White House Protesters: Close Guantanamo

Local Editor

Dozens of protesters have converged on the White House on Friday, calling US President Barak Obama to close the notorious Guantanamo prison.

Protesters, representing International Organizations as - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, CODEPINK, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, and the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker - gathered outside the White House to demand US President to fulfill his promise to shut down Guantanamo Prison located in Cuba.

Nevertheless, only seven men out of 779 inmates in Guantanamo have been convicted and sentenced.
" Those charged and convicted of a war crime were lucky because they would have a chance to get out of Guantanamo while most of the prisoners who have been held there without a charge could spend the rest of their lives in prison," according to the Guardian newspaper.

Protesters stated that similar protests were also held in forty cities across seven countries during a global day of action for closing the prison.
On November 13, 2001 the former US President George W. Bush authorized the establishment of Guantanamo prison.

Activist and member with the Free Omar Khadr NOW Campaign, Michael Van Arragon said "We're here a year after Obama's failed promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay."

Canadian Press in a story published in the Toronto Star stated that, in 2002, at the age of 15, Khadr was captured and detained at Bagram and Guantanamo prisons for a decade.
" A US military commission sentenced Khadr to eight years beyond the dozen he'd already spent in Guantanamo Bay. It made no distinction between youth and adult punishment or between consecutive and concurrent sentences." it added.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team