WASHINGTON – The Pentagon announced on Saturday that it would discontinue its plan to offer coronavirus vaccines to detainees in Guantánamo Bay, reversing the course a few days after they said the vaccine would be administered to those who wanted it.
“No Guantanamo detainees have been vaccinated. We are interrupting the plan to move on, while reviewing force protection protocols. We remain committed to our obligations to keep our troops safe,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby in a statement. tweet.
Kirby’s statement came just over an hour after minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tweeted that President Joe Biden “told us he would have a plan to defeat the virus on day 1. He simply never told us that it would be to give the vaccine to terrorists before most Americans”.
Cuba’s naval base has 6,000 residents, including 1,500 American soldiers working in the prison, where 40 prisoners remain. By law, prisoners must receive all health care at the base and there is only one community hospital to serve the area.
Some public health experts and criminal justice advocates argued that incarcerated people should be at the top of the list of priorities for receiving the vaccine, as many are held in tight quarters and are in close contact with prison officials, creating conditions conducive to a generalized Covid-19 comes out.
It is not known how many people in Guantánamo were infected with Covid-19. The Pentagon in March 2020 banned commanders from publicly reporting new cases of coronavirus among their personnel, as cases increased worldwide.
The pandemic delayed military commission procedures in Guantánamo, including the joint death penalty trial for men accused of plotting the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, initially scheduled to begin on January 11, 2021.
Guantanamo Bay has hosted hundreds of prisoners of war since the September 11 attacks and lawmakers for years have struggled to close the prison, whose administration is expensive and has been a source of questions about human rights violations. President Joe Biden said during his campaign that he supported the closure of the detention center, but offered no concrete timeline or commitment to do so.
A group of former prisoners who were once detained in Guantánamo Bay wrote a letter to Biden in the New York Review of Books on Friday, asking him to close the facility.
“President Bush opened. President Obama promised to close it, but he did not. President Trump promised to keep it open. Now it is his turn to shape his legacy regarding Guantánamo,” they wrote.
