Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has tapped his choice to lead the process of deciding what to do with Guantanamo Bay's detainees.
Matthew Olsen, acting head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, will chair the task force in charge of recommending whether or not to prosecute the roughly 245 men still in custody at Gitmo. It will also makes suggestions about how to handle those whom are not brought to trial.
In January, President Barack Obama issued an executive order requiring the government to close the prison within a year and to create a new strategy for dealing with its inmates.
In his role at Justice, Olsen oversees the department’s intelligence activities, as well as its counterterrorism and counterespionage sections. Between 1994 and 2006, Olsen served as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, where he headed the national security section after it was created in 2005.
During his time as a prosecutor, he spent 15 months as special counsel to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. He told the Washington Post that during that time, he had a “front-row-seat” to see how national security cases develop.
“Mr. Olsen has the experience and judgment to lead the team’s evaluation of these individual cases,” Holder said in a statement. “We’ve established a solid framework for the administration to make the right decision on each individual detainee."
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