Oops! Guantánamo won’t be closed by January
US President Barack Obama has now acknowledged that the administration will miss its self-imposed deadline to close the prisoners’ detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by mid-January. During his East Asia trip, Obama said that with “Guantánamo, we had a specific deadline that was missed”. He hopes to shut it down in 2010, but without giving a new date. Shutting down Guantánamo has been increasingly less likely as the administration bumped into a range of political and logistical tripwires, including the resignation of the White House counsel who had drafted the original order to close the facility. But many members of Congress, as well as residents living near proposed relocation sites, have opposed administration plans to relocate the remaining 200 inmates to other countries or prisons in the US. Last week, the attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that five terrorism suspects — including the self-avowed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — would be tried in a federal court rather than in military tribunals. For more, read the New York Times
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