Obama’s proposal to shut Guantanamo opposed

Lynch, a former federal prosecutor who Obama appointed to head the Justice Department two years ago, is opposing a White House backed proposal that would allow Guantanamo Bay prisoners to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court by video-conference, the officials said.

Over the past three months, Lynch has twice intervened to block administration proposals on the issue, objecting that they would violate long-standing rules of criminal-justice procedure. 

In the first case, her last-minute opposition derailed a White House-initiated legislative proposal to allow video guilty pleas after nearly two months of inter-agency negotiations and law drafting. 

In the second case, Lynch blocked the administration from publicly supporting a Senate proposal to legalise video guilty pleas. 

“It’s been a fierce inter-agency tussle,” said a senior Obama administration official, who supports the proposal and asked not to be identified. White House officials confirmed Obama supports the proposal. But the president declined to overrule objections from Lynch, the administration’s top law-enforcement official. 

“There were some frustrations,” said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The top lawyer in the land has weighed in, and that was the DOJ’s purview to do that.” If enacted into law, the Obama-backed plan would allow detained terrorism suspects who plead guilty to serve their sentences in a third-country prison, without setting foot on US soil.

The plan would thus sidestep a Congressional ban on transferring detainees to the United States, which has left dozens of prisoners in long-term judicial limbo in Guantanamo, the American military enclave in Cuba. Obama has vowed to close the prison on his watch.