Closing Guantanamo may not happen until 2011 -- at the earliest. There's no money to buy Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, and funding possibilities are a long-shot and won't come up for months.

Even once the money is obtained, it will take another 8 to 10 months to turn it into a Supermax, which is a requirement before any transfers take place.

It's obvious Republicans oppose the plan, but some Democrats who support closing Gitmo are uncomfortable with the idea that Obama may hold people at Thomson indefinitely without charges.

The answer: Send them all home or to third countries, except for those against whom criminal charges are filed. Trial here or release. If the Administration only plans to charge 10 to 20 detainees, Thomson is an extravagance. The Southern District and Eastern Districts of New York are up to the task of prosecuting terror cases, as are numerous other districts (including Colorado, where Supermax is located.) Then we'd save a lot of money, Gitmo could be closed soon and there would be no indefinite detention without charges down the pike.

In addition to the six detainees who arrived back in their home country of Yemen yesterday, six others were sent to Afhanistan and the Somali region:

Those released are:

* Afghans Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim and Mohammed Hashim.
* Somali detainees Mohammed Soliman Barre and Ismael Arale.
* Yemenis Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami and Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf.

A Tunisian detainee, Moez Ben Abdelkader Fezzani, also known as Abou Nassim, was sent to Italy where he will be tried on terror charges for recruiting Afghan fighters.

198 detainees remain. About 100 will be sent to Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, some of whom will be tried by military commission. [More...]

A logjam of sorts has broken, and six Yemenis and four Afghans will be released from Guantanamo and sent home or to other countries within the next several days.

There are 97 Yemenis at Gitmo, comprising 46% of the remaining 210 detainees, 34 of whom have been ordered released. Andy Worthington writes about their dilemma today at Huffpo.

The New York Times takes President Obama and Congress to task for refusing funding to close Gitmo. [More...]

President Obama will announce today that the Guantanamo detainees will be moved to Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois. (Background here.)

That's a good thing. As the Constitution Project reminds us though, the move must not be used as an excuse for indefinite definitions without charges.

“There is broad bipartisan support for the use of federal prisons to hold Guantanamo detainees who are facing charges or have been convicted in federal court,” said Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project. “Former members of Congress and U.S. Attorneys from Illinois, a former federal judge and influential conservatives all agree that U.S. prisons have the proven track record to successfully hold these men and protect the surrounding communities.

But that support quickly evaporates if the administration’s plan is to hold suspected terrorists under a ‘prolonged detention’ policy that runs counter to our most basic constitutional principles.”

Here is a bi-partisan declaration supporting the trial of Gitmo detainees in federal court and opposing indefinite detention without charges. [Update below..]

Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith were released from Guantanamo in 2004. They sued for torture and religious discrimination. Their case was dismissed. Today, the Supreme Court denied cert.

The Obama administration opposed high court review of the case, adhering to its practice of defending Bush administration officials against allegations from one-time suspected terrorists or Taliban allies.

The defendants in the case included top Bush military officials such as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and retired Gen. Richard Myers, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The D.C. Court of Appeals decision, which will now stand, is here. [More...]

Conservative Andrew Breitbart has launched a series of new sites called Big Government. Today, the site published this leaked memo which suggests that President Obama is going to order the detainees at Guantanamo to be moved to the Thomson Correctional Facility in Illinois.

Key portions are below:

Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Policy & Research has released a new report on the Guantanamo suicides. You can read the full report, Death in Camp Delta, here (pdf). From the press release:

[T]his report highlights the derelictions of duty by officials of multiple defense and intelligence agencies who allowed three detainees to die and elected not to conduct a proper investigation into the cause of the deaths.

[More...]

The New York Times reports on two "black jails" still being operated by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. It has interviewed several released detainees whose accounts are similar. They had no access to the Red Cross. One is a special unit at Bagram:

The site consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each lighted by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day, where detainees said that their only contact with another human being was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.

The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. ...While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, that order did not apply to this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces.

The other is at Balad Air Base in Iraq. An Obama Adminisration official says Obama's orders to close the black hole sites applied to those run by the CIA, not military Special Operations forces, and there are no plans to close these jails.

Faghoul Abdelli and Mohamed Terari spent six years at Guantanamo, were ordered released in 2006 and returned to Algeria in 2008.

They were charged with crimes in Algeria and acquitted this week. More background here and here.

They aren't the first detainees sent home to Algeria and charged with crimes. Amnesty International has this report on what happens to them once returned to Algeria. Here's another report.

On Friday, Judge Gladys Kessler ordered Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed to be released. Not surprisingly, he doesn't want to return to Algeria. Current results of Guantanamo habeas challenges: Federal courts have ordered 31 detainees released and upheld detention for 8.

Time Magazine reports on The Fall of Greg Craig:

Obama quietly killed the Gitmo plan in the second week of May; Craig never got a chance to argue the case to the President. "It was a political decision, to put it bluntly," says an aide.

...The White House realized it had to start over on a signature issue....First to go was the release of the pictures of detainee abuse. Days later, Obama sided against Craig again, ending the suspension of Bush's extrajudicial military commissions. The following week, Obama pre-empted an ongoing debate among his national-security team and embraced one of the most controversial of Bush's positions: the holding of detainees without charges or trial, something he had promised during the campaign to reject.

[More...]

President Obama made it official today. His administration will not close Guantanamo by the one year deadline in January.

Part of that is due to the inability to find countries willing to take the detainees. And while Attorney General Eric Holder was strong in his commitment today to U.S. federal criminal trials for some detainees, it's still troubling that he continues to suggest the Obama Administration may continue to hold some detainees indefinitely without charges or trial.

If the administration has evidence against these detainees, it should prosecute them in federal court. If not, it should repatriate them or relocate them to safe havens."

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is in favor of moving Guantanamo detainees to the almost empty Thomson Correctional Center, 150 miles from Chicago. (Background here.) So are local residents. It would be an economic boom to the area -- up to $1 billion over four years.

Who objects? Republicans.

House Republican Aaron Schock of Peoria plans to introduce a measure aimed at prohibiting the use of federal dollars to move the detainees to Thomson...The spokesman for Schock said House Republicans Tim Johnson, John Shimkus and Peter Roskam, all from Illinois, have agreed to sign on to the measure and efforts were ongoing to bring all seven GOP House members from Illinois on board.

If the deal goes through, it will be at least as secure as Supermax, and detainees would not be allowed to have visitors (other than legal counsel.)