Guantánamo Bay is still open. This week, pressure ramped up to close it

It was 22 years ago this week that the U.S. opened a military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks.

That prison remains open today.

It still holds 30 men, many of whom have never been criminally charged, and there has still been no 9/11 trial.

So this week, a group of nearly 100 advocacy organizations sent a letter to President Biden urging him to finally close the facility.

One of them is the Center for Victims of Torture. Its director of global policy and advocacy, Scott Roehm, talks to NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer about why the prison is still open, and what is happening with the long-awaited 9/11 trial.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Sacha Pfeiffer: Resistance to closing Guantánamo has generally been Republican-led, but that's fading the further away we get from 9/11. So why do you think the Biden administration hasn't made closing Gitmo more of a priority?

Scott Roehm: I think it's largely been a lack of courage and a lack of priority. There weren't nearly enough transfers out of Guantánamo. The administration released a handful of men earlier in the year, and then the transfers stopped. These are men that all of the agencies in the U.S. government with a significant national security function have agreed, unanimously, should be released. They no longer need to continue to be held. Their detention doesn't serve a national security purpose. In most cases, these decisions were made years ago.

Pfeiffer: We should note that these are often referred to as "forever prisoners" — people held in indefinite detention even when, as you said, they're sometimes cleared for release, but still are held because the administration is trying