Guantanamo must close as soon as possible

US President Barack Obama swept to power a year ago on the promise and premise that change was needed and that he was the catalyst for change.

After eight dark and wasted years of the misguided foreign policy of the administration of George W. Bush, Obama was seen as a breath of fresh air, a man who could deliver, a leader who would right the wrongs of so many.

Key to his litany of promises was a solemn pledge to the American people and to nations around the world that the Guantanamo Bay detention centre would be closed by this coming January.

The centre was established offshore to ensure that its military personnel would be free from the ties of international law to extract information under duress and torture from the illegal combatants detained therein.

Obama's pledge to close it was thus welcomed by all law-abiding nations and people. No longer could US personnel act with impunity against those detained in conflicts and combat.

No longer could isolation be used as a thin veil to cover up sleep deprivation, waterboarding, stress tactics and the sheer psychological terror of being far removed from a native land and taken to a small military outpost from an age of US imperialism in the Caribbean.

But, sadly, the Obama administration has been slow in its efforts to repatriate or relocate the inmates detained there, and the president announced last Wednesday that he will not meet his original January deadline for shutting down the military prison.

An under-utilised maximum security jail in Illinois is offering up its facility for the detainees. So far, that has not expedited the closing of Guantanamo. There is a fear that once in the US proper, the detainees will have access to justice and courts and legal advice. How radical!

Obama has a moral duty to close Guantanamo now. He must turn the page now on this darkest chapter in US history.