Feds Tour Mich. Prison Eyed as New Gitmo

(NEWSER) - When the Obama administration floated Michigan’s Standish Maximum Security Correctional Facility as a possible landing point for Guantanamo Bay detainees yesterday, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and several state legislators swiftly condemned the idea. But residents of the nearby town are perfectly willing to take them, if it saves the endangered prison and its 340 jobs, the Washington Post reports. More»

Supermax is already home to Unabomber, '20th hijacker'

(NEWSER) - Members of Congress have protested President Obama's efforts to move Guantanamo inmates to US prisons, but residents of Florence, Colo., say they wouldn't mind taking in a few enemy combatants. The supermax prison near town already holds some of the world's most infamous terrorists: a 1993 World Trade Center assailant, the Unabomber, and 9/11's "20th hijacker." "People here don't care about it," the editor of the town's local newspaper told the Los Angeles Times. More»

Prison nearly empty, unemployment brutal in rural Thomson

(NEWSER) - A nearly vacant prison in a western Illinois town where unemployment is over 10% will be the new home of as many as 100 current Guantanamo Bay detainees. An announcement of the president's decision to acquire the 8-year-old jail is expected today, the Chicago Tribune reports. Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Dick Durbin campaigned hard to bring new inmates to Thomson, near the border with Iowa. More»

Thompson site is top contender, but local congressmen are opposed

(NEWSER) - The leading contender to take Guantanamo Bay's prisoners when it shuts down is a federal prison in Illinois, sources tell the Chicago Tribune . The near-empty facility in the small town of Thompson, about 150 miles west of Chicago, would take an unspecified but "limited" number of Gitmo's remaining 215 or so terror suspects. Town residents like the idea of pumping jobs and money into the economy, but local congressmen are incensed. More»

Federal, Military prosecutors fight for rare testimony

(NEWSER) - Federal and military prosecutors looking to convict Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other high-profile Guantanamo Bay detainees are competing with each other to offer plea bargains to lower-profile inmates in exchange for testimony. Some detainees have remained at Gitmo because they are considered too difficult to prosecute, and the evidence against some of them is so thin that in one case, a prosecutor asked a defendant to suggest a charge he’d be willing to cop to. More»