Obama effort leads to surge in Guantanamo releases
Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS
By NEDRA PICKLER and BEN FOX
Dec. 11, 2014 3:21 AM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fed up with the stalled progress toward closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center, President Barack Obama summoned top administration officials to the White House for an unusual meeting last month to make it clear he wanted action.
The president addressed the team at length, emphasizing why he wants to shut down the detention facility for terrorism suspects, according to administration officials familiar with the meeting, which wasn't on Obama's public schedule. The presidential lecture was the culmination of months of White House frustration with his own administration's inaction. Since then, the a dozen prisoners have been transferred overseas — more than all of last year and the most since 2010.
"We're working on it," Obama said at a bookstore over the Thanksgiving weekend when a shopper expressed hope Guantanamo will close. With the sudden surge in transfers, Guantanamo is now at a turning point. The prisoner population is at 136 — down from a high of near 700 and its lowest point since shortly after it opened in January 2002 — with 68 of the prisoners cleared for transfer. Officials have said at least five more will be moved by Dec. 31.
Obama is trying to work his way toward the pledge he made on his first day in office to close the detention center at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. But actually closing it would still either require approval from Congress, which has prohibited transferring any prisoners to the U.S., or a bold unilateral action that his opponents are warning him against but administration officials say hasn't been ruled out.
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Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/91383d1d804a4d7b89c096f469119df0/obama-effort-leads-surge-guantanamo-releases
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