Obama didn't close it

Ten years after the first prisoners captured in George W. Bush's war on terror arrived at Guantánamo, the legal status of this improvised prison remains in limbo. When he got to the White House in 2009, President Obama promised to close it within a year. He has been unable to fulfill his pledge - not only because of the legal problems raised by some of the remaining 167 detainees there, only four of whom have been judged and are serving their sentences, but also because Congress, with the support of both Republicans and Democrats, has denied him the funding for their transfer to federal prisons in the United States, such as the one in Illinois, as proposed by Obama.

The permanence of this detention center in a territory rented from Cuba in 1903 continues to be a source of shame for the United States and the West in general. Many European governments have been tearing their hair out over its existence while collaborating in the CIA's secret flights to transport prisoners there from the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And when Obama proposed pulling them out, there were few European countries prepared to accept them on their territory (Spain agreed to take five), and even fewer US lawmakers willing to have them in jails in their constituencies.

Obama, who banned the use of torture and "extreme" interrogation techniques, has not only failed to achieve his objective of closing the detention center, but also recently accepted, at Congress' request, a bar on the use of military transport to transfer these prisoners to the United States or any other country. He also authorized the army to detain indefinitely without trial, both within the United States and elsewhere, anyone suspected of terrorism. The issue applies not only to Guantánamo but also to other detention centers that the US uses in the world, in Afghanistan and other remote locations.

Only half of the prisoners that remain in Guantánamo, among them Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused of organizing the 9/11 attacks, are considered to be genuinely dangerous. And it does not cease to be a paradox that the center remains open given that the US has opened talks with the Taliban on the future of Afghanistan. It is time to close this source of shame, which only serves to undermine Western arguments on human rights and the rule of law.