Biden ‘determined’ to close Guantanamo Bay in next 6 months

President Biden is “determined” to close the Guantánamo Bay prison before leaving office in January — the White House confirmed Thursday following the announcement of three plea deals for al-Qaida terrorists held at the military facility.

Biden, 81, played no role in the plea deal negotiations that took the death penalty off the table for the terrorists, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the White House claimed — despite the president’s professed goal of emptying the prison of its 30 remaining inmates.

“Does the president still plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison before he leaves office? Is there a realistic pathway to do that in the next six months?” a journalist asked at the regular White House briefing.

“That’s still something that the president wants to do and get done,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre replied.

“As far as a timeline, I don’t have anything for you here, but obviously this is something that he wanted to be done under his administration,” Jean-Pierre said.

“I just don’t have anything else to read out or preview at this time, but it is something that he’s determined to get done.”

The prison on the coast of Cuba was opened in 2002 to hold terrorism suspects seized by the US military and the CIA from Afghanistan and other countries in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The facility, chosen for its isolation on US-leased land in southern Cuba, became controversial for the slow process of legal proceedings for inmates, and tough interrogation tactics that critics described as torture.

Mohammed, who allegedly plotted the terror attacks that killed about 3,000 people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, was captured in Pakistan in 2003.

Two alleged co-conspirators, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, were caught that same year.

All three have accepted plea deals that’ll guarantee they’ll be sparred the death penalty — though it remains unclear where exactly they’ll serve out their life prison sentences.

Congress in 2018 sought to restrict the use of funds to transfer Mohammed specifically to the US mainland.

Amid an outcry from 9/11 victims’ families, who said the men deserved to stand trial and be executed, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan insisted that Biden didn’t have anything to do with the plea deal — despite publicly supporting the prison’s closure.

“Last night the White House received word that the convening authority had entered these pretrial agreements that had been negotiated by military prosecutors with KSM and some of the other 9/11 defendants, and we had no role in that process,” Sullivan said at the White House briefing.

“The president had no role. The vice president had no role. I had no role. The White House had no role. And we were informed yesterday — the same day that they went out publicly — that this pretrial agreement had been accepted by the convening authority.”

Sullivan said that “what the president did upon learning of that was direct his team to consult as appropriate with officials and lawyers at the Department of Defense on this matter. Those consultations are ongoing, and I have nothing more.”