Obama urges Congress: Shut Guantanamo

BARACK Obama has called for Guantanamo Bay to be closed this year.

The US president used his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday to put the issue back on the agenda, having largely avoided it since he failed in his promise to shut the terrorist detention centre within his first year in office in 2009.

But he stopped short of renewing that pledge, instead calling on Congress to take action. ‘This needs to be the year Congress lifts the remaining restrictions on detainee transfers and we close the prison at Guantanamo Bay,’ he said. ‘Because we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action, but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals and setting an example for the rest of the world.’

With Mr Obama pressing ahead to end the unpopular war in Afghanistan by the end of the year, the US had to ‘move off a permanent war footing’, even as it continued to pursue terrorist networks, he said.

There are still 155 prisoners at the prison in Cuba, including one British resident, Shaker Aamer, who has been held there since November 2001 on suspicion of leading a group of fighters in Afghanistan. The White House has long blamed Congress’s refusal to allow prisoners to be tried on the US mainland for the failure to shut it down. But human rights charity Reprieve claims the president has the power to close the prison himself, after a bill passed last year removed significant obstacles to detainees being sent home.

Katie Taylor, of Reprieve, said: ‘President Obama has found it convenient to blame Congress for his inaction but this excuse will no longer wash.’