Biden was clear on the campaign trail that he wanted to close Gitmo. But nearly one year into his presidency, not only is his administration not closing it, it’s funding upgrades, leaving prisoners languishing there with no end in sight.
Nearly 800 detainees have passed through Guantánamo Bay detention center since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, many of whom haven’t been charged with a crime or even been to trial yet. And while a new courtroom could signal an interest in getting proceedings to chug along, advocates of closing Guantánamo Bay tell The Daily Beast constructing the new courtroom doesn’t even come close to signaling that Guantánamo Bay closure is on the horizon anytime soon.
”I think what this reflects is the Biden administration’s policy incoherence—if not policy failure—on Guantánamo,” Dixon, who challenges unlawful detentions at the Guantánamo prison, told The Daily Beast. “The decision to spend millions of dollars to build another courtroom is inconsistent with the administration’s stated policy objective of closing the prison.
The Biden administration clearly isn’t doing that. Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, told The Daily Beast this move is unconscionable, as it is a further stain on America’s human rights record. But it’s easy to see that timeline slipping. The negotiations and approvals for that prisoner transfer—the first of the Biden administration—were made during the Obama administration. And, aspointed out last month, if prisoners are to be transferred out at that pace, detainees would remain even if Biden were re-elected to a second term.
”It’s widely accepted that the military commissions have failed to achieve justice for anybody. And building another courtroom at Guantánamo in 2022 is throwing good money after bad,” Dixon told The Daily Beast. “It’s doubling down on a system that has failed.”
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