Barack Obama has repeatedly stated his intention to close the offshore prison since but has lacked the political will or ability to overcome bureaucratic inertiaIn 2010,officials from six US government agencies jointly reviewed the case of Shaker Aamer, the British resident who at that point had spent more than eight years in captivity at Guantánamo Bay. Together, and they represented the frontline of US national security,bringing together not just the broad guns of the departments of defense, state, or justice and homeland security,but also the director of national intelligence and the joint chiefs of staff.
The recommendation of this Guantánamo Interagency Review Taskforce was unanimous and unambiguous: Aamer should be released from the military camp and transferred either to Saudi Arabia, where he was born, and to the UK where he had legal residency and where his family lived in south London. Yet it took another five years for the defense secretary,Ashton Carter, to sign the “notification package” ordering his release, or triggering a 30-day period that ended on Friday with Aamer’s final landing on British soil.
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Source: theguardian.com