The US Department of Defense announced on Saturday it had transferred six detainees out of Guantanamo, leaving about 245 at the offshore prison as US president-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office.
Four detainees were sent to Iraq, one to Algeria and one to Afghanistan after a series of reviews, the Department of Defense said in a statement. Obama has vowed to close the detention center in southeast Cuba and stop the military commissions.
Still, military judges rejected last-minute requests to postpone pretrial hearings scheduled to begin today for five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks and a Canadian accused of killing a US soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan.
Defense lawyers have sought to halt the cases — or at least delay them pending a review by the Obama administration.
And the chief prosecutor, Army Colonel Lawrence Morris, said the prosecution was seeking a delay for “efficiency” and legal reasons.
“We’re still in business. We’re going to court Monday,” Morris said on Saturday.
Morris said he has to be prepared to go forward because he does not know when Obama will halt the trials and order the closure of the prison.
The Pentagon said the transfer of the six prisoners “is a demonstration of the United States’ desire not to hold detainees any longer than necessary.”
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
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