ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
As we heard from Don Gonyea, President Obama has requested that all pending military hearings at Guantanamo be suspended for 120 days. Mr. Obama wants a complete review of the military commissions there. They were setup by the Bush administration to try detainees. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the president's order is viewed as a first step towards closing Guantanamo.
JACKIE NORTHAM: Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama pledged to close the detention camp and signaled he was not happy with the commissions.
MATTHEW WAXMAN: I think, clearly, the new administration's legal review of military commissions began long before yesterday's inauguration.
NORTHAM: Matthew Waxman is a law professor at Columbia Law School and is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. Waxman says it's important that Mr. Obama made the decision to suspend the commissions quickly.
WAXMAN: Because the longer procedures go on there, and there are some ongoing proceedings up until today that were occurring, the longer those went on, the more difficult it would be for the new president to later pull them back.
NORTHAM: Mr. Obama's decision effectively brings all 21 pending cases at Guantanamo to a halt, at least until May 20th, while the new administration studies the process. Eugene Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says it's unlikely the commissions will be reconstituted.
EUGENE FIDELL: Obviously, the military commissions have been severely discredited everywhere - in our legal system, in the court of public of opinion and around the world. So, I find it hard to imagine that the Obama administration would exert itself to preserve their viability.
NORTHAM: According to news agencies, the administration today circulated a draft executive order that would close Guantanamo within a year. The camp currently holds roughly 245 detainees. People involved with the Obama transition team say the order would also include repatriating some of the detainees and transferring others into the U.S. Ireland and Switzerland also signaled today that they may be willing to take some of the prisoners. Geneve Mantri with Amnesty International says these moves by the Obama administration are positive steps.
GENEVE MANTRI: What we're really looking forward to see is what the administration puts in its place - what human rights safeguards it has, whether it has the safeguards that we would like to see in any legal system, and all the things that most people have criticized this process is lacking.
NORTHAM: The Obama administration will have to decide what legal system should be used to prosecute the detainees and where they will be detained, says Fidell.
FIDELL: The Bush administration left the Obama administration with a mare's nest of legal and practical problems. And it's going to take some time and the best minds that the legal profession has to sort those problems out.
NORTHAM: The new administration will also have to decide what to do with detainees for whom there is not enough evidence to try them, but the U.S. intelligence agencies say are too dangerous to release. Former detainee affairs official Waxman says, President Obama will have to strike the right balance.
WAXMAN: In trying to navigate these policy dilemmas, the new president needs to balance on the one hand security, with on the other hand, not just civil liberties, but also legitimacy.
NORTHAM: Waxman says it's more important now to move competently rather than quickly in deciding what to do with Guantanamo. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.