The White House said on Friday that U.S. President Joe Biden aims to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects by the time he leaves office, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in a daily briefing.

"That certainly is the goal, and our intention," Psaki said, when asked by a reporter about the timeline for closing the prison. 

She said the administration was working through the National Security Council to "assess the current state of play that the Biden administration has – well, we've inherited from the previous administration."  

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In his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump expressed willingness to keep the Guantanamo prison open and "fill it with bad guys." The Republican retained this position once elected.   

However, some detainees were promised their release from Guantanamo under his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, who never succeeded in working out a compromise with Congress. Biden was the vice president during Obama's term.   
The military prison accommodates inmates linked to the U.S. "war on terror" including Pakistani Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the deadly September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.  

It still houses around 40 detainees, 26 of whom are considered too dangerous to be released, but legal proceedings drag on due to the complexity of their cases.

After 9/11, the U.S. Army, under the presidency of George W. Bush, quickly built the detention center on a naval base belonging to the United States at the eastern tip of Cuba, on a small enclave rented by the United States from Cuba since 1903. 

(With input from AFP, Reuters)