Washington: Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay for foreign terrorism suspects should be immediately closed and its inmates moved to the United States.
Powell said the controversial prison in Cuba had become a "major problem" for the United States' image abroad and done more harm than good.
"Guantanamo has become a major, major problem in the way the world perceives America and if it were up to me I would close Guantanamo not tomorrow but this afternoon and I would not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system," Powell told NBC's Meet the Press.
"Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don't need it and it is causing us far more damage than any good we get for it," he added.
The US is holding about 380 foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo.
