Free them or put them on trial. Thus urges a petition to President Barack Obama over the prisoners held at Guantanamo, jailed and in limbo for more than a decade. The petition launched by Guantanamo's former chief military prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis was signed by more than 145,500 people by Monday for the president to bring some kind of closure to the fate of the terror suspects at the US prison on the eastern tip of Cuba.

Guantanamo Bay prisoner Obaydullah says he is "losing all hope" after joining a widening hunger strike in February to protest his indefinite detention at the US military jail. In his declaration, signed on March 27 but made public Friday, the Afghan prisoner vowed that he and his fellow detainees "plan to remain on strike until we are treated with dignity" despite the difficulties and health consequences.

President Barack Obama may name a new envoy as a first step toward honoring his renewed pledge to close Guantanamo Bay, but the path to shuttering the "war on terror" camp seems as intractable as ever. With more than half of the inmates on a hunger strike, Obama said the situation was "not sustainable" in rare comments Tuesday on a jail that stained the US image and that he promised, and failed to close in his first term. A day later, the White House was under pressure to explain exactly how Obama planned to do things differently for the George W. Bush-era facility.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Tuesday renewed his pledge to close the prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the impediments that have thwarted him thus far remain.