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Guantanamo could become research center

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility is known to house dangerous criminals that are described as national threats to the United States Government. However, after Obama filed motions to finally close Guantanamo for good on February, there’s no mentioning of what will happen next to this detention facility in Cuba.

The proposal, made by biologist Joe Roman from the University of Vermont and law professor James Kraska at the U.S. Naval War College, sets to turn the Guantanamo Bay detention facility into a marine research center. Roman and Kraska’s proposal also includes the idea to make of this detention facility in Cuba, an international peace park.

The Guantanamo Bay detention facility is known to house dangerous criminals that are described as national threats to the United States Government. Photo credit: John Moore/Getty Images

The proposal was introduced by a group of scientists and published in the journal Science on Thursday. The proposition made by law professor James Kraska and conservation biologist Joe Roman intends to turn the Guantanamo Bay Naval base into a conservation area for the Cuban environmental habitat.

Although the idea of a peace park made out of a former detention facility known to house terrorists seems a little far-fetched, the facilities need a new purpose after being shut down. And the best way to flip a decayed facility like Guantanamo Bay is to turn it into something beneficial, as a marine research center.

The Obama administration has not responded to the proposal just yet, but it could be a smart move by the US President to not only achieve his promise to shut down the facility made in the 2008 campaign, but it would also serve to leave a sustainable program instead of a rotten and abandoned building.

Conservation biologist Joe Roman claims that Guantanamo could become the Woods Hole of the Caribbean, in reference to the famous U.S. ocean science center. The idea proposed on Thursday through the journal Science is set to create something sustainable and productive from a facility allegedly used as an underground prison and worse.

Guantanamo’s background check

The prison located in Cuba was opened in January 2002 under Bush administration in order to bring detainees from the Afghanistan War to the American naval base. The Guantanamo prison was under investigation and was presumed to be a place where torture of detainees took place regularly.

The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has not helped the United States advance its national security, said Obama in a press release from the Oval Office on February. Out of nearly 800 prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, more than 85% have been transferred abroad, according to a report from the Defense Department.

The Pentagon, which would hold no more than 60 detainees in each of its maximum-security prisons, has proposed only 13 potential sites on U.S. soil. The facilities would include seven existing prisons in Colorado, South Carolina and Kansas.

Source: The University of Vermont

Categories: Science
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