detainees

AP - President Barack Obama approved Monday the resumption of military trials for detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ending a two-year ban.

Fifty-seven of the men had been approved to return home, or to third countries. Last year's failed Christmas Day plot, which was also traced to Yemen, forced the White House to suspend those plans.

Last week's bomb plot puts two strikes against the detainees.

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Washington had approved the release of many of the Yemeni detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. But after a Yemen-based al-Qaida affiliate allegedly tried to bomb a U.S. plane, those releases were put on hold.

Now, the delays are stoking anti-American sentiment.

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One year after President Obama pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, 200 detainees remain there. A new study finds judges using wildly different criteria to review the cases — the result of a lack of clear guidelines on issues such as the use of coercion — and how to define an enemy combatant.

The legal justifications used by Bush administration officials to detain people after the Sept. 11 attacks remain controversial and legally murky.

Some former detainees are seeking to hold former officials personally accountable through civil lawsuits, with mixed results.

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Obama administration officials are inspecting the maximum-security Standish prison in Michigan, which could be used to hold terrorism suspects now being held at Guantanamo Bay.

But not everyone in the rural community, about 150 miles north of Detroit, would welcome accused terrorists as neighbors.

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