Norton Applauds President’s Announcement to Continue Work to Close Guantanamo Bay and Says the Buck Now Should Stop with Congress

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) released the following statement regarding President Obama’s announcement today of his plan for closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.

“I commend the President for not letting the Congress rest on the ghost town that Guantanamo Bay has become. As we pay $450 million annually for that near-empty facility, we must ask, why is the strongest nation in the world afraid to house detainees accused of terrorism within our borders? I have visited Guantanamo three times. Each time it has been remarkable to see how successful the administration has been in bringing the total number of detainees down from nearly 800 to 91, with 35 now cleared for transfer to allied nations, and 10 undergoing military trials. Will my Republican colleagues keep Guantanamo open if the administration gets us down to a prisoner or two, or at least to the ten that are scheduled for military trails? This is not a rhetorical question. The United States is in the unprecedented position of now holding detainees without trail, perhaps indefinitely. I do not underestimate the difficulty of prosecuting detainees who could face the death penalty or life in prison. What is unacceptable is for the United States to hold detainees for nearly 15 years without trial in a country that guarantees a fair trial even to terrorists. The administration has been very resourceful in reducing the number of detainees, but Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is wrong when he says the president has ‘passed the buck’ to Congress. The buck stops in Congress. It is Congress that has said no to allowing the few remaining detainees to be transferred to maximum-security prisons, which are prepared to receive them here, until they can be prosecuted. The almost instantaneous criticism claiming that the president’s plan lacks detail need only be addressed with a hearing, if necessary. We have allowed Guantanamo to become a larger-than-life symbol in the battle against terrorism, showing our country’s open flaunting of our own principles by holding detainees at Guantanamo without trial.”