Reuters/Washington
President Barack Obama vowed yesterday to make a new push to close the Guantanamo detention centre, where about 100 inmates are on hunger strike, saying it was damaging to US interests to keep holding prisoners there in legal limbo.
Human rights groups have long been critical of the 12-year-old camp for foreign terrorism suspects, and their concern has intensified in recent weeks. Some of those on hunger strike are being force-fed at the camp at the US Naval Base in Cuba.
Obama, who repeatedly vowed to close the camp, which now holds 166 detainees, when he was campaigning for a first term and when he first took office in 2009, said he would re-engage with lawmakers to find a way to shut the facility and make good on an unkept promise.
However, he offered no new path to overcoming congressional, political and legal obstacles that blocked his earlier efforts to close Guantanamo, where many of the prisoners have been held for more than a decade without being tried or charged.
“It’s not sustainable - I mean, the notion that we’re going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity,” Obama told a White House news conference.
Long a subject of international condemnation, Guantanamo has returned to the spotlight with the hunger strike. Some inmates have given harrowing accounts of force-feeding.
Obama defended the US military’s decision to force-feed hunger strikers, saying “I don’t want these individuals to die.”
He ticked off a list of reasons why the camp should be shut down.
“Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” Obama said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us, in terms of our international standing. It lessens co-operation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”
He said he had asked his advisers to review every option at his disposal, pledging, “I’m going to go back at this.”
Obama pointed the finger at Congress for preventing his earlier efforts and said he would need lawmakers’ help this time. But he acknowledged it would be an uphill struggle, saying, “It’s easy to demagogue the issue.”
The Guantanamo camp was opened by Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W Bush, to hold foreign terrorism suspects captured overseas after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
Canada lost track of $3bn in anti-terror funds
Canada lost track of $3.1bn in security and anti-terrorism funds since the September 2001 attacks in the US, the auditor general said yesterday.
Between 2001 and 2009, about $12.9bn was allocated to 35 government departments and agencies to fund public security and anti-terrorism initiatives.
According to Auditor General Michael Ferguson, nearly one-quarter of the allocated funds are unaccounted for.
“The funding may have lapsed without being spent,” Ferguson said in a report to parliament.
“It may have been spent on PSAT (public security and anti-terrorism) activities and reported as part of ongoing programmes spending. It may have been carried forward and spent on programmes not related to the initiative.”
President Barack Obama
