The Obama Administration is committed to close the Guantanamo terrorist detention centre, according to the White House.
There had been no plan to transfer the Guantanamo inmates to their home country or to a third country, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
“We never had a plan to transfer anybody either to their home country or to a third country that we have reason to believe will present a security situation for us or for that country,” said Mr. Gibbs.
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced that no new Gitmo detainees would be transferred to Yemen.
The decision, he said, has been taken in view of the developments in the aftermath of the failed Christmas day bombing attempt.
“I think you heard the President say yesterday we are committed to close Guantanamo,” Mr. Gibbs said.
“In relating to Yemen, I think you heard John (Brennan, the Deputy National Security Advisor to the US President) say nobody was going to be transferred back that we did not believe that the Yemeni government could handle.”
“The determination was made that given the swift change in the security environment even over the last few weeks in Yemen caused the President and the Attorney General to agree that pausing any of those transfers was the right policy right now,” he said.
Mr. Obama in his speech on Tuesday enunciate clearly one of the explicit reasons mentioned in very early recruiting material from al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula was the existence of Guantanamo Bay.
“That having been said, as John and others have said on numerous occasions, we’re not going to make any decisions that we believe threaten the security of the country,” he said.
Soon after coming to power, Mr. Obama had ordered for the closer of Guantanamo in one year, but that goal is unlikely to be achieved.
No fresh date of its closer has been determined yet, Mr. Gibbs said.
