Leading article: Revelations that highlight a president's broken promise

Barack Obama is not the first US president to find himself held hostage to a campaign pledge that he has been unable to redeem in office. On the campaign trail, he promised to close the prison that had come to symbolise the most controversial aspect of President George Bush's "war on terror".

Aides to the then president-elect in January 2009 predicted that Mr Obama would issue an executive order declaring the imminent closure of the camp on his first day in office. Two years on, and ten years on from the 2001 bombings in New York, that pledge is unfulfilled – to the dismay of his most ardent supporters on the centre-left. 

Not only are 172 men still locked up in Guantanamo but all real movement to close the camp has been abandoned. Meanwhile, the release of more than 700 classified military documents obtained by WikiLeaks last year sheds new light on why many remaining prisoners have no prospect of being either released or tried, let alone tried before a civilian court, which was another key element of Mr Obama's now forgotten promise.

The latest leaks make it clearer than ever that several hundred men were incarcerated for years on evidence that would never have stood up in a court, either because it was vague or hopelessly tainted. It came either from witnesses who were known to be unreliable as a result of psychiatric problems, or who had been tortured, or who later admitted that they briefed against fellow prisoners to advance their own chances of early release.

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