The U.S. has transferred five detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Oman.
13 years ago - On January 11, 2012, the first detainees arrived in Cuba.
The White House has been moving toward releasing all those detainees deemed not a security threat, as part of a strategy of closing the detention center.
As our Washington correspondent Priscilla Huff reports, those who helped set up the military commissions to try the detainees now oppose the entire process.
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At its height, the detention center at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay Cuba held 774 prisoners.
Today, 13 years after it opened, there are just 122 - with another five released to Oman and Estonia.
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(SUPER: Morris Davis, Colonel, retired, Former Chief Prosector Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions)
"This has gone on for far too long. Guantanamo should never have opened to begin with, y'know it was an effort to avoid the law."
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Colonel Morris Davis was the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo Bay military commissions from 2005 to 2007.
Over the years...the process of military commissions has been challenged
with the U.S. Supreme Court granting the the detainees key legal rights in 2006 - with its ruling on the Hamdan versus Rumsfeld case.
Today, Colonel Davis believes the entire legal argument for keeping the remaining men at Guantanamo Bay should be questioned.
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(SUPER: Morris David, Colonel, Former Chief Prosector Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions)
"The government's argument has always been that under the law of war, we have the right to detain the enemy for the duration of the conflict and the courts have accepted that argument. Well, the conflict that the government cited is the war in Afghanistan which the President officially ended a couple of days ago."
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On December 31, 2014, the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan official ended, with Afghan forces taking over full responsibility for the security of that nation and the fight against the Taliban on Afghan soil.
Echoing President Obama's promise to shut the facility, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Martin Dempsey said last weekend, It's in America's national interest to close Guantanamo.
Over the last two months, the White House has been released detainees deemed not a security threat...something Thomas Wilner - who has defended some of the prisoners - wants to see continue.
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(SUPER: Thomas Wilner, Partner, Shearman & Sterling LLP, has defended detainees)
"The people who were there from the beginning We recognized as long ago as 2004 that they were not significant threats! We've got to dig into the facts and really deal with these issues and close the damn place, its disgraceful."
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Campaigners marked the 13th anniversary of the detention center with protests outside the White House - with participants wearing orange jumpsuits and black hoods.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantanamo Files.
He hopes that the White House will see not just the political cost and legal cost of keeping the detention center open....but also the economic cost of maintaining it for the 68 considered dangerous.
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(SUPER: Andy Worthington, Author, The Guantanamo Files)
"I believe at that point the president will be able to make the case more strongly than he has been able to to date to Congress that ... that it is ruinously expensive to keep Guantanamo open. To make the case as he always has done about how fundamentally wrong Guantanamo is on every basis and to move those men to the U.S. mainland."
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The very first commander of the detention center has highlighted in an opinion piece published in Politico Magazine,
the costs of keeping Guantanamo Bay open are far higher than shutting it.
it costs over $3 million each year to keep each detainee in Cuba...
but would only cost $78,000 per year to house them at a federal Super Max maximum security prision here in the United States.
Republican lawmakers dismiss claims that the White House is releasing low-risk prisoners
claiming as many as 30 percent attempt to re-engage in terrorism.
Senator Kelly Ayotte - a Republican from New Hampshire - wants to see the transfers stopped - especially after the tragic attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.
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(SUPER: Kelly Ayotte, US Senator R-NH)
"And its one thing to make a campaign promise, but if you look at the security situation that we are facing around the world right now, now is not the time to be emptying Guantanamo with no plan on how or where these individuals are going to go..."
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Strictly speaking, just 10 detainees are facing criminal charges, with another 23 referred for prosecution while 54 are approved for release...as long as countries like Estonia and Oman step up and offer them a home.
Priscilla Huff.....Washington
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