Closing the jail in the US military base at Guantanamo remains one of the unfulfilled promises of the Obama administration. According to the White House, the process towards the eventual closure of the enclave is being torpedoed by Republican lawmakers.
Another struggle over this issue recently arose when the US president said he would veto any legislation that prevents the transfer of prisoners from the base to other countries. So the president responded to a bill introduced by several legislators of the opposition party, which would prevent the majority of shipments for the next two years, ie, the same Obama will be in power.
The proposed bill by Senators Kelly Ayotte, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Richard Burr seeks to repeal the current law therefore under the purview of the same, Democrat government has transferred some thirty prisoners to countries like Yemen, where most detainees were from. The “anti-transfer” project began to be developed after the attacks of January 7 and 9 in Paris that killed 20 people, including three Islamic terrorists.
Moving or releasing the “suspected terrorists” makes them available to re-join extremist organizations, say the Republicans. However, Reuters, notes that “in practice this nuance is irrelevant because of the hundreds of detainees who have been through the military prison, only five have charges against him”.
Obama defends strongly his initiative because “keeping operations the prison at Guantanamo undermines national security.” Also, he remembers that Pentagon reports say that for every prisoner, American taxpayers disbursed about 3, 3 million dollars a year.
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But despite all these arguments, the road to the closing of the prison is quite rugged. Even within the Department of Defense it has far more than a few detractors.
Several US media said the issue was one of the reasons for the resignation of former Pentagon chief Charles Hagel and special envoy of the State Department for closing the prison, Cliff Sloan, who said he was frustrated with the slow progress of the military on that topic.
The dispute over the prison and Guantanamo Bay is one of the issues that the Cuban government intends to put on the table to restore ties between the US and Cuba. President Raul Castro himself, in the last summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, said that normalizing relations will not be possible if the US doesn’t return “the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base.”
However, the US administration has made clear that his attempts to close the prison have nothing to do with that claim from Havana. In fact, the White House responded immediately to the requirement of Castro: “The United States plans to retain the territory it occupies in Guantanamo.”
Upon closing of the prison
-In 2009 the Guantanamo prison had 242 inmates.
-Until now, there remain 122, of which 54 have been declared “eligible” to be transferred, 10 have been processed or received their respective judgment and 58 are under periodic review process.
-During 2013 11 prisoners were transferred, 28 in 2014 and five so far this year.
