Guantanamo Will Not Be Closed By Obama’s January Deadline

President Obama signed the executive order closing Guantanamo two days after his January 20 inauguration, aiming to draw a firm line under the “war on terror” regime of George W. Bush, who opened the jail in early 2002 to house terrorist suspects.

 After a week of UN General Assembly in New York and a G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, the Obama administration waited for the weekend (a time when most citizens are away from the news) to inform that Guantanamo will not be closed by January.

 According to several reports over the weekend, the prison at Guantanamo Bay will not be closed by President Barack Obama’s deadline of January 22. Also, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday that meeting President Barack Obama’s 22 January deadline for closing the Guantanamo Bay camp will be “tough.”

 In interviews with several television networks, Robert Gates said that closing the camp was proving more complicated than expected.

 The Obama administration is said to now regret its earlier decision to proclaim it would close the facility within a year of the president taking office. An unnamed White House officer told reporters that not every detainee will be removed in time, though it is hoped the numbers will dwindle substantially from the current 220.

 There has been a growing assumption that the administration would not meet it’s target given the difficulties faced in relocating inmates from the controversial detention center on the US naval base in Cuba.

 According to the The Washington Post, Greg Craig, the chief White House legal adviser to the president who strongly pushed setting a firm date, will be found a new job before long. He was said to be no longer in charge of the issue.

 After eight months in office, only a dozen detainees have been relocated to third countries or repatriated, even though the majority of those remaining are no longer regarded as a threat by the Americans.

 After years of criticizing the prison for not meeting international law, US allies are reluctant to take in detainees, while Washington in turn is prevented from sending prisoners home to countries that may torture them.

 The US Justice Department also announced over the weekend the transfer of three detainees to Yemen and Ireland. Alla Ali bin Ali Ahmed, a Yemen native, was returned to his homeland after a federal court ruled that he could no longer be detained at the facility in Cuba. The two other detainees, whose names were not disclosed, have been sent to Ireland.

 Plans to move detainees to the US have met an outbreak of complaints from the public and many lawmakers in Congress.

 Like President George W. Bush, President Obama now asserts that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force gives him the right to hold some terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial.

 The Washington Post editorialized on this matter with these words: “It is odd that the same policy which, when pursued by the Bush administration, constituted “thumbing its nose at the Constitution” and putting a “stain on America’s name at home and abroad” now elicits nothing but a few measured tasks.”

 The Americano / Agencies

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