Washington, May 24 (RHC)-- Dozens of people have staged a protest outside the White House in Washington, DC, calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to fulfill his promise to shut down the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison.
 
Protesters from several groups -- including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, CODEPINK, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, and the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker -- came together on Friday outside the White House to express their anger at the continued operation of the illegal prison complex at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo.
 
The protest comes a year to the day Barack Obama repeated his campaign pledge of closing the notorious prison.  The protesters criticized the president's failure to keep his promise and argue that most detainees now at Guantanamo Bay will still be there when Obama leaves office in January 2017.
 
Out of the 779 prisoners held at the prison over the years, only seven men have been convicted and sentenced.  According to the British newspaper The Guardian, those charged and convicted of a war crime were lucky because they would have a chance to get out of Guantanamo while most of the prisoners who have been held there without a charge could spend the rest of their lives in prison.
 
The Guantanamo prison is shrouded in reports of torture and abuse.  In January, Amnesty International condemned the U.S. for its continued operation of the illegal prison.  It said the torture of detainees at the prison is a prime example of America's double standard on human rights.
 
According to the organizers of Friday's protests outside the White House, similar protests were also held in forty cities across seven countries during a global day of action for closing the prison.