Amid a hunger strike by Guantanamo Bay inmates, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged to re-invigorate his administration’s bid to close down the infamous prison, housing several terrorism suspects without charges.
“It is not a surprise to me that we’ve got problems in Guantanamo, which is why, when I was campaigning in 2007 and 2008 — I said we need to close Guantanamo. I continue to believe that we’ve got to close Guantanamo,” Obama told reporters at the White House.
The US president was responding to a question following reports that around 100 of 160 prisoners are on a hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Obama said he has asked his team to “review everything that’s currently being done in Guantanamo, everything that we can do administratively, and I’m going to re-engage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people”.
He said the prison – which is outside the pales of traditional mainstream American system – is not necessary to keep the country safe.
“It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”
Taking a swipe at the US Congress for blocking his plan to shut down the prison, Obama said, “Now Congress determined that they would not let us close it and despite the fact that there are a number of the folks who are currently in Guantanamo who the courts have said could be returned to their country of origin or potentially a third country.”
Expanding on the issue over Guantanamo prison, where hundreds of terrorism suspects were detained after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Obama noted that it is not sustainable.
“I mean, the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over a hundred individuals in a no man’s land in perpetuity, even at a time when we’ve wound down the war in Iraq, we’re winding down the war in Afghanistan, we’re having success defeating al Qaeda core, we’ve kept the pressure up on all these transnational terrorist networks, when we’ve transferred detention authority in Afghanistan – the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried – that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.”
Answering a question about continued force-feeding the inmates, Obama said, “I don’t want these individuals to die. Obviously, the Pentagon is trying to manage the situation as best as they can. But I think all of us should reflect on why exactly are we doing this. Why are we doing this?”
He cited several cases of terrorist convictions, saying the suspects were tried in the conventional American justice system and are currently serving sentences in maximum-security prisons around the country.
“Nothing’s happened to them. Justice has been served. It’s been done in a way that’s consistent with our Constitution, consistent with due process, consistent with rule of law, consistent with our traditions.”
He particularly cited the examples of the individual in Times Square bombing attempt, the individual who tried to bomb a plane in Detroit and a Somali who was part of al-Shahab, saying all of them have been deal with within the American legal system.
“So we can handle this. And I understand that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with the traumas that had taken place, why, for a lot of Americans, the notion was somehow that we had to create a special facility like Guantanamo, and we couldn’t handle this in — in a normal, conventional fashion. I understand that reaction.
“But we’re not over a decade out. We should be wiser. We should have more experience at – in how we prosecute terrorists. And this is a lingering, you know, problem that is not going to get better. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to fester.”
While his administration would examine every option administratively to try to deal with this issue “but ultimately, we’re also going to need some help from Congress”, he stressed.
“And I’m going to ask some – some folks over there who, you know, care about fighting terrorism but also care about who we are as a people to – to step up and – and help me on it.”
