Obama announces new plan to close Guantánamo Bay

President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced fresh plans to close the military detention camp at Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

The proposal will include the transfer of around two-thirds of the 91 remaining inmates to stateside facilities – a move strongly opposed by the Republican-controlled Congress.

In a speech at the White House, Obama said that keeping the prison was “counterproductive” to the nation’s anti-terrorist strategies and was also harming relations with allied nations.

Regarding the opposition in Congress to transferring inmates stateside, Obama said that terrorists were already being held in US prisons.

“We’ve managed it just fine,” the president said.

He urged Congress to give his proposal “a fair hearing” and said he did not want to pass the problem on to his successor in the White House.

Obama, who made an election pledge to close the camp during his first term in 2008, intends to send around 35 prisoners who have been cleared for release by the Defense Department to other countries, with the remainder to be sent to prisons within the United States

Guantánamo is the mostly costly prison on the planet

With the exception of a small group of members, among them Republican Senator John McCain, who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congress has to date been opposed to the measure.

The White House remains skeptical that Congress will approve the plans, having repeatedly blocked efforts to close the facility.

Over the past year, the Pentagon has been looking into the use of prisons such as Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and the Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, where both Ramzi Yousef, who was found guilty of organizing the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and Ted Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, are currently held.

Around 2,000 military and civilian personnel are employed at Guantánamo and the courts set up to try the prisoners there cost the government around $4.4 million per inmate a year, making it the most costly jail on the planet.

Despite Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo, transferring its prisoners from Cuba to the United States could create many headaches: a number of those held there say they were tortured to secure confessions, meaning that they would eventually be freed by stateside courts.