At a White House news conference Tuesday, President Barack Obama said he will continue with efforts to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
The announcement follows a hunger strike amongst prisoners that began in March and has since worsened. Now, almost 100 detainees in Guantanamo Bay have joined the strike, on grounds of unfair treatment.
Forty additional Navy medical authorities have been sent to Cuba to deal with the strikers, some of whom were hospitalized for malnourishment.
"It needs to be closed," Obama said, standing before reporters in the White House press room. "I'm going to go back at this."
Part of President Obama's 2008 campaign included a promise to close the military-run prison, but he has come up against legal blocks from Congress that have barred him from doing so.
Legislators have put contingencies on military budget bills that don't allot funds for Guantanamo trials. Additionally, at the beginning of Obama's presidency, his administration came up against staunch opposition to a plan to move prisoners to a detention center in Illinois.
Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon told USA Today that's difficult for Congress to grant any permission to close Guantanamo when President Obama has given no other way out.
"The President faces bipartisan opposition to closing Guantanamo Bay's detention center because he has offered no alternative plan regarding the detainees there, nor a plan for future terrorist captures," he said.
President Obama rationalized that Guantanamo was a necessary establishment, especially immediately after the 9/11 attacks. But now, he said, the prison serves little purpose and it is time to shut the doors.
"The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop," the President said.
Watch the President's comments on Guantanamo Bay here.
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