The notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center has been a millstone around Washington's neck ever since it was set up by President George W. Bush in 2002. Barack Obama came to the White House over seven years ago promising to close down a prison which shamed the values of justice which Americans claim to hold so dear. For Bush and his neocon team, Gitmo was a no-brainer. They had embarked upon a war on terror. The people they dressed in orange jumpsuits, detained and in some cases tortured in the tiny piece of US sovereign territory on the tip of Cuba, were prisoners taken in that war. The general view was that all 684 of the inmates at Gitmo's peak occupation were highly dangerous terrorists who needed to be taken out of circulation, if necessary, for the rest of their lives. It was only reluctantly that Bush moved toward some sort of trial process and even that was through highly restrictive military-style courts. It turned out that some of those picked up by US forces or the CIA or handed over by Afghan or other friendly governments merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Osama Bin Laden's driver was undoubtedly a valuable source of information, but once he had been debriefed, to which he apparently submitted himself willingly, there was no good reason to detain him. As and when human rights prosecutors move against Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes committed in Gaza, would his office driver also be a legitimate target for arrest? Under Obama there has been a steady trickle of releases. Not all of them were wise, in that the former detainees turned up again in terrorist ranks. Were they merely resuming their former wicked ways or had they become radicalized by their inhumane treatment at the hands of their American jailers? It also seemed a nonsense that those who could not be sent back to their home states were despatched to third countries which Washington had persuaded to accept them. It is unclear how many of these former detainees have actually stayed where they were put. Now there are 116 Gitmo inmates left. They are presumed to comprise a hard core of unrepentant terrorists who would head for Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS) the moment they were free. Yet, before his second term ends, Obama is desperate to fulfill that original campaign promise to shut down Gitmo. The obvious answer, to bring the detainees to US prisons, has been blocked by Congress. Once on US soil, America's cumbersome and ingenious legal industry would swing into action. Even assuming that there is strong evidence against the remaining inmates which would stand up in a court of law, smart defense lawyers would seek to have prosecutions thrown out immediately on the basis that their clients had been subjected to cruel and degrading treatment. Is it possible that Obama will seek to have the last prisoners moved to another remote location such as the large US base on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, where the CIA is rumored to have long run a small, top-secret detention center? This might well be seen as sleight of hand, but if the detainees could be parceled out to similar remote US military facilities, the prison signs over Gitmo could at least be taken down and Obama's campaign promise would have been fulfilled in fact, if not in spirit.
