commissions first crafted under Bush – and while Obama has revised the commissions, they still allow coerced and hearsay evidence, and fail to amount to the fair trial proceedings of courts martial and US federal courts.

"The only thing that President Obama is doing with this announcement is changing the zip code of Guantánamo," said Amnesty International's US policy director, Tom Parker. Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents some of Guantánamo prisoners, warned: "The proceedings will achieve neither reliable justice nor a restoration of America's credibility around the world."