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U.S. Refuses to Close Guantanamo

HeadlineJun 13, 2006

Meanwhile the Bush administration is once again rejecting calls to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison following the suicide of three men on Saturday.

  • State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack: “Look, we have no desire to be the world’s jailers. We look forward to the day at some point where it would close down but the fact of the matter is that right now it houses some very dangerous people who right now are not only a threat to American citizens but other people around the world.”

Meanwhile in Washington, the Center for Constitutional Rights held a press conference condemning the administration’s treatment of detainees at the military base.

  • Attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez: “It does seem that the administration will continue to try and put a spin on this when I think it’s very simple and very clear what happened. We are holding human beings in indefinite detention, with complete uncertainty about their fate, under conditions that are stressful and oppressive. There is a reason why our constitution ensures the rule of habeas corpus, there is a reason why the magna carter incorporates the rights to challenge imprisonment by the king and its because that kind of detention leads to the exact results we saw this weekend, a kind of desperation and futility that would make someone rather die that continue to be held like that.”
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