President Obama had promised to close the prison since his first day in office, but has suffered setbacks in Congress.
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Those words aren’t spoken very often in just that way from the podium in the White House briefing room, but they were Wednesday by press secretary Josh Earnest.
“I think we need to finish the job of removing the very irrational restrictions that are in current law”, Sloan said in a briefing on the issue at a Washington law firm.
Play video “April: Gitmo Brit Could Be Freed”.
The rule has left USA diplomatic envoys asking countries and territories as far-flung as Uruguay, Bermuda and Palau to accept detainees. In the House, however, Republicans still reeling from the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap, are pushing a plan that would make any attempts to transfer prisoners and close the prison more hard. But Obama has failed to carry out similar veto threats in the past.
“The administration is in fact in the final stages of drafting a plan to safely and responsibly close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and to present that plan to Congress”, Earnest said.
“The American people – and bipartisan majorities of Congress – have long opposed closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing unsafe terrorists to USA soil”.
There are now 116 inmates at the USA facility in Cuba, which remains a divisive symbol of the nation’s post-9/11 war on terrorism.
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Wells Dixon is an attorney at the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who represents several Guantanamo Bay detainees.
