VIDEO: Obama Presents Plan to Close Guantanamo Bay Prison

President Barack Obama on Tuesday proposed to “once and for all” close the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer remaining detainees to a facility in the United States. Since 2002, 779 people have been detained there; fewer than 100 remain.

“For many years it’s been clear that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our security,” Obama said in a White House press conference. “It undermines it.”

“Fifteen years after [the 9/11 attacks] we’re still having to defend a facility where not a single verdict has been reached in those attacks. Not a single one. When I first ran for president it was widely recognized that this facility needed to close. … There was bipartisan support to close it.”

From AP:

Obama’s plan faces resistance from Congress and has also been criticized by the Center for Constitutional Rights as offering “too little, too late.”

–Posted by Roisin Davis