Supporters of the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center were optimistic when US President Joe Biden took office. And they were relieved this summer after the United States released a prisoner for the first time in years. Many are now growing impatient.
In the months since that release, there have been few signs of progress in closing the notorious US prison in Cuba. That has led to growing skepticism about Biden’s approach as the administration completes its first year and the detention center reaches a milestone on Tuesday, the 20th anniversary of the first prisoner arrival.
“President Biden has expressed his intention to close Guantanamo as a matter of policy, but has not taken significant steps toward closure,” said Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who has long played an important role in the challenge of indefinite confinement without charges at the base.
“There is a lot of impatience and a lot of frustration among defenders and people who have been watching this,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of security with the human rights program at Amnesty International USA.
Without a more coordinated effort, those who want the center to close fear a repeat of what happened during the term of President Barack Obama. Obama made the closure of Guantanamo a relevant issue in his first days in office, but was barely able to reduce it in the face of political opposition in Congress.
“We cannot forget what this country did 20 years ago and continues to do today,” said Eviatar. “This government has a lot on its plate, certainly, but this is a heinous human rights offense.”
There are still 39 prisoners remaining. It is the fewest since the early days of the detention center, when the initial groups, suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, arrived on flights from Afghanistan – with their faces covered, handcuffed and in orange prison suits – along the way. which was eventually a dormant US outpost on the southeastern coast of Cuba.
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