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President Donald Trump poised to lift ban on CIA 'black site' prisons

Washington: The Trump administration is preparing a sweeping executive order that would clear the way for the CIA to reopen overseas "black site" prisons, like those where it detained and tortured terrorism suspects before former President Barack Obama shut them down.

President Donald Trump's three-page draft order, titled "Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants," would also undo many of the other restrictions on handling detainees that Mr Obama put in place in response to policies of the Bush administration.

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Trump could reopen CIA 'black site' prisons

US President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order opening a review of US intelligence needs and possibly reopening secret CIA prisons overseas used to detain terror suspects.

If Mr Trump signs the draft order, he would also revoke Mr Obama's directive to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees in US custody. That would be another step toward reopening secret prisons outside of the normal wartime rules established by the Geneva Conventions, although statutory obstacles would remain.

And while Mr Obama tried to close the Guantanamo prison and refused to bring new detainees there, the draft order directs the Pentagon to continue using the facility "for the detention and trial of newly captured" detainees - including not just more suspected members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, like the 41 remaining detainees, but also Islamic State detainees. It does not address legal problems that might raise.

The draft order does not direct any immediate reopening of CIA prisons or revival of torture tactics, which are now barred by statute. But it sets up high-level policy reviews to make further recommendations in both areas to Mr Trump, who vowed during the campaign to bring back waterboarding and a "hell of a lot worse" not only because "torture works," but because even "if it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway."

Members of congress denounced the draft order. Republican Senator John McCain said that Mr Trump "can sign whatever executive orders he likes. But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America."

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Elisa Massimino, director of Human Rights First, denounced the draft order as "flirting with a return to the 'enhanced interrogation program' and the environment that gave rise to it." She noted that numerous retired military leaders have rejected torture as "illegal, immoral, and damaging to national security," and said many of Mr Trump's Cabinet nominees had seemed to share that view in their confirmation testimony.

"It would be surprising and extremely troubling if the national security Cabinet officials were to acquiesce in an order like that after the assurances that they gave in their confirmation hearings," she said.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to an email inquiring about the draft order, including when Mr Trump may intend to sign it. But the order was accompanied by a one-page statement that criticised the Obama administration for having "refrained from exercising certain authorities" about detainees it said were critical to defending the country from "radical Islamism."

Specifically, the draft order would revoke two executive orders about detainees that Mr Obama issued in January 2009, shortly after his inauguration. One was Mr Obama's directive to close the Guantanamo prison and the other was his directive to end CIA prisons, grant Red Cross access to all detainees, and limit interrogators to the Army Field Manual techniques.

In their place, Mr Trump's draft order would resurrect a 2007 executive order issued by President George W. Bush. It responded to a 2006 Supreme Court about the Geneva Conventions that had put CIA interrogators at risk of prosecution for war crimes, leading to a temporary halt of the agency's "enhanced" interrogations program.

Mr Bush's 2007 order enabled the agency to resume a form of the program by specifically listing what sorts of prisoner abuses counted as war crimes. That made it safe for interrogators to use other tactics, like extended sleep deprivation, that were not on the list. Mr Obama revoked that order as part of his 2009 overhaul of detention legal policy.

One of the Obama orders Mr Trump's draft order would revoke also limited interrogators to using techniques listed in the Army Field Manual. But in 2015, Congress enacted a statute locking down that rule as a matter of law, as well as a requirement to let the Red Cross visit detainees. Those limits would remain in place for the time being.

Still, the draft order says high-level Trump administration officials should conduct several reviews and make recommendations to Mr Trump. One was whether to change the field manual, to the extent permitted by law. Another was "whether to reinitiate a program of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated outside the United States" by the CIA, including any "legislative proposals" necessary to permit the resumption of such a program.

It is not clear whether the CIA would be enthusiastic about resuming a role in detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects after its scorching experience over the past decade. In written answers to question by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr Trump's CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said he would review whether a rewrite of the field manual was needed and left the door open to seeking a change in the law "if experts believed current law was an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country."

While Mr Trump's order says no detainee should be tortured or otherwise subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment "as prescribed by US law," it makes no mention of international law commitments binding the United States to adhere to humane standards even if Congress were to relax domestic legal limits on interrogations, such as the Convention Against Torture or the Geneva Conventions.

Tom Malinowski, who was assistant secretary of state for human rights in the Obama administration, said the draft order showed that everyone who thought the office of the presidency or the advice of Cabinet secretaries like General Mattis would temper Mr Trump "is being shown wrong again."

"He'll listen to his worst instincts over his best advisers unless restrained by law," Mr Malinowski said.

The New York Times with the The Washington Post