President Obama said Tuesday he would
again move to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
noted that the United States needs to re-evaluate how it handles
suspected terrorists.
"I continue to believe that we've got to close Guantanamo," he
said. "I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is
not necessary to keep America safe."
When Obama took office more than four years ago, he pledged to
close the prison within a year, but he underestimated Congress'
resistance to transferring terror suspects to the US and to paying
for alternative facilities to hold them on US soil and he had no
choice but to keep it open.
At a news conference Tuesday, Obama laid out his arguments for
closing it: "It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms
of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies
on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists.
It needs to be closed."
Asked about a hunger strike among detainees at the facility, Obama
said efforts would continue to be sure the men do not die, but added,
"All of us should reflect on why exactly we're doing this."
Keeping detainees indefinitely without trial is "contrary to our
interests and it needs to stop," he said.
Obama acknowledged that closing the facility is "a hard case to
make," but vowed, "I'm going to go back at it because I think it's
important."
He said he would return to the issue and had asked his advisors to
review what is currently being done at Guanatanamo and would work to
make the case that keeping the facility open was not in the US
interests.
He vowed to reach out to lawmakers to seek ways to close the
facility and examine all options that can be taken by the White
House.
Suspected al-Qaeda and other terrorism-related detainees have been
held at the prison since 2002. Currently there are 166 prisoners
there and several of them are on a hunger strike that followed what
prisoners said was an aggressive cell search on February 6.
On April 13 US military guards forcefully transferred prisoners
out of a communal dormitory into individual cells. There was a
skirmish in which rubber bullets were fired and minor injuries were
reported among both prisoners and guards.
Lawyers for the prisoners say despair is the underlying reason for
the hunger strikes after being held for more than 10 years without
charges being filed, much less a trial.
Detainee Samir Naji al-Hasan Moqbel wrote a story for the New York
Times earlier this month in which he detailed the hunger strike of at
least 40 detainees and the force feeding he had endured.
"The only reason I am still here is that President Obama refuses
to send any detainees back to Yemen. This makes no sense. I am a
human being, not a passport, and I deserve to be treated like one,"
he wrote. "I do not want to die here, but until President Obama and
Yemen's president do something, that is what I risk every day."
He described the detainees as "suffering deeply" and said he hoped
the hunger strike would draw attention to the prison again.
Obama had campaigned in 2008 on closing the prison camp, even
signing an order to close the facility on his first day in office in
2009. He later had stepped back from doing so amid strong opposition
from Congress.
