Guantanamo Bay – still a wound on flesh of free world

Any solution, however radical, has to be considered

Barack Obama has a promise to keep.

Seven years ago, when he became president, he pledged to close the vile detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Seven years later, it’s still open, like a wound in the flesh of the free world. At first, we didn’t know what was happening at “Gitmo”. Eventually, the Associated Press forced the US government to disclose 779 prisoners were being held there.

Conditions were harsh. The Bush administration insisted that, although these people were captured during armed conflict, the Geneva Convention didn’t apply. So they could be tortured – and they were. If you want the disturbing details, go online.

So, as Obama arrived on a wave of hope, he said it had to end. It was a campaign commitment that, despite his desperate wish to get it done before he leaves office in January, he has been unable to meet. Amid political, legal and financial battles, Guantanamo Bay still holds 91 men.

It’s a complicated issue, admittedly. I’m not naive. I agree that, in times of conflict, even idealistic nations must suspend freedoms to safeguard their people.

And there’s the problem of where to send these men. A total of 10 are still to face trial. More than half of the 91 are from Yemen, where the US can’t send them because there’s a civil war. Countries across the world have helped by accepting and trying to rehabilitate detainees – including advanced plans for another 35 of the 91 – but the problem persists.

Last week, 14 years and six weeks after the first 20 men arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Obama announced his latest plan to close it and was roundly criticised for planning to bring terrorists to US soil. It must all be so depressingly familiar to him.

Next month, Obama will achieve one ambition when he visits Cuba, as the first sitting president to do so since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. The US insists that passing the base to Cuban control won’t be discussed but that’s hard to believe. Any solution, however radical, has to be considered.

Because when communist Cuba seems a more benign regime than the United States of America, something has gone terribly wrong.