The White House admitted on Sunday it would be unable to shut Guantanamo Bay in the near future, even as it acknowledged the US naval prison camp is a rallying cry for Islamic extremists.
Nearly a year has passed since US President Barack Obama’s self-imposed deadline to shutter the camp, but his spokesman said legal and legislative hurdles would prevent that goal being realized any time soon.
“It’s certainly not going to close in the next month. I think it’s going to be a while before that prison closes,” Robert Gibbs told CNN’s State of the Union program.
Obama views Guantanamo, which conjures up images of water-boarding and other alleged torture, as a prime symbol of war on terror excess during the administration of former US president George W. Bush, which only serves as a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.
However, his efforts to shut down the prison camp on the southern tip of Cuba have struggled as allies balk at taking in higher-risk inmates and prosecutions become bogged down in a legal quagmire.
Only three of the remaining 174 detainees have been formally tried and found guilty. Dozens have been cleared, but no foreign ally will accept them and there is strong US opposition to any being allowed on US soil.
US lawmakers effectively blocked one avenue this week by approving a Pentagon budget that forbids funding for an alternate prison, relocating prisoners to the US or sending detainees to certain countries.
Gibbs called for help from Obama’s Republican foes, who next month will gain control of the House of Representatives and trim the Democrats’ Senate majority after landslide midterm election gains.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
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