US set to release plan to close Guantanamo prison

More than two years after President Barack Obama reiterated his promise to close the facility, a plan suggests seven alternative prison sites in three states

The detention facility was opened in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan (AP)

Washington is set to release a plan to close its controversial detention centre at Guantanamo next week, reports say, as President Barack Obama – who has repeatedly promised to shutter the facility – approaches his final year in office.

The plan suggests seven alternative detention sites in Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina and lays out a strategy to decrease the facility’s overall population – currently at 112, with 53 people eligible for release from custody, the Associated Press reported on Saturday, citing unnamed administration officials.

Moving the facility to the United States would require lawmakers’ approval at a time when the White House faces harsh opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress.

The US Defence Department told The Independent it had no timeline on when a proposal would be delivered to Congress.

“The administration is working diligently to complete the plan to safely and responsibly close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. We don't have a timeline on when it will be delivered Congress and we don't discuss plans that have not been delivered,” said Cmdr Gary Ross, a spokesman.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, located in a US naval base on Cuba, was established in 2002 to hold what were considered enemy combatants during the so-called War on Terror launched by administration of then-President George W Bush in response to the September 11 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Centre and Pentagon.

The prison has held 779 Muslim men and boys – including 15 children, many of which were sold to the US by international partners in the US’s ostensible counterterrorism operation for about $5,000 a person, according to international advocacy group Reprieve. Reprieve lawyers have secured the release of 69 people, who had been imprisoned without charge or trial.

Mr Obama in a May 23, 2013 famously reiterated calls to close Guantanamo, saying that it had “become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.”

Republican Arizona Senator John McCain has repeatedly called for Mr Obama to release an official proposal on closing the facility and in September reiterated calls for concrete action.

“Since taking office, President Obama has said that he wants to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but six and a half years later, his administration has never provided a plan to do so,” Mr McCain, who lost the presidency to Obama in 2008, said in September.

“Worse, as the United States continues to fight terrorists around the world, the Administration has no coherent policy for dealing with law of war detainees.

A group of 28 retired generals called Guantanamo’s closure a “national security imperative” in an open letter publishe this week. The letter’s signatories included Gen Charles Krulak, a retired 4-Star commandant of the Marine Corps, and Major General Michael R Lehnert, the first commanding general of the joint detention task force at Guantanamo.

There are 112 men still detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, 41, of which have been cleared for release but have yet to be transferred out of the US.

British resident Shaker Aamer, a 46-year-old man of Saudi origin, was the most recent Guantanamo detainee to be released after he was abducted in Afghanistan and sold to US forces in 2001. Mr Aamer arrived back in the United Kingdom on October 30.