[T]here are prohibitions legislatively on the transfer of some of the prisoners that are there into some part of this country, some would be tried in federal courts as we've seen done in the past, some would be tried in military commissions, likely spending the rest of their lives in a maximum security prison that nobody, including terrorists, have ever escaped from and some regrettably will have to be indefinitely detained, I say regrettably not because it's a bad thing necessarily for them in terms of the fact that they're very dangerous people and we have to make sure that even if we can't prosecute them, we're not putting them back out on the battlefield.

The administration has run into several hurdles in closing the prison, including strong opposition from members of Congress. Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives voted 212-206 in favor [JURIST report] of a defense spending bill [HR 3082 materials] including a provision preventing Guantanamo detainees from being transferred to the US for trial. The legislation would block Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] and the other accused 9/11 conspirators from being tried in a US civilian court, as intended [JURIST report] by US Attorney General Eric Holder. In May, the US House Armed Services Committee [official website] approved legislation [JURIST report] prohibiting the modification or construction of a facility in the US to hold detainees currently held at Guantanamo. The number of detainees at Guantanamo has been significantly reduced as the administration continues to transfer detainees to a growing list of countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, Maldives, Georgia, Albania, Latvia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Somaliland, Palau, Belgium, Afghanistan and Bermuda [JURIST reports].

[T]he judge blocked [defense] lawyers from introducing exculpatory documentary evidence and refused to hear many witnesses and experts. An illusion of adversarial nature and legitimacy was created by allowing the defense to file motions and objections to serious procedural violations, however [they were] routinely quashed. ... [T]he court ... openly ignore[d] applicable procedural and substantive laws as well as basic notions of fairness. This is testament to the power of those corrupt officials who zealously seek to justify their seizure, control and ownership of Yukos assets and to isolate Khodorkovsky and Lebedev from Russia's business and public spheres - and to keep them in jail as long as possible to achieve these goals.

The trial has not proceeded without considerable political conflict. In May, former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov [BBC profile] testified [JURIST report] that former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin [official website; JURIST news archive] ordered Khodorkovsky's arrest for political reasons, indicating that Khodorkovsky had funded the Communist Party [party website, in Russian] without first getting approval to do so from the president. Some critics of the Russian government have argued that the charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are politically motivated [JURIST op-ed] due to Khodorkovsky's opposition to Putin. In March, Khodorkovsky criticized Russia's justice system [JURIST report] as an "assembly line" that inevitably finds the government's political enemies to be guilty. The statement echoed concerns Khodorkovsky had previously expressed about the fairness of Russian trials and the need for widespread reform of the Russian court system [JURIST reports].