President Obama may want to shutter the doors of Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for good come January, but that doesn’t mean the terror suspects being held there will let go — even the ones who have been acquitted.

As Congress debates how to try the 299 Gitmo detainees, Obama administration officials told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that it essentially would be decided on a case-by-case basis whether to release those found not guilty of terrorism charges. Taken into account would be whether the prisoner posed a future threat. So what’s so different about that than what the Bush administration was doing? Not much. The Wall Street Journal says Obama officials say that the laws of war allow indefinite detention to prevent aliens from committing warlike acts in the future. In contrast, prosecution by military commission aims to punish them for past war crimes. This approach got high marks from even Republicans.

"Some of them will be able to get out of jail because they’ve rehabilitated themselves and some of them may in fact die in jail," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC. But "I don’t want to put people in a dark hole forever" just "because somebody like Dick Cheney, or you fill in the blank with a politician, said so."

Another Obama official said only voluntary statements by foreign terrorism suspects at Gitmo should be used as evidence at their military trials. He warned that the convictions could be appealed on constitutional grounds if suspects were somehow coerced, and said the administration supported a bill barring the use of any statements obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which would cover torture or other illegal abuse.

And perhaps detainee treatment at Gitmo isn’t as bad as many would make it out to be, because there’s at least one Gitmo detainee who would rather stay put than be sent back home.

Umar Abdulayev, 30, was brought to Guantanamo years ago, and he is fighting to stay at Gitmo rather than be sent back to Tajikistan, reports The Miami Herald. Abdulayev fled civil war in his homeland at age 13 and claims that he was visited by Tajik intelligence agents at Gitmo, who said he could be released if he would spy on Muslim radicals in that country. Abdulayev says that when he refused, the agents threatened retribution. The Herald says: "He [lawyer] argues that his client is twice cursed — not only because he rebuffed the overtures of the secular security forces but because he carries ‘the stigma of having been held at Guantanamo.’"

Meanwhile, Obama is in Italy today for the Group of Eight meeting, which will focus on issues such as the global economy and global warming. The G8 leaders were expected to discuss Obama’s plan for a crackdown on oil speculators amid concerns that the recent increase in crude prices threatened a recession.