What is the worst prison in the world? An opinion of Joseph B. Biden, J.C. Kissinger, and the War on Terror

The director of the Human Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. The views in this commentary are of her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

And yet, Guantanamo remains open. Former President Barack Obama, who made the most serious public commitment to close the prison and developed the clearest exit strategy, was stymied both by congressional action and by his own administration’s loss of nerve in the face of political headwinds. The first prisoners that the U.S. transferred to Gitmo were almost two decades ago, but it is not the only group of people trapped there. We have the cage as well.

For example, former President George W. Bush – who authorized the initial detention of prisoners there – called Guantanamo “a propaganda tool for our enemies and a distraction for our allies,” and said he wanted to close it before he left office. Henry Kissinger, who was Secretary of State, called the prison a stain on our national reputation.

The working group has joined a chorus that includes several secretaries of state, national security advisors, and chairmen of the Joint chiefs of staff in concluding that the military commission system to try prisoners at Gitmo is irredeemably flawed.

The costs of being stuck there are huge, particularly the loss of US moral authority and lack of closure for the worst terrorist attacks in US history. All this comes at a cost to the American taxpayers of about $540 million a year to maintain the prison. The improvised detention and trial experiment at what Donald Rumsfeld glibly called “the least worst” place to warehouse prisoners in the war on terror has been a moral, legal, strategic, and financial sinkhole for our country.

It is good to know that President Joe Biden is reenergizing the drive to close the island. He appointed a new envoy to negotiate host country arrangements for the prisoners cleared for transfer out of Gitmo in September. He has also signaled that his administration will not stand in the way of plea negotiations in the cases of the five 9/11 conspirators. Given the sclerotic military commission process, plea deals appear at this point to be the only viable path to resolving these cases and securing justice for the families of 9/11 victims.

The risk is manageable, at this time, as the closing the prison is a risk management exercise. We can escape from the prison with the help of the president.

The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee stated that the CNN report demonstrated that Iran was prepared to torture its own people in order to quell unrest.

In November, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) launched an independent investigation into Iran’s crackdown on a nationwide uprising that erupted in September over the death in detention of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini. The mission will collect evidence of abuse in the repression of the protests.

The findings of the UNHRC-established commission of inquiry on Syria were used in the prosecution of a ex-colonel in Germany for crimes against humanity.

More than three dozen secret jails, also known as “Black sites”, were identified by CNN in late February, many of which were inside government or Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities.

Among the most severe forms of torture detailed in those testimonies were electrocutions, removal of nails, lashings and beatings that resulted in scars and broken limbs, and sexual violence.

The findings paint a picture of a regime that meted out torture on an industrial scale to crush the uprising, which posed the biggest domestic threat to the clerical elite in decades.