MIAMI -- The looming presidency of Donald Trump has created a deep sense of uncertainty for inmates at Guantanamo on the 15th anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Nineteen of the remaining 55 prisoners are cleared for release and could be freed in the final days of Barack Obama's presidency, part of an effort to shrink the prison, since the administration couldn't close it on his watch.
But those left behind will face the future under Trump, who has said he wants to keep Guantanamo open and recently called on Obama to halt releases.
"There is a great deal of anxiety and fear," said Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York organization that represents five prisoners.
That backdrop has given a feeling of urgency to anti-Guantanamo demonstrations scheduled for Wednesday's anniversary in London, Los Angeles and Washington, featuring activists in the orange prison jumpsuits that came to symbolize the detention center though now they are typically worn only by a handful of detainees who have violated detention center rules and are on "disciplinary status."
In Washington, human-rights groups, including Amnesty International USA, plan to rally at the Supreme Court and then march to the Senate as they demand Obama use his executive powers to override congressional restrictions on moving detainees to the U.S. and close the detention center before Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, an unlikely prospect given such steps would face legal challenges and could be reversed once Trump takes office.
"We want to see everyone in Guantanamo charged and fairly tried or released," said Elizabeth Beavers, senior campaigner with Amnesty. "That's what we see as the only lawful disposition."
The U.S. began using its military base on southeast Cuba's isolated, rocky coast to hold prisoners captured during the Afghanistan invasion, delivering the first planeload on Jan. 11, 2002, and reaching a peak head count 18 months later of nearly 680. There were 242 prisoners left when Obama took office in 2009, pledging to close what became a source of international criticism over the mistreatment of detainees and the notion of holding people indefinitely, most without charge.
Obama couldn't close Guantanamo because of American opposition to holding any of the men in the United States. That ultimately became a ban on transferring them to U.S. soil for any reason, including trial, making the failure to close the detention center part of his legacy.
Trump said during the campaign that he not only wants to keep Guantanamo open but also "load it up with some bad dudes." He weighed in on Twitter on Jan. 3, saying: "There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield."
Two days later, the Pentagon announced four men held for more than 14 years without charge had been released and transferred to Saudi Arabia for resettlement. White House spokesman Josh Earnest rejected the president-elect's call for a halt to releases and said more would follow in the coming days.
The 55 remaining prisoners include 10 who are in some stage of the military commissions, a hybrid of civilian and military court set up to prosecute men at Guantanamo for war crimes. One prisoner, an aide to Osama bin Laden, was convicted and is serving a life sentence; two are awaiting sentences as part of plea deals; and the other seven are in the pretrial stage, including five men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
With the 19 cleared to go, that leaves 26 being held under international laws of war that the U.S. government says allow it to detain men indefinitely if they pose a threat to the country or its allies.
A Section on 01/12/2017