President George W Bush declared publicly more than a year ago that he would like to close Guantanamo Bay and put the detainees on trial.

The White House took a long time to realise that shackled men in orange jumpsuits, force-fed hunger strikers and a series of judicial reverses was not good for its international image.

But the notorious internment camp on Cuba is a problem that the United States is finding impossible to either manage or discard.

Almost 400 detainees have been released since 2002 and returned to countries as diverse as Afghanistan and Australia, Britain and Tajikistan.

Those set free include a former Taleban minister, a Libyan said to be the source of the tainted intelligence that Iraq had obtained uranium and many who were effectively kidnapped for bounty in Pakistan.

There are around 380 men still incarcerated at Gitmo, including 80 who have been cleared for release by the military authorities but still remain locked up.

None of the 80 have been declared innocent of the allegations levelled against them, but the fact that they have been deemed fit for release suggests that it is accepted they no longer pose a security threat.

America faces several problems in releasing them. Many are natives of countries with poor human rights records who are likely to be tortured or ill-treated if they are returned there.

In a raft of cases the US is seeking to impose conditions on the return of some detainees — including demands that they be subjected to continuous monitoring or surveillance. A number of governments have refused to accept the returnees on that basis.

For example, the US wanted to return a number of Yemenis on the grounds that they remain detained in their homeland. But President Saleh of Yemen said he could not justify holding people without evidence.

Britain has adopted a typically curious approach to the problem. The Government has called for Guantanamo Bay to be closed but, at the same time, it refuses to speed that closure process by accepting the return of seven or eight British “residents” who are locked up there.

These men have all lived at some point and for varying periods of time in Britain. One of those, Jordanian-born Jamil el-Banna, has a wife and five British children living in London.

Whitehall argues that because they are not British citizens it cannot intervene on their behalf.

But this new policy of non-involvement with Guantanamo affairs has the potential to rebound on Britain. MI5 and MI6 are no longer able to send officials to Cuba to interview any of the inmates at Guantanamo.

This means Britain has no access to the one part of the Guantanamo project that is of most interest — the high value detainee programme.

The 14 men held under this regime have been transferred to Gitmo from CIA “ghost prisons” around the world and are all judged to be senior al-Qaeda operatives. The most recent arrival is Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, the architect of the 7/7 attacks and a series of terror plots against Britain.

Whatever happens to the rest of the Guantanamo camps, it is unlikely that his prison within a prison will be closed for a long time to come.

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