The White House has quietly served notice that new plans being drafted to fulfil President Barack Obama’s long-ago pledge to close down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay will involve bringing several dozen of its allegedly most dangerous detainees to prisons on American soil.
Offering new detail on arrangements finally to shut down the Guantanamo complex, Lisa Monaco, a top homeland security adviser to the President, said at the weekend that while she envisaged persuading other countries to accept about 52 of the remaining 116 prisoners, there would be an “irreducible minimum” group of inmates too dangerous to resettle overseas.
Those brought to America would, she said, be put in “supermax” high-security prisons where they would remain under military detention or face criminal trials.
The administration has concluded that it has no option but to engage in what would surely be a tough fight with Congress to allow the shutting down of a detention complex with a murky record of human rights which has long been characterised by the President himself as a stain on America’s record around the world.
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Republicans are likely to resist the plan, but the White House hopes financial arguments may prevail. The cost of keeping Guantanamo open is about $3m a year per detainee.
