‘No idea when Guantanamo Bay will be closed’
Author: Sunny Hundal
The White House admitted yesterday that they did not know when Guantanamo Bay will be closed.
The response came a year after President Obama vowed to close the controversial facility. But yesterday the White House admitted it a time-table was now up in the air.
In response to questioning, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said: “I don’t know when the process will be done. I know they made great progress… establishing first and foremost case files and recommendations of who indeed was there and why. There has been progress on that.”
“There has been progress on issue of citing a new detention facility. The president won’t meet the deadline he laid out a year ago, but the president, his national security team, the generals in Iraq and Afghanistan understand the support for al Qaeda that Guantanamo provides them, in recruiting, in attracting those that seek to do us harm.”
“To keep the American people safe the president pledged to close Guantanamo Bay and he will do that,” Gibbs added.
As the writer and activist Andy Worthington pointed out on Radicalisms last week, lots of progress has been made.
But the unwillingness of countries across Europe as well as individual states in the US to take Guantanamo prisoners has made it much harder for Obama to fast-track prisoners out of the facility so it can be shut down.
