Donald Trump signs legislation to keep Guantanamo Bay OPEN
PRESIDENT Donald Trump signed an order on Tuesday to keep open the military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay after his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, tried unsuccessfully to close the prison that has drawn international condemnation.
Trump: We're going to load Guantanamo Bay up with bad dudes
In his first State of the Union address to Congress, President Trump made clear he was fulfilling a campaign promise to keep operating the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the US military base at Guantanamo, Cuba.
“I just signed, prior to walking in, an order directing [Defence] Secretary [Jim] Mattis ... to re-examine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay,” President Trump said.
The executive order authorised the US military to add detainees and suggested the possibility that captured Islamic State militants could be sent there for the first time.
Obama signed an order on his first full day in office in 2009 ordering efforts to shutter Guantanamo within a year, but his plan was thwarted by mostly Republican opposition in Congress. Instead, his administration reduced the inmate population to 41 from 242 during his eight years in office.
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