Inside the Guantanamo detention camp

Saying it was damaging to U.S. interests to keep holding prisoners in legal limbo at Guantanamo, President Barack Obama renewed an old vow on 30 April 2013 to close the camp, where about 100 inmates are on hunger strike to protest against their years in detention without trial. Obama, who repeatedly pledged to close the camp when he was campaigning for a first term and after he first took office in 2009, put the blame on Congress for his failure to make good on his promise and said he would re-engage with lawmakers on the issue. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp was established in January 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees it had determined to be connected with opponents in the Global War on Terror. Current and former prisoners have complained of abuse and torture; and in a 2005 Amnesty International report the facility was called the "gulag of our times".

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