President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year. With the stroke of a pen, Obama also ordered the immediate closure of secret CIA prisons overseas and directed all agencies, including the CIA, to abide by the Army Field Manual’s interrogation rules. Obama also nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001. Obama signed the executive orders at a ceremony attended by retired generals and admirals who had spoken out against torture.

President Obama: “In order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo and promptly to close the detention facility at Guantanamo, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interest of justice, I hereby order. And we then provide the process whereby Guantanamo will be closed no later than one year from now.”

Questions still remain over whether the CIA will continue to use secret interrogations techniques not authorized in the Army Field Manual. And the Obama administration hasn’t announced plans to close military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Thursday, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged Obama to review those prisons as well.

UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay: “I appeal to President Obama to also look into similar detention regimes, which have been set up or supported by the US government in Afghanistan and Iraq and ensure that those detainees have judicial review of their detention and their prospects of release or trial.”