A White House PushIn January, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing Mr. Mattis to recommend within 90 days a policy about how to handle future detainees, including whether or when to take them to Guantánamo. Announcing that order in his State of the Union address, Mr. Trump also ad-libbed a line that “in many cases,” future detainees will be sent to the prison. But many national security professionals see taking new detainees to Guantánamo as unattractive for several reasons. Taking Islamic State detainees to Guantánamo would give a court an opportunity to rule that the larger conflict in Iraq and Syria is illegal. Mr. Kassem also asked a judge last month to order an independent psychological examination of another one of his clients, Mohammed al-Qahtani.

Source: New York Times May 02, 2018 20:33 UTC