Share More Dark Truths From Guantanamo as Five Innocent Men Released

[Judi Lynn]

Share More Dark Truths From Guantanamo as Five Innocent Men Released
Wednesday 31 March 2010

by: Andy Worthington, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

After eight years imprisonment without charge or trial, five former Guantánamo prisoners are beginning new lives this week - two in Switzerland and three in Georgia. Their stories reveal, yet again, how Republican lawmakers and media pundits in the US, who have, in recent months, renewed their fear-filled attacks on those still held, are guilty of hyperbolic and unprincipled outbursts and, in addition, how these critics' attacks are damaging to the prospects of cleared men, seized by mistake, finding new homes in countries that, unlike the US, are prepared to offer them a chance to rebuild their shattered lives on a humanitarian basis.

All five men were cleared for release from Guantánamo on two or three separate occasions - through Bush-era military review boards, through the deliberations of an interagency task force established by President Obama and, in some cases, through successfully having their habeas corpus petitions granted by a US court. However, difficulties arose when it came to freeing them because they feared torture or other ill-treatment if returned to their home countries, and the US government (first under George W. Bush and now under Barack Obama) recognized its obligations under international treaties not to repatriate them, but to find other countries prepared to take them instead.

The fact that Georgia - the former Soviet satellite in the Caucasus - is the new home of three of these men and not the US, demonstrates another obstacle to the men's release. Had President Obama acted decisively last April, two Uighurs (Muslims from China's Xinjiang province, seized by mistake in December 2001) would have been freed in the US and others would undoubtedly have followed. However, when the president bowed to pressure from Republican critics and turned down a plan put forward by White House Counsel Greg Craig and backed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, which involved bringing the two men to live in the US, the job of Obama's Special Envoy Daniel Fried, who was charged with finding new homes for dozens of cleared prisoners from countries including Algeria, China, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, was made considerably more difficult.

America's allies had to overcome their obvious impulse - refusing to help unless the US also acknowledged its own mistakes by giving new homes to cleared prisoners - and it is a tribute to the governments of Switzerland and Georgia that they felt able to place humanitarian concerns above political pragmatism by accepting the men. Switzerland had already accepted an Uzbek ex-prisoner in January this year and Georgia now joins Switzerland in a distinguished club that also includes Albania, Belgium, Bermuda, France and Hungary, Ireland, Palau, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain. These countries have all shown up the US and other European countries, including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, which have turned their backs on the dozens of cleared prisoners who will languish in Guantánamo until new homes can be found for them.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/more-dark-truths-from-guantanamo-five-innocent-men-released58174

[Solly Mack]

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