• Press Release

Closing of Guantánamo Must be a Priority for President Biden

May 18, 2021

Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images
Responding to the Biden administration approving three more detainees at Guantánamo Bay for release, Daphne Eviatar, the director of the Security With Human Rights program said:

“It is not enough for the Biden administration to announce that more detainees are cleared for release when the government has not made any plans for how it will let cleared detainees finally experience freedom.

“Nine people are currently cleared for release at Guantánamo and some have been cleared for more than a decade, yet they are still stuck. This is an outrageous and shameful violation of human rights. President Biden cannot have true credibility advocating for other countries to respect human rights if he does not prioritize closing Guantánamo.

“Amnesty International USA is calling on President Biden immediately to appoint a high-level official in his administration to take charge of closing Guantánamo and arranging the transfers of all detainees who are not charged with crimes, a critical first step to ending the indefinite detention of the detainees there.”

Read more:

President Biden Must Close Guantánamo Bay Detention Center, End Twenty Years of Human Rights Abuses (news, February 12, 2021)

17 Years Later, Guantanamo Prison Remains a Threat to Human Rights (News, January 10, 2019)