Biden quietly steps up effort to close Guantanamo bay prison

The Biden administration is making fresh attempts to close the infamous Guantanamo bay prison facility, by transferring all remaining 36 detainees to US mainland prisons. 

Biden is reportedly close to making good on his election manifesto commitment of closing the facility after the issue took a back seat during his first year in office, according to the Washington Post. 

Tina Kaidanow, a top US diplomat, has been appointed to oversee the transfer of detainees to other prisons and hasten the notorious prison’s closure. 

But if Biden is to be successful, he must avoid the same obstacles that derailed his predecessors' attempts to shut Guantanamo down - risking accusations of being ‘soft’ on terrorism and losing political capital. 

In 2010, as President Obama tried to close the facility, the US congress passed a ban on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US mainland to thwart his efforts. 

And the stance of Republican lawmakers has remained largely unchanged since then. 

“The Biden administration wants to free more terrorists, and we know, to an absolute, metaphysical certainty, the results of that will be more Americans murdered,” Senator Ted Cruz said in December at a Judiciary Committee hearing on Guantanamo.

The US first opened the detention centre under President George W. Bush in January 2002 after the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan. It was intended to hold and interrogate prisoners with alleged links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban at the time. 

Scores of suspects from multiple countries were later sent to the Cuban facility - often in highly controversial circumstances.

The detention centre became notorious after reports emerged detainees were humiliated and tortured there.
 
Numbers have dwindled in recent years, after hundreds of former detainees were released, returned home or re-settled in third country locations. 

But according to one recent study, the facility still costs $540 million a year to house the 36 inmates who remain.