US House Members Demand Closing Guantanamo Bay Prison
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Democratic representatives urged US President Joe Biden to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison and finalize the files of the 39 detainees imprisoned there.
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The US authorities opened the Guantanamo Bay prison in late 2001
Democratic House members urged US President Joe Biden on Thursday to shut down the Guantanamo Bay facility and either free or put the 39 remaining prisoners on trial in federal courts.
A message in a letter
With the United States approaching the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, 75 lawmakers signed a letter claiming that the US Navy-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was in disrepair, costly, and a two-decade-old human rights embarrassment to the country.
They wrote that after the Sept. 11 attacks, the prison’s population peaked at about 800 inmates, but now holds 39 men only, many of whom are elderly and becoming increasingly infirm.
Moreover, according to estimates, the jail operation costs more than $500 million per year, with a yearly cost of $13 million per prisoner, pointing out that Biden was in favor of the demand to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp when he was Vice President in 2009.
In addition, the letter stated that "after nearly two decades, and numerous efforts at reform, the military commission process remains dysfunctional."
Guantanamo Bay prison is a symbol of abuse
The prison became a symbol of abuse in Washington's wars after the 9/11 attacks.
It is noteworthy that the US authorities opened the prison in late 2001, with an international campaign to arrest al-Qaeda members and their accomplices in the 9/11 attacks.
However, the secret transfer of detainees to Guantanamo, holding them there without charges, subjecting them to torture, and not putting them on trial, all led to condemnations of the US administrations' performance and to human-right charges.
Only a few detainees have been charged under the military court system established at Guantanamo, but their cases have mostly been suspended.
When Biden became president, 40 men were still in detention, before releasing one of them and deporting him to Morocco in July. It was also agreed to release 10 others and return them to their countries or transfer them to a third country.
But 12 of them, including Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who is described as the architect of the 9/11 attacks, are undergoing a slow military trial. Two were convicted over two decades, while the other 19 have not been charged or released.
