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Washington Post Opinion: ‘After 23 Shameful Years, Close Guantanamo'

Crime and Justice News

Updated: Jan 17

Joe Biden will leave office as the third president to try — and fail — to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “Keeping inmates detained for decades in a parallel legal structure, without charges, after many were subjected to torture and denied basic due process (the presumption of innocence and speedy trials, for instance) contradicts core principles of American justice,” the Washington Post editorial board writes. “For 23 years, Guantánamo’s dark stain has hampered America’s ability to honestly condemn other countries for using arbitrary detention and torture, and for denying basic human rights for the accused.”


The cost – an estimated $500 million a year for 15 detainees, or $33 million per prisoner – “exposes the absurdity of keeping the prison open at all,” the Post board opines. The prison was opened by President George W. Bush and quickly filled with 780 men, as his administration railed against the “war on terror” in the wake of the 9/11 attack on New York City.  Before his term was over, the Post writes, Bush “belatedly realiz(ed) that its existence had become a terrorist recruiting tool and a blight on America’s global standing as a beacon of justice.” He reduced the population of 242 inmates. Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to close the prison but was held up by Congress and only got its population down to 40 people. President Donald Trump, in his first term, added no prisoners. Biden got the prison total down to 15, stepped up with some recent progress,  as his administration sent two detainees to Malaysia and one to Kenya, then sent 11 Yemeni men to Oman, in the largest-ever transfer of detainees from the military prison.  Some of the remaining prisoners, three men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, had agreed to plead guilty and were slated to serve life terms in federal prison, but Secretary Lloyd Austin stepped in at the last moment to nix a plea deal with three men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Austin’s decision was overturned by a military judge, and the deal is now stalled.

 

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