Barack Obama's election pledge to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay by next January now looks unfeasible. Photo / AP

Barack Obama's election pledge to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay by next January now looks unfeasible. Photo / AP

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama brought back Bush-era military trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay yesterday by signing into law new rules that will give detainees stronger legal rights in court.

Obama approved the rules, most of which he proposed in May, as part of a US$680 billion ($946 billion) defence policy, but did not mention Guantanamo during the signing.

The law makes it likely that Obama will miss his election pledge to close the prison by January, leaving hundreds of prisoners in limbo and leaving in place a military tribunal system that he has condemned as unfair.

More than 220 detainees remain at Guantanamo, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 terror attacks. The Obama administration is still deciding how to prosecute some in US courts and turn over others to nations that are willing to rehabilitate or free them.

Additionally, the administration is grappling with how to keep in prison a handful of detainees who are considered too dangerous to release or put on trial.

The old system limited detainees' legal rights to defend themselves at trial, in part by allowing the use of hearsay and coerced statements to be used against them.

Civil rights and constitutional law advocates said the changes still fell far short of guaranteeing detainees' rights.

Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the new system still lets the military prosecute a broader group of detainees than US or international law allows.

"The Obama administration has committed to closing the prison at Guantanamo, but closing the prison will have little meaning if the administration leaves in place the policies that the prison has come to represent," he said. "The commissions remain not only illegal but unnecessary."

The new system was supposed to have been approved by September, and detainees' cases have been put on hold for months as court officials waited for the rules to be in place. Obama has ordered the prison to be closed by January 22, 2010, but that deadline now is expected to be delayed.

Part of the problem in closing the prison is where to try detainees who are brought to the US, and where to send those whom courts have ordered to be freed.

The new law bans the release of any of the prisoners in the United States during 2010, but allows them to be transferred to domestic prisons after a review process.

- AP