President Barack Obama is due to announce this week that he is reviving controversial military trials for suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, US officials said.
But Obama, who sharply criticized the use of military commissions to try extremists under his predecessor George W. Bush, may ask lawmakers to expand legal protections for detainees, the officials said Tuesday, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Obama is scheduled to meet in the Oval Office Wednesday with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the panel, in addition to congressional leadership.
The president could push Congress, which created the military commissions in 2006, to curb the use of hearsay evidence, ban coerced testimony and allow suspects to choose their defense counsel, one source said.
The move would affect, among others, five detainees charged with having played key roles in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, including the plot”s self-proclaimed mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Obama”s decision would come as Republicans have fiercely assailed his order to close the detention facility at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by late January next year, and Democrats have rejected a White House funding request to shutter the prison.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, said trials by military commissions would only be acceptable under revised rules expanding the legal protections for defendants and that Obama may act quickly.
