An update on the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention facility

CAROL ROSENBERG, BENJAMIN WITTES & DAVID FRAKT

At least 31 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center have joined a hunger strike to protest the conditions and their indefinite detainment, according to some of the detainees’ lawyers. When President Obama entered office in 2008, he promised to shut down Guantanamo Bay within a year, but more than four years later, the prison is still open and there are no signs that it will close anytime soon.  In fact, the Pentagon has requested $49 million to construct a new prison building for terror detainees at Guantanamo. This hour, we’ll reexamine Guantanamo Bay prison camp. First, CAROL ROSENBERG, with McClatchy News and the Miami Herald, gives us an update on the hunger strikes and the detainee trials. Then we debate the future of the detention facility with BENJAMIN WITTES, of the Brookings Institution, and DAVID FRAKT from the University of Pittsburgh Law School, who  represented two Guantanamo detainees.