 More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because US officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to a report in the Washington Post on Sunday.
| Boy howdy that Ethel makes a great chili ... |
The report says that since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released on Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as US officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions, the report says. The WP report says the delays illustrate how much harder it will be to empty the prison at Guantanamo than it was to fill it after it opened in January 2002 to detain fighters captured in Afghanistan and terrorism suspects captured overseas.
It said that in many cases, the prisonersÂ’ countries do not want them back. Yemen, for instance, has balked at accepting some of the 106 Yemeni nationals at Guantanamo by challenging the legality of their citizenship.
| "They ain't Yemenis! They're .. um .. something else. Somalis maybe?" |
The report says that US laws that prevent the deportation of people to countries where they could face torture or other human rights abuses, as in the case of 17 Chinese Muslim separatists who have been cleared for release but fear they could be executed for political reasons if returned to China were a major obstacle in the deportation of the detainees. Compounding the problem are persistent refusals by the US, its European allies and other countries to grant asylum to prisoners who are stateless or have no place to go, it adds.
| Since they're terrorists and furriners to boot, it would seem logical not to give them asylum, nor give them access to our civilian courts, but what do I know? |
“In general, most countries simply do not want to help,” said John B Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Countries believe this is not their problem. They think they didn’t contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they don’t have to be part of the solution.”
“The holdup is a mystery to me, frankly,” said Katznelson, senior counsel for Reprieve, a British legal defense fund. “If the US has cleared these people and they want to go back, I don’t understand why they can’t just put them on a plane.”
| Because you need a landing clearance. You're counsel to what, again? |
The 82 cleared prisoners who remain stuck in limbo come from 16 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, according to defence attorneys who have received official notification of their clientsÂ’ status. The 17 Chinese Muslim separatists make up the largest contingent. Other countries with multiple prisoners awaiting release include Afghanistan, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Yemen. |