WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden will try to close U.S. base prison at Guantanamo Bay after a review process, resuming a project initiated under the Obama administration, the White House said Friday.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said it was the Biden administration’s “intention” to close the detention facility, something President Barack Obama promised to do in a year’s time. after taking office in January 2009.
Psaki gave no timetable, telling reporters that the formal review would be “robust” and would require the involvement of officials from the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and other bodies that have not yet been appointed under the new administration.
“There are many agents from different agencies who should be part of this discussion about the steps to follow,” he said.
Obama met with intense domestic political opposition when he tried to close the detention center, a notorious symbol of the U.S. fight against terrorism. Biden may have more room for maneuver now that only 40 prisoners remain and Guantánamo draws much less public attention, although his announcement drew some immediate criticism.
The United States opened the detention center in January 2002 to detain people suspected of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It became a source of international criticism for the ill-treatment of prisoners and the prolonged imprisonment of people without charges.
The announcement of a closure plan was not unexpected. Biden had said as a candidate that he supported the closure of the detention center. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also said so in a written testimony for confirmation in the Senate.
“Guantanamo has provided us with the ability to carry out the war detention law to keep our enemies off the battlefield, but I think it’s time for them to close Guantanamo detention facilities,” Austin said.
The remaining 40 prisoners at Guantanamo include five who had previously been released by an intensive review process set up under Obama as part of the effort to close the detention center and move the remaining prisoners to facilities in the United States.
At its peak in 2003, the detention center at the Navy base in the southeastern tip of Cuba contained about 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 the closure, but left it to his successor.
Under Bush, the U.S. began efforts to prosecute some prisoners of war crimes in courts known as military commissions. He also released 532 prisoners.
Obama pledged to close the detention center while maintaining the largest Navy base, but was met with fierce political opposition over plans to prosecute and imprison men in the U.S. and the concern that he would return other people to his land would pose a security risk.
To some extent, this opposition persists. “Democrats’ obsession with bringing terrorists to American gardens is strange, wrong, and dangerous,” Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said after the White House announcement Friday. “As with President Obama, Republicans will fight nails.”
Obama argued that keeping the detention center was not just a 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 at one point pledged to “load it” with some “bad guys”. He never did and approved a single release, a Saudi prisoner who had reached a plea deal in his war crimes case.
Of those who remain at Guantanamo, ten men are being tried by a military commission. They include five men accused of planning and providing logistical support for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The case has been stuck in pre-trial trials for years.
Human rights groups that have long advocated the closure of Guantanamo welcomed Biden’s announcement.
“For nearly two decades, the United States has denied justice to the hundreds of men the government has detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay, without charge or trial,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the Human Rights Security Program. of Amnesty International USA. “There are forty men left today. We have been closing it for a long time ”.