Muslim Brotherhood in U.S. Gets Millions in Grants

The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States document is here.

The House Intelligence Committee Testimony on the Muslim Brotherhood is here.

Mosque Linked To Muslim Brotherhood Has Received Millions In Federal Grants

DailyCaller: A Kansas City mosque owned by an Islamic umbrella organization with deep ties to the U.S. arm of the Muslim Brotherhood has received millions of dollars in federal grants over the past several years, according to a federal spending database.

The Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City has received $2,739,891 from the Department of Agriculture since 2010, a Daily Caller analysis has found. The money largely went to the mosque’s Crescent Clinic to provide services through the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program, known as WIC.

The most recent federal payment — in the amount of $327,436 — was handed out Oct. 1.

Property records show the mosque is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which acts as a financial holding company for Islamic organizations. It offers sharia-compliant financial products to Muslim investors, operates Islamic schools and owns more than 300 other mosques throughout the U.S.

Founded in 1973 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Muslim Students Association, NAIT’s most controversial connection is to the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror financing cases. Along with other Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), NAIT was named a co-conspirator in the federal case but was not indicted.

At the Holy Land Foundation trial, evidence was presented that ISNA diverted funds from the accounts it held with NAIT to institutions linked to Hamas and to Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader.

Federal prosecutors introduced evidence in the case that “established that ISNA and NAIT were among those organizations created by the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of checks drawn from ISNA’s account and deposited in the Holy Land Foundation’s account with NAIT were made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahadeen,” which is the original name for Hamas’ military wing.

While Hamas was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 1997 and is considered the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the larger Muslim Brotherhood is not itself designated as a terrorist group.

NAIT has other ties to the Holy Land Foundation case. Its newly-appointed executive director, Salah Obeidallah, was a founding member and former president of the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson, N.J.

In the 1990s, the imam at that mosque was Mohammad El-Mezain, a founding member of the Holy Land Foundation who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for helping fund Hamas. Obeidallah has said that he was not aware of El-Mezain’s terror funding activities.

In being owned by NAIT, the Kansas City organization is in company with numerous mosques with ties to known terrorists, terror sympathizers and fundamentalist Islamists.

Purportedly backed by money from Saudi Arabia and supporting a fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, NAIT holds the deed to the Islamic Society of Boston, which operates the mosque attended by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the so-called Boston Marathon bombers.

It also controls the Islamic Center of San Diego, which was attended by Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two al-Qaeda members who helped fly American Flight 77 into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

According to a 2002 Newsweek investigation, members of the San Diego mosque helped the two terrorists obtain housing, driver’s licences and social security numbers. They claimed not to have known about the men’s terror plans.

NAIT also owns the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Fairfax Co., Va. — a known hotbed of terrorist activity. Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki served as imam at that location in 2001 and 2002. He was killed by an American drone in Yemen in 2011.

The Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City has its own loose links to terrorist activities. The mosque made news earlier this year when it held the funeral for Nadir Soofi, one of the two jihadis who attempted to pull off a terrorist attack in Garland, Tex. Soofi, who was 34, and his accomplice, 30-year-old Elton Simpson, opened fire outside of an art exhibit featuring cartoons of Muhammad, but were killed by a security guard.

Both Soofi and Simpson attended the Islamic Community Center in Phoenix, which land deeds show is owned by NAIT.

That particular mosque posted $100,000 bond for Simpson following his 2010 arrest for lying to FBI agents about his plans to travel to Somalia to join a terrorist group. Simpson was given three years probation in that case.

The Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City has also hosted Imam Khalid Yasin, an American-born convert to Islam, who has publicly supported sharia law and claimed that homosexuals should receive the death penalty.

As a May 2010 Yahoo! message board post shows, Yasin visited the Islamic Center of Greater Kansas City and other area mosques that month to hold a series of lectures and workshops about Islam.

That was nearly two years after Yasin touted the virtues of sharia law and capital punishment in a speech at a British mosque. Full article here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Muslim Brotherhood, Cameron: No Obama: Yes

The topic of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mac-daddy umbrella jihad organization globally with a terror history, Cameron is right, Obama is wrong.

The United Kingdom has an epic Islamic issue in country and the United States is a close follow. The worst part for our homeland is the UK and Europe are part of the United States visa waiver program. Travel freely, no questions asked. We must now rely on U.S. Customs and Border Patrol assigned to the UK to work the issues.

Couple Guilty Of Plotting Major Terror Attack

‘Silent Bomber’ Mohammed Rehman and his wife were days from building a bomb that would have caused multiple casualties in London.

Mohammed Rehman court case

Couple Guilty Of Terror Attack Plot

SkyNews: Would-be suicide bomber Mohammed Rehman and his wife Sana Ahmed Khan have been found guilty of planning a major terror attack in London.

Rehman, 25, had stockpiled bombmaking materials at his Reading home and using the Twitter username ‘Silent Bomber’ he asked his followers which targets they thought suitable for a massive terror attack; Westfield shopping centre or the London Underground.

Rehman used a profile picture of Jihadi John’ Mohammed Emwazi, to post: “Westfield shopping centre or London underground? Any advice would be appreciated greatly,” accompanied by a link to an al Qaida media release about the 7/7 bombings.

The same day, he searched YouTube for ‘London bombings’ and ‘Shehzad Tanweer’ – one of the 7/7 bombers who he referred to as his “beloved predecessor”.

Prosecutors claimed Rehman proved he was “intent on martyrdom” when he also tweeted: “Now I just make explosives in preparation for kuffar lol and when I’ve made the required amount I’ll be wearing them on my chest.” More details here.

So for Prime Minister David Cameron, he has work to do starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that Barack Obama remains supportive of and quite loyal.

Statement by David Cameron on the findings of the internal review to improve the government’s understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I have today laid before both Houses the main findings of the internal review I commissioned in the last Parliament to improve the government’s understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood; establish whether the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology or activities, or those of individual members or affiliates, put at risk, damaged, or risked damaging the UK’s national interests; and where appropriate inform policy.

The review involved substantial research and wide consultation including Muslim Brotherhood representatives in the UK and overseas, and an open invitation to other interested parties to submit written contributions.

It is a complex subject: the Muslim Brotherhood comprises both a transnational network, with links in the UK, and national organisations in and outside the Islamic world. The movement is deliberately opaque, and habitually secretive.

Since the authors completed their initial research in 2014, and during the course of the government’s examination of the findings, further allegations of violence carried out by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have surfaced, which the government will continue to investigate, taking action as appropriate.

As the Muslim Brotherhood continues to evolve, so must our understanding of it. The findings have revealed much that we did not know but work will continue to ensure we keep up to date with developments.

The government considers the following the most important findings.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s foundational texts call for the progressive moral purification of individuals and Muslim societies and their eventual political unification in a Caliphate under Sharia law. To this day the Muslim Brotherhood characterises Western societies and liberal Muslims as decadent and immoral. It can be seen primarily as a political project.

Parts of the Muslim Brotherhood have a highly ambiguous relationship with violent extremism. Both as an ideology and as a network it has been a rite of passage for some individuals and groups who have gone on to engage in violence and terrorism. It has stated its opposition to al-Qaida (AQ) but it has never credibly denounced the use made by terrorist organisations of the work of Sayyid Qutb, one of the Brotherhood’s most prominent ideologues. Individuals closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK have supported suicide bombing and other attacks in Israel by Hamas, an organisation whose military wing has been proscribed in the UK since 2001 as a terrorist organisation, and which describes itself as the Palestinian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Moreover, despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s public condemnation of violence in 2012/13 and afterwards, some of their supporters have been involved in violent exchanges with the security forces and other groups. Media reports and credible academic studies indicate that in the past 12 months a minority of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt have engaged alongside other Islamists in violent acts. Some senior leaders have publicly reiterated the Muslim Brotherhood’s commitment to non-violence, but others have failed to renounce the calls for retribution in some recent Muslim Brotherhood statements.

Muslim Brotherhood-associated and influenced groups in the UK have at times had a significant influence on national organisations which have claimed to represent Muslim communities (and on that basis have had a dialogue with government), charities and some mosques. But they have also sometimes characterised the UK as fundamentally hostile to Muslim faith and identity; and expressed support for terrorist attacks conducted by Hamas.

Aspects of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and activities therefore run counter to British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, equality and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. The Muslim Brotherhood is not the only movement that promotes values which appear intolerant of equality and freedom of faith and belief. Nor is it the only movement or group dedicated in theory to revolutionising societies and changing existing ways of life. But I have made clear this government’s determination to reject intolerance, and to counter not just violent Islamist extremism, but also to tackle those who create the conditions for it to flourish.

The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism.

We will therefore keep under review the views that are promoted and activities that are undertaken by Muslim Brotherhood associates in the UK, in Arabic as well as English. We will consider whether any action under the Counter-Extremism Strategy or as part of our wider work may be appropriate, including action in line with the new engagement policy the government will develop to ensure central and local government does not inadvertently provide legitimacy or a platform for extremists. We will challenge extremists’ poisonous narratives and promote positive alternatives that show vulnerable people that there are better ways to get on in life.

We will continue to:

  • refuse visas to members and associates of the Muslim Brotherhood who are on record as having made extremist comments, where this would be conducive to the public good and in line with our existing policy guidelines and approach to extremism in all forms
  • seek to ensure charities that have links to the Muslim Brotherhood are not misused to support or finance the Muslim Brotherhood instead of their lawful charitable purpose
  • strengthen liaison arrangements with international partners to ensure that allegations of illicit funding or other misuse of charities are robustly investigated and appropriate action taken
  • enforce the EU asset freeze on Hamas
  • keep under review whether the views and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood meet the legal test for proscription

We will also intensify scrutiny of the views and activities that Muslim Brotherhood members, associates and affiliates (whether based in the UK or elsewhere) promote overseas. As our Counter-Extremism Strategy makes clear, insights from our overseas posts will help the government better understand drivers, networks and ideologies. We will continue to consult, and share information and analysis with, governments in the Middle East and North Africa as appropriate. We will then take further decisions and actions as needed.

 

Normalized Cuba Relations Forces 8000 Cubans on U.S.

Fusion: Sidestepping Nicaraguan intransigence, Costa Rica and five other countries have announced a secret deal to airlift some 8,000 Cuban immigrants out of Costa Rica and into El Salvador, where they’ll be put on buses and transported up to Mexico in the last leg of their harrowing 5,000-mile journey to the United States.

The decision to leapfrog Nicaragua comes nearly six weeks after the Sandinista government decided to militarize its southern border and prevent Cubans from continuing their journey north through Central America. Cuban immigrants have been piling up on the border ever since, as their numbers swelled from 1,500 to some 8,000, according to the number of temporary visas issued by Costa Rican authorities.

More details:

FoxLatino:

Central American nations have reached a deal to let the first of thousands of stranded Cuban migrants continue their journey north toward the United States next month, officials said Monday.

The humanitarian transfer will airlift an unspecified number of Cubans the first week of January from Costa Rica to El Salvador, from where they will continue by bus toward Mexico, Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Guatemalan government, which hosted a diplomatic meeting earlier in the day to consider the issue, described it as a “pilot” program and said a work group has been tasked with coordinating logistics.

The two governments did not immediately release further details, citing some nations’ desire for discretion on what has become a diplomatic flashpoint between Costa Rica and neighboring Nicaragua.

The number of Cubans stranded in Costa Rica has reached at least 8,000 since Nicaragua closed its border to them weeks ago. The islanders say they are trying to reach the United States, where favorable migratory policies toward Cubans mean nearly all are allowed to stay and apply for residency.

On Sunday, Pope Francis called for their plight to be resolved.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said the measure will be available only to Cubans who are already in Costa Rica. Ministry spokeswoman Melissa Duran told The Associated Press it will be up to the migrants to pay the costs of their travel, but did not give more specifics.

On Dec. 18, Costa Rica stopped issuing transit visas for Cuban migrants and announced that any who arrived after that without a visa would be deported.

Cuba has seen a spike in outward migration in the year since it and Washington announced they would re-establish diplomatic ties after more than five decades of open hostility. Many Cuban migrants say they chose now to emigrate out of fear that detente could bring about an end to the U.S. policies that benefit them — although U.S. officials say no change is in the works.

Cuba and its close ally Nicaragua argue that the U.S. policies toward Cubans encourage them to attempt dangerous migratory routes and cause a brain drain on the island.

More from NPR:

A U.S. Coast Guard crew (foreground) with six Cubans who were picked up in the Florida Straits in May. A larger Coast Guard vessel is in the background. The number of Cubans trying to reach the U.S. has soared in the past year. Many Cubans believe it will be more difficult to enter the U.S. as relations improve, though U.S. officials say there will be no rule changes in the near term.

Covert Monitoring of Mosque Members Pays Off

UK Muslim ‘Disneyland Family’ Linked to Mosque of San Bernardino Terrorists

by Raheem Kassam and Liam Deacon  •  Dec 25, 2015
Cross-posted from Breitbart

The British Muslim family banned from entering the U.S. this week was on its way to meet relatives in California who prayed at the same mosque as terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who murdered 14 people in San Bernardino this month.

On Tuesday, Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, his brother, and nine of their children were pulled from a queue at Gatwick airport by British Border Agency guards and barred from traveling to the U.S. on the instruction of the country’s Homeland Security agency.

Mahmood has claimed that they were stopped from traveling to California to visit family and Disneyland merely “because they were Muslim.”

It has now been revealed that his relative in California, Muhammad Mahmood, prayed at the same mosque as U.S.-born terrorist Syed Farook and his Pakistani born wife Tashfeen – believed to be the Tablighi Jamaat-run Dar Al Uloom Islamiyah mosque.

The mosque – linked to the “Army of Darkness” group Tablighi Jamaat [TJ], which itself has historical, indirect links to multiple terrorism cases – became the centre of the investigation surrounding the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, as Breitbart News reported from the scene early in December, revealing an extraordinary refusal of the mosque’s elders to co-operate with journalists.

Muhammad Mahmood (the relative) is a U.S. citizen who runs an auto repair shop in San Bernardino. He told the BBC that he “did not know him [Syed Farook] personally” and would not have recognised the terrorist and could not recall ever speaking to him.

A comment from a Muhammad Mahmood from the same mosque just days after the attack in the Sacramento Beereads: “It’s a sad thing… There will be a backlash, of course… Guess why: I’m a brown-skinned guy with a beard who is named Muhammad.”

Tablighi Jamaat is a Deobandi revivalist movement whose mandate is, according to its leading advocate Ebrahim Rangooni, to save the Muslim world “from the culture and civilisation of the Jews and the Christians…” To this end, he has suggested cultivating “such hatred for their ways as human beings have to urine and excrement.”

On Wednesday, a British, Labour Party Member of Parliament wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron accusing Homeland Security of widespread discrimination. A spokesman for the prime minister then confirmed he was considering the issues and would respond in due course.

However, it was reported yesterday how a Facebook account, set up at the London address of the family in the name of Hamza Hussain, has listed job titles such as “supervisor at Taliban and leader at al-Qaeda.”

Furthermore, on Wednesday it was revealed that Mr. Mahmood’s brother, also traveling, had been denied entry into Israel and detained eight years ago on a “lads” trip to Middle East with a “group of older gentlemen.”

American security agencies have also confirmed the brothers “hit positive for terror checks.” A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said that currently the “religion, faith or spiritual beliefs of an international traveler are not determining factors” when deciding if a person can travel to the U.S. However, the spokesman explained, people can be denied entry for a variety of reasons including health-related issues, prior criminal convictions, security concerns, or miscellaneous grounds.

Breitbart London has previously reported on Tablighi Jamaat members performing orchestrated public relations stunts that claim institutional “Islamophobia.” In June of this year, a TJ member claimed he had been discriminated against for his Muslim name. In turned out he had hidden his affiliation with the terror-linked Markazi Masjid mosque from his curriculum vitae (resume).

***   Cleric denies ties to San Bernardino killers as phone records surface

The cleric acting as spokesman for the San Bernardino mosque where terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook worshipped claims he barely knew Farook and didn’t know his terrorist wife at all. But phone records and other evidence uncovered by federal investigators cast doubt on his story.

The FBI has questioned the cleric, Roshan Zamir Abbassi, about his phone communications with Farook — including a flurry of at least 38 messages over a two-week span in June, coinciding with the deadly Muslim terrorist attack on two military sites in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Abbassi, a Pakistani, insists he had nothing to do with the shooting at a San Bernardino County government building five miles from the mosque. While he confirms the text messages with Farook, he claims they were merely discussing food donations for his Dar-al-Uloom al-Islamiya of America mosque.

Abbassi maintained at a press conference that he didn’t know Farook any better than he knew the reporters in the room. But members of the mosque say Farook was a fixture there. He had been coming to pray and study at least three times a week for two years. In fact, he memorized the Koran there, something you cannot do without learning Arabic, a subject Abbassi teaches.

His other assertion that he never even saw Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, also strains credulity. Malik joined her husband in shooting 35 of his government co-workers at a Christmas party.

“No one knows anything about his wife,” assistant imam Mahmood Nadvi agreed. “She never came to prayer.”

But longtime mosque member Gasser Shehata, who claimed to have prayed “shoulder to shoulder” with Farook, said Dar-al-Uloom prepared a chicken-and-rice dinner to celebrate the couple’s wedding last year. Reportedly, hundreds of congregants attended the walima reception, including the mosque leadership.

Asked if Farook was radicalized at the mosque, Abbassi snapped, “Never.” He said the mosque teaches only peace, insisting no one has even an “extremist idea.”

“In Islam,” he said, “we are against innocent killing.”

Abbassi recently posted a message on Facebook condemning the United States and other Western nations for their Mideast policies, arguing they are equally guilty of violence to achieve political and religious goals. His mosque’s Web page features a video claiming that the San Bernardino shooting was carried out by the US government in a “false flag conspiracy,” and that Farook and Malik were “patsies” assassinated “by government-sponsored perpetrators.”

Another person of interest is Abbassi’s brother, Mohammad Sabir Abbassi, a Muslim activist who serves as a trustee and English teacher at the San Diego mosque once headed by the late al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

FBI Agent Joel Anderson said in court filings that Farook indicated he was a big fan of Awlaki and listened to a series of sermons about jihad and martyrdom called “The Hereafter.”

In his filing, Anderson says Farook studied the ultra-orthodox Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaat. US officials say the cult, with 50,000 members, is rife with jihadists, and jihadi groomers are recruiting at mosques in at least 10 states.

“We have significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States,” said Assistant FBI Director Michael Heimbach, “and we have found that al Qaeda used them for recruiting.”

Homeland Security Department veteran Philip Haney said Dar-al-Uloom was among the mosques his agency was investigating as part of a probe of the Tablighi movement.

“Individuals who were already in the case in 2012 went to that mosque,” Haney claimed in a Fox News interview.

He said he ID’d some 300 jihadists and terrorists tied to the movement in the United States before the Obama regime pulled the plug on the investigation in 2012. Known Tablighi alumni include the Lackwanna Six, the American Taliban John Walker Lindh, shoe bomber Richard Reid, dirty bomber José Padilla and would-be Brooklyn Bridge bomber Iyman Faris.

“We have nothing to hide,” Roshan Abbassi asserted.

Investigators shouldn’t take his word for it.

Pentagon Stonewalling the Closing of Gitmo

Go General Kelly, keep it open, stay the course sir. There is no country that will take Khalid Sheik Mohammed and if there are 17 slated to be transferred in January it will leave an estimated 90 detainees that no country will accept. While Congress has law forbidding detainee transfers to the United States, Barack Obama can still use an executive order. The last complete study estimated $500 million to retrofit an existing facility in the event they do get transferred to the United States to a Federal facility. Given where the world is on fighting terror, capturing jihadis rather that killing them would be a benefit at this juncture. Gitmo is perfect for the Islamic killers.

Pentagon thwarts Obama’s effort to close Gitmo

Reuters: Charles Levinson and David Rohde – In September, US State Department officials invited a foreign delegation to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to persuade the group to take detainee Tariq Ba Odah to their country. If they succeeded, the transfer would mark a small step toward realizing President Barack Obama’s goal of closing the prison before he leaves office.
The foreign officials told the administration they would first need to review Ba Odah’s medical records, according to US officials with knowledge of the episode. The Yemeni has been on a hunger strike for seven years, dropping to 74 pounds from 148, and the foreign officials wanted to make sure they could care for him.
For the next six weeks, Pentagon officials declined to release the records, citing patient privacy concerns, according to the US officials. The delegation, from a country administration officials declined to identify, canceled its visit. After the administration promised to deliver the records, the delegation traveled to Guantanamo and appeared set to take the prisoner off US hands, the officials said. The Pentagon again withheld Ba Odah’s full medical file.
Today, nearly 14 years since he was placed in the prison and five years since he was cleared for release by US military, intelligence and diplomatic officials, Ba Odah remains in Guantanamo.
In interviews with multiple current and former administration officials involved in the effort to close Guantanamo, Reuters found that the struggle over Ba Odah’s medical records was part of a pattern. Since Obama took office in 2009, these people said, Pentagon officials have been throwing up bureaucratic obstacles to thwart the president’s plan to close Guantanamo.
Negotiating prisoner releases with the Pentagon was like “punching a pillow,” said James Dobbins, the State Department special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2013 to 2014. Defense Department officials “would come to a meeting, they would not make a counter-argument,” he said. “And then nothing would happen.”
Pentagon delays, he said, resulted in four Afghan detainees spending an additional four years in Guantanamo after being approved for transfer.
In other cases, the transfers of six prisoners to Uruguay, five to Kazakhstan, one to Mauritania and one to Britain were delayed for months or years by Pentagon resistance or inaction, officials said.
To slow prisoner transfers, Pentagon officials have refused to provide photographs, complete medical records and other basic documentation to foreign governments willing to take detainees, administration officials said. They have made it increasingly difficult for foreign delegations to visit Guantanamo, limited the time foreign officials can interview detainees and barred delegations from spending the night at Guantanamo.
Partly as a result of the Pentagon’s maneuvers, it is increasingly doubtful that Obama will fulfill a pledge he made in the 2008 presidential election: to close the detention center at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama criticized President George W. Bush for having set up the prison for foreigners seized in the “War on Terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, and then keeping them there for years without trial.
When Obama took office, the prison held 242 detainees, down from a peak of about 680 in 2003. Today, with little more than a year remaining in his presidency, it still holds 107 detainees.
Pentagon officials denied any intentional effort to slow transfers.
“No foreign government or US department has ever notified the Department of Defense that transfer negotiations collapsed due to a lack of information or access provided by the Department of Defense,” said Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross, a US Navy commander.
Myles Caggins, a White House spokesman, denied discord with the Pentagon. “We’re all committed to the same goal: safely and responsibly closing the detention facility,” Caggins said.
Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said in an interview that it was natural for the Pentagon to be cautious on transfers that could result in detainees rejoining the fight against U.S forces. “Look at where most of the casualties have come from – it’s the military,” Hagel said.
The Pentagon’s slow pace in approving transfers was a factor in President Obama’s decision to remove Hagel in February, former administration officials said. And in September, amid continuing Pentagon delays, President Obama upbraided Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in a one-on-one meeting, according to administration officials briefed on the encounter.
Since then, the Pentagon has been more cooperative. Administration officials said they expect to begin transferring at least 17 detainees to foreign countries in January.
Military officials, however, continue to make transfers more difficult and protracted than necessary, administration officials said. In particular, they cite General John F. Kelly, in charge of the US Southern Command, which includes Guantanamo. They said that Kelly, whose son was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, opposes the president’s policy of closing Guantanamo, and that he and his command have created obstacles for visiting delegations.
Kelly denied that he or his command has limited delegation visits. “Our staff works closely with the members of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay and Joint Task Force Guantanamo to support the visits of all foreign delegations,” he said in a written statement, “and have never refused or curtailed one of these visits.”–Reuters
Even if Obama manages to transfer all low-risk detainees to other countries, closing Guantanamo won’t be easy. Several dozen prisoners considered too dangerous to release would have to be imprisoned in the US, a step Republicans in Congress adamantly oppose because, they say, it would endanger American lives.
In a press conference earlier this month, Obama said he still hoped to strike a deal with Congress. He added, however, that he reserved the right to move the prisoners to the US under his executive authority.
The Bush administration faced no political opposition on transfers and was able to move 532 detainees out of Guantanamo over six years, 35 percent of whom returned to the fight, according to US intelligence estimates. The Obama administration has been able to transfer 131 detainees over seven years, 10 percent of whom have returned to the fight.

PRIORITY FROM THE START
Two days after Obama was sworn in as president in 2009, he signed an executive order mandating an immediate review of all 242 detainees then held in Guantanamo and requiring the closure of the detention center. A year later, a task force that included the Defense Department and US intelligence agencies unanimously concluded that 156 detainees were low enough security threats to be transferred to foreign countries.
Members of Congress, meanwhile, seized on reports that transferred detainees had returned to the fight to demand that Guantanamo remain open.
Among those former detainees was Abdul Qayum Zakir, also known as “Mullah Zakir,” who hid his identity from Guantanamo interrogators and became the Taliban’s top military commander after his release. He was responsible for hundreds of American deaths after returning to Afghanistan, according to David Sedney, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia from 2009 to 2013.
In late 2010, Congress passed a law requiring the secretary of defense to personally certify to Congress that a released detainee “cannot engage or re-engage in any terrorist activity.”
Detainee transfers out of Guantanamo slowed to a trickle. In 2011 and 2012, only a handful were released under an exception to the new law that allowed court-ordered releases to bypass the newly legislated requirements. By January 2013, the outlook was so bleak that the State Department shuttered the office tasked with handling the closure of Guantanamo.
Michael Williams, the former State Department deputy envoy for closing Guantanamo, said that during that period, William Lietzau, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, “was not supportive of a Guantanamo closure policy” and an obstacle to transfers inside the Pentagon.
Lietzau, who left his job in 2013, denied obstructing transfers. He said in many cases, delays resulted from his concerns about the ability of foreign countries to monitor transferred detainees. “You have guys who are cleared for transfer, but there is no way to get the assurances, so what do you do then?” Lietzau said.
In May 2013, President Obama unveiled a new push to close the prison. He appointed two new envoys, one at the Pentagon and one at the State Department, to oversee the prison’s closure. One of their top priorities was to transfer as many prisoners as possible to countries willing to take them.
The State Department then proposed that four low-risk Afghan detainees be transferred back to Afghanistan. The four men – Khi Ali Gul, Shawali Khan, Abdul Ghani and Mohammed Zahir – then ranged in age from their early 40s to their early 60s. All had been at Guantanamo for seven years but never formally charged with a crime, and all had been cleared for release by the interagency review board years earlier.
In the case of Gul, State Department officials argued that he was almost certainly innocent. “The consensus was that he had never had any contact with the insurgency or al Qaeda,” said Dobbins. “I can say with confidence we have captured, detained and released thousands of people who have done worse things than these four.”
US officials had offered in secret peace talks with the Taliban in 2012 to swap the four Afghans for captured American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Taliban negotiators said they didn’t want the four men because the four weren’t senior Taliban members.
Afterwards, State Department officials began referring to them as the “JV four” or “Junior Varsity four,” for their seeming lack of importance to Taliban fighters.
When the State Department added the four Afghans to a list of detainees prioritized for transfer in the summer of 2013, Defense Department officials resisted. At a meeting at the Pentagon, a mid-level Defense Department official said transferring the four “might be the president’s priority, but it’s not the Pentagon’s priority or the priority of the people in this building,” according to current and former administration officials present at the meeting.
With the White House’s backing, the State Department moved forward. By spring 2014, the four Afghans were about to be sent home. Then, General Joseph Dunford, commander of US forces in Afghanistan at the time, sent a memo to the State Department warning that the release of the four detainees would endanger his troops in Afghanistan.
When State Department officials read Dunford’s memo, they realized he was citing intelligence about a different group of Afghans who were more senior Taliban. State Department officials pointed out the error, but it was too late. The transfer was halted.
Sedney, the former deputy defense secretary, said that there was broad resistance within the Pentagon to releasing the four Afghans because between 30 and 50 percent of the roughly 200 Afghan detainees repatriated by the Bush administration had rejoined the fight. The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai often freed detainees as soon as they returned home, Sedney said.
The four men were finally flown back to Afghanistan on Dec. 20, 2014 – nearly five years after they were cleared for release. Since then, none have returned to the fight, according to US intelligence officials.
Gul declined a request for an interview. Zahir, now in his early 60s and one of the three Afghans considered low-level Taliban, works as a guard at a school in Kabul. He said that the primary evidence against him – Taliban documents found in his home – were from his work as an administrator in the Intelligence Ministry when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. He said that when American soldiers flew him to Afghanistan for release, one spoke with him briefly before handing him over to Afghan officials. “The American soldier tapped on my shoulder and said, ‘I am sorry,’ “ Zahir said, adding: “I don’t know why they kept me there for 13 long years without proving my guilt or crime.”

VIDEO GAMES
Pentagon obstacles delayed and nearly derailed other transfers. In early 2014, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev offered to take as many as eight Guantanamo detainees. The Central Asian leader, eager for a counterweight to an increasingly assertive Russia, hoped to strengthen his relationship with Washington.
Kazakhstani officials asked to send a delegation to Guantanamo for three days to videotape interviews with prisoners before deciding which ones to accept. Kazakhstani psychologists and intelligence experts wanted to study the interviews for signs of deception.
According to multiple current and former administration officials, Pentagon officials forbade the delegation to videotape the interviews, nixed plans for a multiday visit, ordered detainee interviews shortened, and put new restrictive classifications on documents requested by the Kazakhstanis.
Senior commanders at Joint Task Force Guantanamo – the military unit responsible for administering the detention center – said the visiting Kazakhstanis would be allowed one hour with each prisoner and one day at the detention center.
Allowing taped interviews had been common practice with foreign delegations. This time, the Pentagon banned them on the grounds that the practice would violate the Geneva Conventions’ prohibition on using prisoners of war for “public curiosity.”
After two weeks of failed talks, the Kazakhstanis said they were canceling the visit and wouldn’t take any detainees. An alarmed White House intervened, ordering the Pentagon to compromise, according to current and former administration officials.
The Kazakhstanis would be allowed two hours with each detainee, the Pentagon said, and would be allowed to stay one night at Guantanamo. They said the Kazakhstanis would not be allowed to bring recording equipment with them. Instead, the US military agreed to videotape the interviews and provide the Kazakhstanis with copies of the tapes. The Kazakhstanis visited the prison.
Six weeks later, the Kazakhstanis still hadn’t received the videos. “They were calling us every couple of days, saying, ‘Where are the videos?’ “ said an administration official.
The White House ordered the Pentagon to hand over the videos. The Pentagon complied, and sent the videos to the State Department, but with a new classified designation on it, “Secret/NOFORN,” which means it is illegal to share the material with a foreign country. Administration officials complained again. Days later, the video came back with a more lenient classification. The video was sent to the Kazakhstanis.
Two days later, the Kazakhstanis called Washington. The videos had been processed to look as if it had been shot through dimpled glass. For the Kazakhstanis, who wanted to scrutinize detainees’ body language and facial expressions, the videos were useless.
For a third time, White House officials intervened to force the Pentagon to compromise. Finally, in December, nearly a year after the process began, the five prisoners were transferred to Kazakhstan.
In private meetings, some Pentagon officials have been dismissive of Obama’s policy. After the president publicly pledged early this year to respond to a five-year-old British request for the repatriation of British detainee Shaker Aamer, a senior Pentagon official mocked that vow at an interagency meeting on transfers.
“We will prioritize him – right at the back of the line where he belongs,” the Pentagon official said, according to an administration official present at the meeting. A senior NSC official snapped back: “That’s not what the president meant.” Aamer was transferred to Britain in October.
In autumn this year, a foreign government was invited to Guantanamo to interview eight detainees for possible transfer – a process that can take several days. General Kelly’s command, which oversees Guantanamo, instituted a new policy, suddenly banning the delegation from spending the night at the detention center, according to administration officials. (Officials declined to identify countries involved in transfer negotiations out of concern that doing so would jeopardize the process.)
As a result, the delegation was forced to commute 90 minutes by plane each morning and afternoon from Miami, adding tens of thousands of dollars in government plane bills to US taxpayers. In December, the country decided to take no detainees.
During another foreign delegation’s visit to Guantanamo in autumn, Kelly’s command further cut interview times with detainees, to as little as 45 minutes each, making it harder for foreign officials to assess potential transfers.
Ba Odah, the hunger-striking detainee, is now in his late 30s. Multiple members of the National Security Council have intervened to demand that the Pentagon turn over his complete medical file. The Pentagon has held firm, citing patient privacy concerns.
Ba Odah’s lawyer, Omar Farah, said the Pentagon’s justification is baseless.
“Invoking privacy concerns is a shameless, transparent excuse to mask intransigence,” Farah said. “Mr. Ba Odah has provided his full, informed consent to the release of his medical records.”