© Agence France-Presse/John MooreAn inmate being escorted in Guantanamo
President Obama swept into office on a promise to close the torture center, today Republican presidential candidates call for Guantanamo to be opened to new detainees.
Friday, March 11, 2016, marks 14 years since the first detainee arrived at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Loud & Clear's Brian Becker sat down to talk with activist Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture, about the macabre legacy of the Guantanamo facility and the prospects for the release of the men who are condemned to indefinite detention.
"The prospects of it closing are dim," said Varon. "Obama sent a plan to Congress for closing and everybody from the Republican establishment to the media declared it dead on arrival. There are congressional bans on moving any detainee to the United States, and Obama seems reticent to use executive authority to override that act of Congress. So, right now we basically have a failed policy on life support. "
The United Nations declared Guantanamo a torture center. Torture violates US law and treaty obligations, so doesn't President Obama have executive authority to shut it down? Varon explains that Guantanamo Bay was created by an executive order, which may provide President Obama the power he needs to counter continued congressional resistance.
"It is worth recalling that it was opened by executive fiat and so it goes that it can be closed by executive fiat," he said.
However, the likelihood of President Obama invoking executive authority on the matter is unlikely, due to resistance within his administration. "The attorney general said that such a move would be a violation of a standing law, and a high-up US Defense Department official said that the DoD refused to act contrary to the US Congress, even if ordered through an executive action. The Obama Administration cannot even get on the same page regarding this issue."
Varon also suggested that part of the difficulty in convincing the public and congressional Republicans that closing the facility serves US interests is that they have ceded the moral high ground.
"In Beltway circles, nobody has talked about closing it because it is a human rights abomination and a place where illegal things happen. They refer instead to whether or not it provides actionable intelligence."
Comment: More background