Chronicle on Cuba - June 2008

Terrorism

June 14: US defence secretary Robert Gates has reaffirmed his view that the "war on terror" detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be closed but how to deal with terrorists still had to be decided. Gates declined to say what exactly should be done next until he has reviewed the 5-4 US Supreme Court ruling that found prisoners at the Guantanamo facility had the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. "I've often said, as I've told the president, and the secretary of state, we ought to close Guantanamo," Gates said at a news conference in Brussels at the end of a meeting of NATO defence ministers. "I think that despite the fact that in many respects Guantanamo is a state of the art prison now, early reports of abuses and so on unquestionably were a black eye for the United States," he said. "But how we deal with it, how we deal with terrorists who are trying to kill more Americans subsequent to the court's decision, is something we'll have to look at," he said. (AFP, 14/6/08)