The Guantanamo Bay prison on the island of Cuba has been centre-stage this week in the US, with President Barack Obama and former Vice-President Dick Cheney appearing in what NPR describes as “dramatic, back-to-back televised speeches” on the future of Guantanamo and the release earlier in 2009 of classified documents on the use of torture.

Obama announced in January he wanted to close the prison facility on the island of Cuba, but Senate Democrats voted Tuesday 19 May to withold funding for the closure, asking the White House to provide a more detailed plan. Republicans have criticized Obama’s announcement to close the prison by January 2010, saying they want to know what will be done with the remaining 240 inmates at the facility. Twelve US states to date have passed laws banning inmates on their soil. CNN, Reuters and a series of commentaries on Obama’s plan for closing the prison, from the New York Times

In another development, Ahmed Ghailani, a Tanzanian held at Guantanamo since 2004 in connection with the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, will be tried in a US federal court in New York. He becomes the first detainee from the prison camp to be accorded a civilian trial. BBC, The Standard (Kenya)

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