MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Eric Holder also answered questions today about the fate of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. President-elect Barack Obama says shuttering the facility is one of his priorities and today Holder said some of the detainees could be charged and jailed in the United States.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This week, we have been exploring the options for closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Yesterday we heard from John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He told us that bringing Guantanamo detainees to justice in criminal court would be difficult.
BLOCK: The problem about trying to try these individuals or future individuals captured outside the United States in federal court is that, with respect to the people at Guantanamo, many of them really were outside the jurisdiction of our federal laws to begin with, that the laws on the books on 9/11 didn't even cover their activities outside the United States.
NORRIS: Today, we hear from Sarah Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In September she wrote a report called "Closing Guantanamo: From Bumper Sticker to Blueprint." It advocates prosecuting suspected terrorists in U.S. courts. Mendelson has since passed her recommendations on to the Obama transition team and she says the case of each detainee needs to be carefully examined.
BLOCK: We're hoping that a panel will review all the files and they will sort the files of those detained into two categories, one to be released which involves a lot of diplomacy and another to be brought to prosecution to the U.S. criminal justice system. Now there is tainted evidence for some of these people or let's say that it's not evidence, there is information that has been derived through torture that can't be used in the U.S. criminal justice system. So in some cases you'll probably going to need to have teams of prosecutors and FBI agents gathering new evidence in order to be able to put together an indictment and bring people to justice.
NORRIS: Now, I want to make sure that I get this is right. The current administration uses a military tribunal court so you're talking about a big difference there, the rules of evidence are different, the - it's not an easy transition that you're talking about.
BLOCK: Well, so the Bush administration put together the military commissions and since 2001, they've had 3 convictions. In the U.S. criminal justice system since 2001 there have been 145 convictions of international terrorist cases. So, on balance I think it's safe to say the U.S. criminal justice system has a much better record. Plus, in the military commission system, it has repeatedly come under tremendous question, pressure, it seems illegitimate, cases go up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court strikes them down. Overall our sense is that the U.S. criminal justice system, with all its flaws, is a better, more reliable and more valued way in which to deal with this situation.
NORRIS: Where will the U.S. house detainees who are awaiting trial? The wheels of justice move very slowly and so it's possible that Guantanamo will be closed, these detainees will be moved someplace else. Where will they be housed while they wait for their trials?
BLOCK: Well, just like any criminal that is before the criminal justice system, they'll be held in pre-trial detention facilities associated with whatever court they're going through. We know that there are, you know, 145 convictions that have happened and that there were facilities that held very dangerous people.
NORRIS: Is that something that's widely known or understood, though, that these men who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay will probably be held, in some cases, for quite long periods of time in facilities on U.S. soil?
BLOCK: Well, the Obama transition team has not been explicit with what their plans are, but I think it's also that the American population is not terribly aware that there have been all these other cases that have gone before the U.S. courts and that people have been put away. And if you contrast that with the kind of attention, I mean the white hot lightning that Guantanamo has received - the kind of recruitment tool that it has become, the way it has delegitimized American authority, I think you can see that putting them through the U.S. criminal justice system has a way of washing away the armor and the martyrdom and making them into criminals.
NORRIS: Sarah Mendelson, thanks so much for coming in.
BLOCK: Thank you.
NORRIS: Sarah Mendelson is the director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her study is called "Closing Guantanamo from Bumper Sticker to Blueprint," and you can hear our previous conversations about closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay at npr.org.