US President Barack Obama presented a long-shot plan Tuesday to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention center, hoping to fulfill an elusive campaign promise before he leaves office next year.
US President Barack Obama presented a long-shot plan Tuesday to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention center, hoping to fulfill an elusive campaign promise before he leaves office next year.
Describing the jail as a stain on America's reputation and a catalyst for extremists, Obama said "I don't want to pass this problem on to the next president."
"For many years, it's been clear that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our national security. It undermines it," Obama said from the White House's Roosevelt Room.
He outlined a $290-475 million plan to move the 91 remaining detainees abroad and to one of 13 possible - unnamed - facilities in the United States.
Obama has tried for almost eight years to close the jail, but has been thwarted by Congress, the Pentagon, some in his own party and foreign allies who refuse to host the terror suspects abroad.
As a candidate and as president, Obama has argued that the indefinite detention without trial of Guantanamo inmates harms America's image and its national security.
"It undermines our standing in the world," he said. "This is about closing a chapter in our history."
Obama could still try to force the closure through an executive order, but such a move would expose him to accusations of ruling by decree.
The Guantanamo Bay closure plan, which took months to produce, offers no specifics on the potential location of a U.S. facility.
But military officials have previously listed Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, or the US Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, among possible destinations for inmates.
Those locations, however, face objections from local politicians.
Human rights groups worry this would only extend detentions without trial and create a "Guantanamo North."
"The possibility of a new, parallel system of lifelong incarceration inside the United States without charge would set a dangerous precedent," Amnesty International said in a statement.
Guantanamo opened in January 2002 on a US naval base on a coastal spit of land in southeastern Cuba leased from Havana under a treaty dating back to 1903.
It was set up after the 9/11 attacks under then-president George W. Bush's administration to deal with "enemy combatants" denied many US legal rights.
