A democratic shame called the Guantanamo!

-DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL 

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There is  sigh of relief  to know the  notorious Guantanamo is becoming non-operations at least very soon. 

People caught as terrorists by the CIA  and allies have been tortured for years at The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, established in January 2002. In January 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said the prison camp was established to detain extraordinarily dangerous prisoners, to interrogate prisoners in an optimal setting, and to prosecute prisoners for war crimes. Detainees captured in the War on Terror, most of them from Afghanistan and Iraq, also form the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia were transported to the prison.

US President Obama’s said the controversial torture prison in Cuba, Guantanamo is being closed down finally. It might be President Obama's biggest broken promise: closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. As a candidate, Obama vowed so many times that he would shutter the prison he called a recruitment tool for terrorists that he himself even noted how often he's promised to do so, in an interview after he was elected.

Obama has run into plenty of opposition in Congress. Lawmakers passed a bill preventing federal money from being used to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to the USA. Obama signed that bill into law, even as he issued a statement that disapproved of it. The provision was part of a bigger military bill that Obama said was too important not to sign. Republicans, in particular, say that Guantanamo must stay open to keep terrorists there.

After Bush political appointees at the US Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice advised the Bush regime that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, military guards took the first twenty detainees to Guantanamo on 11 January 2002.

The Bush regime asserted that detainees were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Since 2004, US Supreme Court decisions courts have jurisdiction over the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Current and former prisoners have reported abuse and torture but the White House boldly denied and nothing could be done by others. In 2006, the United Nations called unsuccessfully for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be closed. In January 2009, Susan J. Crawford, appointed by Bush to review DoD terror practices used at Guantanamo Bay and oversee the military trials, became the first Bush administration official to concede that torture occurred at Guantanamo Bay.

On 22 January 2009, President Barack Obama signed an order to suspend proceedings at Guantanamo military commission for 120 days and shut down the detention facility that year. On 20 May 2009, the US Senate passed an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 (H.R. 2346) by a 90–6 vote to block funds needed for the transfer or release of prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

On 7 January 2011, President Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which, in part, placed restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland or to foreign countries, thus impeding the closure of the facility. In February 2011, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Guantanamo Bay was unlikely to be closed, due to opposition in the Congress. Congress particularly opposed moving prisoners to facilities in the United States for detention or trial.^[19] In April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. As of December 2013, 155 detainees remain at Guantanamo.

The Pentagon, on instructions from President Obama, named an envoy to shut down the controversial prison at Guantanamo Bay, showing renewed commitment to US President Barack Obama’s elusive goal. Paul Lewis, formerly a legal expert for the House of Representatives on Guantanamo, will look at ways to close the jail and transfer detainees to third countries, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said. Lewis, who teaches ethics at Georgetown University, will work with Cliff Sloan, a friend of Secretary of State John Kerry who was named to a similar position at the State Department in June.

Lewis, who teaches ethics at Georgetown University, will work with Cliff Sloan, a friend of Secretary of State John Kerry who was named to a similar position at the State Department in June.

Obama had promised to close the prison set up under his predecessor George W. Bush within one year of taking office in 2009, saying that the indefinite detention of suspects on terrorism charges at the naval base in Cuba did not reflect US values of rule of law. But Obama failed in his goal, with lawmakers of Bush’s Republican Party refusing to authorize funding to transfer prisoners to the United States for trial or overseas.

In May, facing a renewed uproar about Guantanamo Bay after a hunger strike by prisoners, Obama promised to appoint new envoys and lifted a moratorium on repatriating Yemenis, the largest nationality represented at the prison. US authorities have cleared 56 of the 84 Yemeni prisoners for release but none of them have returned. Repatriations had stopped after an Al-Qaeda affiliate with former detainees in its ranks was linked to a failed bid to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger plane on Christmas Day 2009. A total of 164 detainees remain at the US-run base in Cuba after two Algerians were returned home in August.

USA, which has converted entire world as large  prison ward following the Sept-11 hoax, should now reveal all details about tortures inside the Guantanamo for years now.

 Guantanamo known for its notorious operations shall remain in human memory  for ever.