Gitmo detainee transfer ban before Senate

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Senate could take up a measure this week that would block the Obama administration from trying Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainees in the United States.

The House of Representatives already approved the provision, part of a massive bill designed to keep the federal government running through Sept. 30, 2011, that would impose a nine-month ban on transferring detainees, including the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, to the United States for trial, The Washington Post reported.

It was unclear whether the Senate would go along with the House on the proposal, which drew opposition from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the Post reported online Sunday.

Holder announced last year that Mohammed and four other al-Qaida detainees would be tried in a civilian federal court in New York. The plan ran into a bipartisan buzz saw of opposition tied to the Obama administration's troubled effort to close the military prison in Guantanamo Bay where Mohammed and the other detainees are held. Administration officials said in March the detainees, already charged in a military commission at Guantanamo, likely would have a military trial.