Obama Unable to Shut Down Guantanamo: Iranian MP
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A senior Iranian lawmaker said the Zionist regime’s lobby and the “arrogant network” in the US will not allow US President Barack Obama to fulfill his promise and close the Guantanamo prison.
Chairman of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi made the remark on Monday while addressing a ceremony held in Tehran to unveil a report on the United States’ human rights violations in 2013.
Boroujerdi stated that Obama had pledged in his election campaign to shut down the Guantanamo detention camp as president but failed to meet his promise when he entered the White House.
More than 150 detainees are still held at Guantanamo, most of them are held without charge or trial. The first detainees were brought there 12 years ago after being captured during America’s so-called War on Terror.
In 2013 the Obama administration was forced to re-focus its attention on Guantanamo Bay prison after the majority of detainees went on hunger strike. At its peak in July last year, 106 of the then 166 detainees were on hunger strike, with 45 of them being force-fed.
This hunger strike sparked a worldwide debate on the future of Guantanamo, pushing the Obama administration towards finding a solution to the long-lasting judicial entanglement.
The Iranian lawmaker also said Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Bagram base in Afghanistan are official US torture centers in the 21st century and “proof of this arrogant government’s abjection and abasement”.
He described the US administration as "the epitome of human rights violation" and said breaching human rights is “blended with the Americans’ arrogant nature”.
Enumerating US crimes and human rights violations, the lawmaker noted that the United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear bombs and said in their invasion of Iraq, which had no UN Security Council backing, American forces used chemical weapons and depleted uranium against Iraqi people.
He added that Washington wages wars and sells arms to maintain its huge military industries.
Boroujerdi further regretted that with such a record of human rights violations, the US uses the issue of human rights as a tool against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran's report on US human rights violations in 2013 features different aspects of human rights breaching by the US including violation of prisoners’ rights, breach of privacy, violation of the rights of minorities, breaches of immigrants’ rights, racial discrimination, racism in the US cultural, educational and judicial systems, violation of children rights, violation of freedom of speech, and sexual violence against women in American society.