Bomb plot complicates Gitmo plan
By: Josh Gerstein
December 26, 2009 07:02 PM EST
| Growing evidence that the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a commercial airliner as it landed in Detroit Friday spent time in Yemen and may have been fitted with customized, explosive-laden clothing there could complicate the U.S. government’s efforts to send home more than 80 Yemeni prisoners currently at Guantanamo Bay.
Since Yemenis represent almost half of the roughly 200 remaining prisoners at Gitmo, new hurdles to their resettlement could spell more trouble for President Barack Obama’s plan to close the island prison while transferring a limited number of detainees to a prison in the U.S. Six Yemeni nationals were returned home earlier this month, and officials hoped more transfers would follow.
The relatively weak central government has been working, with U.S. military and diplomatic support, to counter two separate insurgencies, and the nation, Osama Bin Laden’s ancestral home, has become a haven for some members of Al Qaeda. That instability has contributed to concerns within the Obama administration and from its domestic critics about returning prisoners there for repatriation.
The Nigerian man charged with the Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard Northwest Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, reportedly spent time in Yemen after graduating from a London university in 2008. According to ABC News, Abdulmutallab has told authorities that, while in Yemen, Al Qaeda operatives crafted the explosive device which was sewn into Abdulmutallab’s underwear.
“Yesterday just highlights the fact that sending this many people back—or any people back—to Yemen right now is a really bad idea,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “It’s just dumb….If you made a list of what the three dumbest countries would be to send people back to, Yemen would be on all the lists.”
“I think it’s a major mistake,” Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said about prisoner releases to Yemen. “I don’t think Guantanamo should be closed, but if we’re going to close it I don’t believe we should be sending people to Yemen where prisoners have managed to escape in the past….Obviously, if [Abdulmutallab] did get training and direction from Yemen, it just adds to what is already a dangerous situation.”
While Republicans have long been outspoken against plans to send more Guantanamo prisoners to Yemen, the Northwest Airlines incident seems to have persuaded at least one key Democrat that those plans should be reconsidered.
“In terms of sending more of them to return to Yemen, it would be a bit of a reach,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told POLITICO on Saturday. “I’d, at a minimum, say that whatever we were about to do we’d at least have to scrub it again from top to bottom.”
Thompson, who said he plans to convene hearings in January about the bombing attempt, said the reported Yemen links to the incident could even lead some members to question whether Yemenis at Guantanamo should be transferred to the new terror prison the administration wants to set up in Thomson, Ill. “It’s something that’s going to be of interest to everybody…We ought to look at everything we have underway to make sure that something hasn’t been overlooked,” the congressman said.
“I’d expect Yemen’s handling of returned Guantanamo detainees to come under intense U.S. scrutiny,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who was an assistant Defense secretary for detainee affairs under President George W. Bush. “In the past, the Yemeni government has not shown great capacity or reliability, but the U.S. hopes to build a stronger partnership and improve that record, in part because it has few other options in this important region.”
The White House had no comment on how Abdulmutallab’s history might impact future prisoner releases or official dealings with Yemen. However, U.S. officials have worked intensely in recent months to support the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and to obtain assurances that Yemenis returned home would not take part in violence.
On the same day Abdulmutallab allegedly boarded a flight in Nigeria bound for Amsterdam and then Detroit, Yemeni fighter planes attacked an alleged Al Qaeda compound in southern Yemen. According to the Yemeni government, one apparent target of the strike was Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric who reportedly had links to the U.S. Army officer who allegedly killed 13 people in a shooting spree at a Texas base last month, Maj. Malik Hasan. It is unclear whether Al-Awlaki was killed in the strike.
In September, Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, visited Yemen to press for greater action against Al Qaeda and discuss logistical issues surrounding prisoner releases. And earlier this month, Obama telephoned Saleh to praise him for recent raids against Al Qaeda and for the nation’s overall cooperation with the U.S. in counterterrorism efforts, U.S. and Yemeni officials said.
While the White House maintains that it is pressing Yemen on both the Al Qaeda and prisoner issues, Hoekstra said the issue of emptying out Guantanamo seems to have priority. “The president appears single-mindely focused on closing Guantanamo. He spends more time and energy on closing Guantanamo than on any of the other issues,” said the Michigan Republican.
One expert on Yemen said the danger it poses to the U.S. has the potential to grow, regardless of whether Guantanamo prisoners are sent there.
“While people say it’s a haven for Al Qaeda, they do not have the kind of cover they had in Afghanistan. The Yemeni military doesn’t like them,” said Charles Schmitz, a geography professor at Towson University in Maryland. “You have a government that’s kind of teetering – That doesn’t have a whole lot of legitimacy….There’s civil disobedience in the south and the Army is basically losing a war in the north. You do have places where they could set up and basically hatch their little plans.”
Hoekstra said the Pentagon has prepared a new report on recidivism among Guantanamo detainees and is keeping the report classified despite repeated Congressional requests to make it public.
While Hoekstra and King were briefed by the White House about the Detroit incident, the pair were also chafing yesterday at what they said was the Obama Administration’s tight control on information about the Detroit incident. As with the shooting at Ft. Hood in November, the White House has ordered federal agencies not to provide briefings or answer inquiries from members of Congress, leaving all such contacts to be handled by the White House.
“I don’t think I ever saw that throughout President Bush’s time in the White House. I could call directly to the director of the CIA or the [National Counterterrorism Center] and get whatever briefings I wanted,” Hoekstra said. He called the briefing limits “totally inappropriate,” but said the White House maintained the orders were needed because of the ongoing criminal investigation.
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http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...665EFC42F4E403
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