HANAHAN – Two members of the South Carolina Congress have introduced legislation to prevent terrorist detainees from being sent to the continent of the United States if the Guantánamo prison, Cuba, is closed.
The bill aims to eliminate Brig Naval Consolidated Brig at Joint Base Charleston from becoming a place of detention.
The move came after the Biden administration said earlier this month that it will seek to close the prison after a review process, resuming a project begun under the Obama administration.
“Any plan to transfer these prisoners to the United States, such as the Obama-era proposal to transfer prisoners to Brig Charleston, is unacceptable,” said US MP Nancy Mace, R-Charleston. “These terrorists are the worst of the worst and should not be kept on American soil.”
The other co-sponsor listed is Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-Laurens.
The Navy brig has long been mentioned as a possible place of detention for detainees if Gitmo closes. It has housed other figures captured in the war on terrorism, but that was many years ago.
The issue of detainees came up recently when White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was the Biden administration’s “intention” to close the detention center, something President Barack Obama promised to do within a year and shortly after taking office the position in January 2009.
He encountered strong political resistance.
Psaki did not give a deadline, telling reporters that the formal review would be “robust” and would require the participation of officials from the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and other bodies that have not yet been appointed to the new administration.
The United States opened the detention center in January 2002 to keep people suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It has become a source of international criticism about the mistreatment of prisoners and the prolonged imprisonment of people without charge.
There are about 40 detainees now in prison in Cuba. At its peak in 2003, the Navy base detention center on the southeastern tip of Cuba held about 680 prisoners.
The announcement of a closure plan was not unexpected. Biden said as a candidate he supported the closure of the detention center.
The Navy originally built the brig, located at the southern end of the Naval Weapons Station, as a medium security containment place for military prisoners serving sentences of 10 years or less. After 9/11, his mission expanded when terrorist detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen, was handed over there in 2002. He had been captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan.
Two other prominent detainees soon followed, including Jose Padilla and Ali Saleh al-Marri, a Qatari arrested in Illinois as a suspected al Qaeda associate.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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