SIR – Why has Guantanamo prison dropped off the media’s radar despite President Obama’s pledge to close the place by January 2009?

It’s still open and right now up to 130 prisoners are on hunger strike.

Some of them have refused food for more than 50 days and are close to death so why the lack of press interest? Imagine if Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad openly set up a place where he said he’d stick people forever without charge, have them held in freezing cold metal cages in the open air and subject them to sleep deprivation, what an outcry there’d be.

However, the current silence on Guantanamo speaks volumes about the reality. The prison currently holds 166 people of whom only 36 may one day get a “military tribunal”. The rest will never be charged for lack of evidence but are still being held.

Isn’t it time that this blight on the conscience of the world is finally closed?

Max Hey, Fairway Grove, Bradford