Guantánamo

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UN rights chief says U.S. must close Guantánamo

 
 

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African Navi Pillay, left, and the head of government of the Mexican Federal district, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, right, looks at a document during a ceremony on July 8, 2011 in Mexico City.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African Navi Pillay, left, and the head of government of the Mexican Federal district, Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, right, looks at a document during a ceremony on July 8, 2011 in Mexico City.
YURI CORTEZ / AFP/Getty Images

GENEVA (AP) – The U.N. human rights chief says the U.S. government must close the Guantánamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama promised a year ago.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says “the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained – indefinitely – in clear breach of international law.”

Obama pledged to shutter the U.S. Navy base prison in Cuba in his annual address to Congress last year.

Pillay said Monday – ahead of Obama’s next annual speech Tuesday – that she is deeply disappointed the U.S. government “has instead entrenched a system of arbitrary detention.”

Pillay said she also is “disturbed at the failure to ensure accountability for serious human rights violations, including torture, that took place.”

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