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Four years after U.S. officials began detaining "unlawful enemy combatants" at a camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, steady international calls to close the center have failed to budge Washington. The UN Committee Against Torture weighed in this week with a report on the issue. Opponents of the detention camp, where nearly 500 people are still held without formal charges, may have been hopeful after U.S. President George W. Bush recently told German television: "I very much would like to end Guantanamo; I very much would like to get people to a court." Bush said closing the camp depends on whether the Supreme Court decides that detainees will be tried in civilian courts or by military tribunals. That ruling is expected in June in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case, discussed in this CFR Backgrounder. 

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