WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- The U.S government must resolve the fate of detainees still at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
"Over recent months, U.S. authorities have allowed the Guantanamo detentions to become a political football, and the politics of fear to trump human rights," Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas Regional Program, said in a release.
President Barack Obama, during interviews with U.S. broadcast media Wednesday in Beijing, said his administration would miss a self-imposed deadline to close the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, facility by mid-January, acknowledging it was difficult to follow through on one of his first pledges as president, The New York Times reported.
Obama said he hoped to shut down the military detention facility sometime next year, but he did not set a new deadline.
Amnesty International has long called for the Guantanamo Bay detainees to be tried in an independent and impartial court -- not before a military commission -- or released.
"Now, as should have been the case from day one, the government should resolve these detentions by either bringing the detainees to fair trial or immediately releasing them," Lee said.
