Ex-Gitmo envoy: ‘Path to closing’ is clear

President Obama’s former envoy on Guantanamo Bay called Tuesday for the administration to accelerate the transfers of detainees approved for release.

“While there have been zigs and zags, we have made great progress,” Cliff Sloan, who stepped down Dec. 31, writes in The New York Times.

{mosads}”The path to closing Guantanamo during the Obama administration is clear, but it will take intense and sustained action to finish the job,” he said.

The Obama administration has released more detainees after the 2014 election than in the three previous years combined.

“Over the past 18 months, we moved 39 people out of there, and more transfers are coming,” Sloan writes.

The president faces fierce opposition from Democrats and Republicans in Congress over closing the facility, and angered lawmakers by flouting a legal requirement to inform them 30 days in advance of a swap of five detainees in exchange for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

At the same time, Congress has dropped a ban from its 2015 defense authorization bill preventing transfers to Yemen, according to Just Security, a blog on legal affairs. Of the 59 detainees cleared for release, 52 are from Yemen.

An additional 10 detainees are undergoing prosecution at Guantanamo, 23 are designated for prosecution, and 29 either await review for transfer or are ineligible for transfer.

The administration is hoping to move those remaining 68 to the U.S. for continued detention or prosecution.

“The absolute and irrational ban on transfers to the United States for any purpose, including detention and prosecution, must be changed as the population is reduced to a small core of detainees who cannot safely be transferred overseas,” Sloan said.

Sloan argued that Guantanamo remains a recruitment and propaganda tool for terrorists, and is too expensive to maintain, at around “$3 million per detainee last year.”

He also argued that the 59 cleared for transfer are not dangerous, and that the oft-cited 30 percent rate of detainees returning to the battlefield include both confirmed and “suspected” cases.

He said those who opposed closing the facility are constrained by an “overabundance of caution,” or are hampered by “an outdated view of the risk posed” by many of the remaining detainees.