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Why is it so difficult to close Guantanamo Bay?

It's been 20 years since the first prisoners arrived at the US naval base of Guantanamo Bay - a makeshift jail, called Camp X-Ray. They weren't designated as "prisoners of war" but were known as "enemy combatants". The worst of the worst, the administration called them. 

But despite three US presidents - including Joe Biden - vowing to close the detention centre, it remains open, and remains to its many critics, an affront to the idea of justice. Thirty-nine prisoners remain there, from the hundreds who have been detained over the decades.

Morris Davis is a retired US Air Force Colonel who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commission for two years from 2005. Why has Guantanamo proved so difficult to close?

Photo: American military police guard the first detainees at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in January 2002. Credit: US Navy/Getty Images

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