Pentagon to submit plan to Congress for closing Guantanamo prison

The Pentagon is expected to submit a plan to the United States Congress to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, setting up a battle with politicians who oppose President Barack Obama’s efforts to shutter the facility.

“We’re going to continue to transfer detainees to other countries that agree to take them“, David said. Today, 2000 troops and civilians are stationed at Guantanamo Bay to staff the prison and court alone, by one measure working out to $US4.4 million (more than $6 million) a year for each the last 91 detainees. His long-awaited blueprint reportedly does not name specific sites that could replace the U.S. prison in Cuba, however. But about 50 are deemed too risky to ever be released. As alternate holding sites, they looked at the Consolidated Naval Brig in SC and the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Colorado, and two facilities at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas – the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and Midwest Joint Regional Corrections Facility.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the military would meet a Tuesday deadline to release the plan on how to shutter the controversial facility. “We’ve seen many members of Congress express their opposition to considering the kinds of necessary steps to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay”.

The new plan is expected to estimate what it would cost to upgrade prisons and to operate a wartime prison in those locations.

Congress is specifically looking forward to seeing the six “elements” that it had stipulated must be part of the plan in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The long-running dispute has taken on added intensity now because the White House has launched a final push to close to the prison before Obama leaves office.

“The American people have a right to expect that the administration will be transparent and honest with them about the activities and associations of the terrorists who remain at Guantanamo, and the administration’s refusal to do so only underscores the fact that closing Guantanamo will make Americans less safe”, Ayotte said. At the time, he argued that the prison was being used as a terrorist propaganda tool.

“We will continue to prosecute those who can be prosecuted”. The other 10 have been charged or convicted in the military commissions system. “And third, that there’s this small group of individuals that can neither be safely transferred nor prosecuted, and it will address those three things and lay out a range of options”.