President Joe Biden will seek to close the prison at the US base in Guantanamo Bay after a review process, resuming a project started under the Obama administration, the White House said Friday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was the “intention” of the Biden administration to close the detention center, something that President Barack Obama promised to do within a year shortly after he took office. in January 2009.
Psaki did not give a timeline, telling reporters that the formal review would be “robust” and would require the participation of officials from the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and other agencies that have yet to be named under the new administration.
“There are many actors from different agencies that need to be part of this political discussion about what to do next,” he said.
Obama ran into intense domestic political opposition when he tried to close the detention center, a notorious symbol of the American fight against terrorism. Biden may have more leeway now that there are only 40 prisoners left and Guantanamo attracts much less public attention, although his announcement drew some immediate criticism.
The United States opened the detention center in January 2002 to hold people suspected of having ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban. It became a source of international criticism for mistreatment of prisoners and prolonged imprisonment of people without charge.
The announcement of a closure plan was not unexpected. Biden had said as a candidate that he supported closing the detention center. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also said so in written testimony for Senate confirmation.
“Guantanamo has given us the ability to carry out law-of-war arrests to keep our enemies off the battlefield, but I think it’s time for the Guantanamo detention center to close,” Austin said.
The remaining 40 prisoners at Guantanamo include five who were previously cleared for release through an intensive review process created under Obama as part of the effort to close the detention center and transfer the remaining prisoners to facilities in the United States.
At its peak in 2003, the naval base detention center in the southeastern corner of Cuba held nearly 680 prisoners. Amid international outrage, President George W. Bush called it “a propaganda tool for our enemies and a distraction for our allies” and said he supported its closure, but left it to his successor.
Under Bush, the United States began efforts to prosecute some prisoners for war crimes in courts known as military commissions. He also released 532 prisoners.
Obama vowed to shut down the detention center, keeping the largest naval base, but ran into fierce political opposition over plans to prosecute and imprison men in the United States and concerns that returning others to their homeland would pose a risk. of security.
To some extent, at least, that opposition remains. The obsession of “the Democrats” with bringing terrorists into the “backyards of Americans is strange, misguided and dangerous,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, after the White House announcement Friday. “As with President Obama, Republicans will fight tooth and nail.”
Obama argued that keeping the detention center was not just bad policy, but a waste of money, costing more than $ 445 million a year in 2016.
Under his administration, 197 were repatriated or resettled in other countries.
That left 41 under Trump, who promised at one point to “load” him with some “bad guys.” He never did and approved only one release, a Saudi prisoner who had settled his war crimes case.
Of those who remain at Guantanamo, there are 10 men facing trial by military commission. Among them are five men tasked with planning and providing logistical support to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The case has been stalled in pre-trial proceedings for years.
Human rights groups that have long advocated closing Guantanamo welcomed Biden’s announcement.
“For nearly two decades, the United States has denied justice to the hundreds of men the government has held in Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, without charge or trial,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of Amnesty’s Security with Human Rights Program. International United States. “Forty men remain there today. It is time to close it. ”
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.