Elected Democrats on Thursday (August 5th) urged US President Joe Biden to close the Guantanamo military prison and to release or try the last 39 detainees suspected of being al-Qaeda accomplices.
Read also: The Biden administration says it wants to close the Guantanamo prison
As the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, 75 elected representatives of the House of Representatives invoked in an open letter to the president the excessive cost of this controversial detention center. "
Guantanamo prison has housed up to 800 prisoners but it currently only holds 39 men, many of whom are elderly and increasingly weak,
" they underline in this letter. "
According to press reports, the prison costs more than 500 million dollars per year, that is to say an exorbitant annual cost of 13 million dollars per prisoner
", they add. The fact that it has still not been closed 20 years later "
tarnishes our reputation abroad and undermines our ability to defend human rights and the rule of law
», Note the elected officials.
Open after September 11
Guantanamo was opened in early 2002 to include detain suspected al-Qaida members and accomplices of the perpetrators of September 11, 2001. "
We recognize that closing the prison will take time, but we believe it is time that you take decisions
, write the elected Democrats to Joe Biden.
They propose that some of the detainees be tried by federal courts, that others be repatriated to their country and that the last be sent to third countries which would undertake to ensure that they are treated well and that they do not represent not a threat to the United States.
Most of the Guantanamo detainees have been incarcerated despite fragile evidence of their involvement.
Many were tortured at secret CIA sites before their transfer to Guantanamo.
A closure blocked by Congress
Barack Obama ordered the prison to be closed in January 2009, when he came to power, with the idea of having the prisoners tried by civilian courts.
But the decision, very unpopular, had been blocked in Congress.
The former president then preferred to discreetly release hundreds of detainees whose release had been approved by the Presidency Review Committee.
These releases were interrupted under Donald Trump.
They resumed under Joe Biden, five inmates having had their release approved since January.
Twelve Guantanamo detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, are awaiting trial by a military commission, which has issued only two convictions in two decades.
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