‘US president does not intend to shutter infamous gulag’
US President Barack Obama does not seek the closure of Guantanamo, America’s notorious military prison on a leased Cuban territory, despite his campaign pledge in 2008, says a political commentator.
Obama “has not lifted a finger to close Guantanamo” almost seven years into his presidency despite vowing to shutter the prison facility on Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, author and radio host Stephen Lendman told Press TV in a Saturday interview.
He said in fact the US spent more money on the prison during Obama’s tenure.
The remarks follow a White House announcement that the Obama administration still has time to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison before the president leaves office.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest added Friday that the administration is continuing to work on transferring Guantanamo detainees from the prison.
The United States is working to reach agreement with countries around the globe to transfer 53 eligible Guantanamo prisoners from the facility in Cuba, Earnest said, noting that some transfers would take place by the end of the year, Reuters reported.
A senior US official told the news agency that “there is a very real possibility” that the number of inmates at Guantanamo, now at 112, could be reduced to less than a hundred by the end of the year.
This is while Lendman says, “Guantanamo is the tip of the iceberg. American maintains a global network of torture prisons in various countries.”
Obama “has no intention of doing (closing) it, nor will his successor. This thing will go on interminably” and many more people will be brutalized in US prisons.”
As many as 775 detainees have been brought to the Guantanamo Bay prison, which was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
Washington says the prisoners are terror suspects, but has not pressed charges against most of them in any court of law. Many detainees have been on hunger strike for months to draw attention to their conditions at the US military prison. Numerous reports of various torture techniques practiced at the military prison has time and time again drawn fire from international human rights groups.
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