Karen Greenberg was quoted in an Aljazeera article about President Trump’s executive order to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open.
Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s School of Law, told Al Jazeera the “idea of institutionalising Guantanamo is wrong now, it was wrong in the past [and]it’s always going to be wrong”.
In this light, the Trump administration’s decision is “unfortunate and unnecessary”.
“The best you could say about it, would be that it was only meant symbolically to sort of rebuke or poke at yet another thing that President Obama did,” Greenberg said, referring to Obama’s promise to shutter the facility.
But she said “it means a lot more than that”: the move effectively takes away any doubt that the US has no intention to close Guantanamo and it is “as if to say, ‘It’s too difficult, period'”.
Trump’s executive order also states the US “may transport additional detainees” to Guantanamo “when lawful and necessary to protect the Nation”, a clause Greenberg said “is a dangerous part [of the order]because the ‘War on Terror’ seems to be an ever-expanding issue”.