CRITICS FRUSTRATED AS GITMO PRISON TURNS 20
Biden has pledged closure, but has yet to move on promise
Advocates for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center were optimistic when President Joe Biden took office. And they were relieved this summer after the U.S. released a prisoner for the first time in years. Many are now increasingly impatient.
In the months since that release, there have been few signs of progress in closing the notorious offshore prison on the U.S. base in Cuba. That has led to increased skepticism about Biden’s approach as the administration completes its first year and the detention center reaches a milestone Tuesday — the 20th anniversary of the first prisoners’ arrival.
“President Biden has stated his intention to close Guantanamo as a matter of policy but has not taken substantial steps toward closure,” said Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New Yorkbased Center for Constitutional Rights, which has long taken a leading role in challenging the indefinite confinement without charge at the base.
“There’s a lot of impatience and a lot of frustration among advocates and people who have been watching this,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the security with the human rights program at Amnesty International USA.
Without a more concerted effort, those who want the center to close fear a repeat of what happened under President Barack Obama. Obama made closing Guantanamo a signature issue from his first days in office, but managed only to shrink it in the face of political opposition in Congress.
There are 39 prisoners left. It’s the fewest since the detention center’s earliest days, when the initial groups, suspected of having a connection to al-Qaeda or the Taliban, arrived on flights from Afghanistan to what at the time was a sleepy U.S. outpost on the southeastern coast of Cuba.
Guantanamo became the focus of international outrage because of the mistreatment and torture of prisoners and the U.S. insistence that it could hold men indefinitely without charge for the duration of a war against al-Qaeda that seemingly has no end. The critics grew to include Michael Lehnert,
a now-retired Marine Corps major general who was tasked with opening the detention center but came to believe that holding mostly low-level fighters without charge was counter to American values and interests.
“To me, the existence of Guantanamo is anathema to everything that we represent, and it needs to be closed for that reason,” Lehnert said.
At its peak, in 2003, the detention center held nearly 680 prisoners. President George W. Bush released more than 500 and Obama freed 197 before time ran out on his effort to whittle down the population.
President Donald Trump rescinded the Obama order to close Guantanamo, but largely ignored the place.
Of the remaining prisoners, 10 face trial by military commission in proceedings that have bogged down for years. They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the selfproclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
There are 13 who have been cleared for release, including eight under Biden who could now be returned to their homeland or resettled elsewhere. Two dozen have not been cleared and have never been charged.
A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy, said the National Security Council is “actively” working with the Defense, State and Justice departments and other agencies to reduce the population within restrictions imposed by Congress. The restrictions include a ban on returning prisoners to certain countries, including Yemen and Somalia, or sending any to the U.S., even for further imprisonment.
The official said the administration is committed to closing the detention center, an effort it “jump-started” after four years of inaction under Trump.
Critics want the Biden administration to get busy repatriating or resettling the detainees who have been cleared and to restore a State Department unit devoted to the effort that was eliminated under Trump.
“Until I see some visible signs that the administration is going to do something about it, I am not heartened,” said Lehnert. “If there is somebody in charge of closing Guantanamo, I have not talked to anybody that knows who they are.”