The Obama administration pressed ahead yesterday with its plans to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, flying a detainee to New York to face federal trial despite bipartisan opposition in Congress to bringing such prisoners to the United States for trial, resettlement or continued detention.The transfer of Ahmed Ghailani to face capital charges in the 1998 East Africa bombings marked the first time a detainee who is not an American citizen has been brought from the prison in Cuba to the United States. Ghailani, appearing briefly in U.S. District Court in Manhattan yesterday, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges in connection with the blasts at the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Those attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.Human rights groups, which earlier expressed dismay about President Obama's announcement that some suspects would be tried in reformed military commissions, welcomed Ghailani's transfer. But Republicans and some military groups, who were cheered by the prospect of renewed military tribunals, sharply attacked the decision to hold any trials in the United States."By bringing Ghailani's case into the federal court system without a policy or plan on how to deal with the larger Gitmo issue, the Obama administration is again taking a piecemeal approach to a major national security issue," said Kirk S. Lippold, a senior military fellow at Military Families United who was commander of the USS Cole when it was bombed in Yemen in 2000.Since it announced its decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by next January, the administration has tread a politically treacherous path between the wishes of its liberal constituency and the fears of conservative critics, pleasing and upsetting both at different times.CONTINUE READING