Pentagon due to submit Guantanamo closure plan

Washington DC: Military officials are poised to submit to Congress a much-anticipated report on how to close the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, a spokesman said Monday.

Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the military would meet a Tuesday deadline to release the plan on how to shutter the controversial facility.

"We understand that the deadline`s tomorrow, and it`s our intent to meet it," Davis said.

The detention center at Guantanamo Bay was opened by then president George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Inmates were called "enemy combatants" and denied standard US legal rights, meaning many were held for years without charge or trial.

President Barack Obama has been trying to close Guantanamo since taking office in 2009, arguing the facility acts as a recruitment tool for jihadists and feeds into an anti-US narrative.

About 780 inmates have been held there since it opened in January 2002; there are now 91 inmates remaining.

The United States wants other countries to take those designated low risk. But about 50 are deemed too dangerous to ever be released. 

The Pentagon last year sent a team of experts to review US sites that could house those detainees following the closure of the prison.

Tuesday`s report is expected to contain details on how much it would cost to house the men at each site.

Locations considered include the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, South Carolina; Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, and a federal prison complex in Colorado that is already home to Egypt`s Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and "Unabomber" serial murderer Ted Kaczynsk