Sessions: Let’s welcome jihadists to Gitmo again

United States Attorney General (AG) Jeff Sessions made it clear that he supports resuming the usage of Guantánamo Bay (Gitmo) in Cuba as a military prison to detain newly captured Islamic terrorists – an idea he is looking to push on President Donald Trump.

When asked what legal advice he would give the new commander-in-chief about what to do with the Cuban facility that has imprisoned jihadists over numerous administrations, Sessions had little doubt what he would do.

“[I see] no legal problem [with adding jihadists and keeping it open] whatsoever,” the attorney general responded to the conservative radio talk show host, Hugh Hewitt.

The perfect prison

Sessions is eager to restore the island correction facility that former President Barack Obama spent years depleting its number of inmates – many of whom were notorious jihadists from well-known Islamic terrorist groups.

“There’s plenty of space,” he maintained. “We’re well-equipped for it. It’s a perfect place for it. Eventually, this will be decided by the military rather than the Justice Department, but I see no legal problem whatsoever with doing that.”

The former Alabama lawmaker is more than familiar with detention facility, indicating that Obama’s reasoning for trying the fully shut it down was flawed – at best.

“I’ve been there a number of times as a senator and it’s just a very fine place for holding these kind of dangerous criminals,” Sessions shared on the show. “We’ve spent a lot of money fixing it up, and I’m inclined to the view that it remains a perfectly acceptable place. And I think a lot of the criticisms have just been totally exaggerated.”

Doubling up on the commander-in-chief’s criticism of Obama for endeavoring to put an end to the Caribbean incarceration facility, America’s new top cop expressed his intentions of trying to persuade Trump to work toward maintaining the operations of Gitmo. In fact, the Republican AG pressed the military justice system to expedite the Gitmo hearings that are taking place.

“By now, we should have worked through all the legal complications that the Obama administration seemed to allow to linger and never get decided – so nothing ever happened,” Sessions told Hewitt on the program.

Getting Gitmo going

Sessions does not want to see America’s legal system go easy on the Islamic terrorists, which could give them shorter sentences and end up incarcerating them inside U.S. borders – where they would become a greater threat.

“So, it is time for us in the months to come to get this thing figured out and start using it [military justice system] in an effective way,” the conservative senator impressed. “In general, I don’t think we’re better off bringing these people to federal court in New York and trying them in federal court – where they get discovery rights to find out our intelligence – and get court-appointed lawyers and things of that nature.”

Working with Obama’s parole-style panel during the later part of his administration, the military justice system was seen expediting detainee reviews and court hearings in preparation of closing Gitmo – a process Trump insisted he was dead set against.

Just last month, the new commander-in-chief reportedly expressed his intentions of ordering the Pentagon to keep Gitmo as a designated detention center for newly apprehended Islamic terrorists with ties to ISIS (the Islamic State), Taliban and al-Qaeda, according to the New York Times.

This declaration is consistent with Trump’s promise that he made to supporters during his presidential campaign against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, who he portrayed as being too lenient on Islamic terrorists – following in Obama’s footsteps.

“[I’m going to load Gitmo] up with some bad dudes,” he vowed on the campaign trail.

Gitmo on the verge of closure

On many occasions before and after his inauguration, Trump has ripped the former president for severely dwindling the number of international criminals detained at the island facility. But despite his reduction in numbers, Obama fell short of fulfilling his campaign promise to close Gitmo.

“The former president blamed his inability to deliver on ‘congressional restrictions,’ explicitly saying, ‘all these rules and norms and laws’ prevented him from emptying out and ultimately closing Gitmo,” Breitbart reported. “However, Obama himself signed into law a bipartisan bill that prohibited him from carrying out his proposal to close down the facility. The law banned Obama officials from building or modifying U.S. facilities to house Guantánamo prisoners – a key move to facilitate the former president’s plan to shut Gitmo down.”

Despite his failure to shut down Guantánamo Bay completely, Obama dropped the number of inmates by more than 200 from the beginning to the end of his eight years in office – from 242 down to 41.

The former commander-in-chief has come under fire from many conservatives for putting deadly jihadists back onto the streets – as many have reportedly returned to the battlefield in the name of jihad.

“His administration liberated many jihadists who had been deemed ‘forever prisoners’ – or too dangerous to release,” Breitbart’s Edwin Mora informed. “The U.S. intelligence community has determined that some (20) of the prisoners released by Obama are confirmed (9) or suspected (11) to have re-engaged in terrorist activities.”

However, Obama’s liberal treatment of releasing militant inmates at the island facility was outdone by his predecessor.

“Nevertheless, the recidivism rate for detainees released by former President George W. Bush is higher – 113 confirmed and 75 suspected of having returned to the battlefield,” Mora pointed out. “Bush did liberate more than three times the amount of prisoners (532) released by Obama (161), which may explain the high recidivism rate. It appears that the more prisoners are released, the higher the likelihood some will return to terrorist activities.”

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