US to hold 50 Guantanamo prisoners indefinitely

The Post reports that the decision is the result of a case-by-case review of the remaining Guantanamo prisoners by a Justice Department-led task force set up by President Obama last year. The detainees have been held under barbaric conditions and subjected to torture, most of them languishing in the prison camp for eight years. The Post report cites unnamed administration officials, who spoke of the task force’s conclusions in advance of the public release of its report.

News of the decision came on the one-year anniversary of Obama’s signing of an executive order to close the infamous prison at Guantanamo. That pledge was announced with great fanfare on the second full day of the new administration as evidence that Obama would reverse the Bush administration’s legacy of criminality and contempt for democratic rights. It has not been carried out.

Instead, Obama is keeping Guantanamo going while he works to open a military prison on US soil, rightly called “Guantanamo North” by its critics, to which those detainees not repatriated to their home countries or to other countries are to be kept, either to be jailed indefinitely or tried before military tribunals. Others, newly captured in the so-called war against Al Qaeda, and other “extremists” are to be thrown into the new military prison, which the administration plans to set up in Thomson, Illinois.

These moves expose Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo as an empty gesture, designed to refurbish the image of the United States around the world while his administration continues the police-state methods of Bush.

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