Social activist actress Jagger slams Obama for GITMO closure failure

New York, Jan.12 (ANI): Nicaraguan-born social and human rights advocate and a former actress and fashion icon Bianca Jagger has criticized US President Barack Obama for failing to restore 'America's moral stature in the world.'

Speaking on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the arrival of prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, Jagger said that Obama had pledged to close the prison camp within a year in 2009, but was yet to do so.

She said that President Obama had electrified people throughout the world, particularly the human rights community, by using his second day in office to issue executive orders to close the Guantánamo detention center and end torture and secret detention.

The Huffington Post quoted Jagger, as saying: "What has followed has been an infinitely depressing departure from this promise and what it represented-that the USA would try to repair some of the damage of George Bush's assault on the international rule of law, and human rights."

"Having famously promised Guantánamo's closure by January 2010, not only has Obama's administration broken this promise, it has now apparently reconciled itself to the dismal prospect of the camp remaining open for years to come-as signalled by the president's signing into law-albeit reluctantly-of the National Defense Authorization Act at the weekend," Jagger added.

Presently 173 so-called "enemy combatants" still languish at Guantánamo Bay, pending trial or release (of a total of 775 people brought to the camp since its inception).

Both former detainees and Red Cross inspectors have spoken of the harrowing use of torture at that facility, including sleep deprivation, truth drugs and beatings.

Amnesty International has called the conditions at Guantánamo "a human rights scandal"' (ANI)