Office charged with shutting Guantanamo Bay closes
The US has shut down the office of its special envoy charge with the closure of Guantanamo Bay, in a sign of the fading hopes of shutting the controversial jail. Daniel Fried, the special envoy in charge of the dossier, will now move to coordinate the State Department's sanctions policy, including for Iran and Syria, and his "former responsibilities will be 'assumed' by the office of the department's legal adviser," according to The New York Times. Mr Fried, a veteran diplomat and former ambassador to Poland, was appointed special envoy in May 2009, only months after President Barack Obama ordered the notorious jail at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to close.