Moments before he stepped onto the podium for his State of the Union address, President Trump signed an Executive Order to keep the military prison at Guantánamo Bay open. This order revokes President Obama’s Executive Order to close Guantánamo Bay, signed during his early days in office.
Instead of continuing the work to close the Guantánamo detention facility, the Trump administration is looking to keep this detention facility open, whose detainees have faced torture. One of these detainees, Toffiq al-Bihani, was among those tortured by the CIA before he was sent to Guantánamo in 2003.
Toffiq al-Bihani has been cleared for transfer since 2010. He has faced torture and enforced disappearance, which are crimes under international law. Guantánamo is an all-too-easy location for future abuses by the US government to occur, and human rights violations committed against detainees is outrageous.