Guantanamo's stateless losing hope

[subsuelo]

When Ayman al-Shurafa was taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, few outside Chicago had heard of Barack Obama.

By the time Obama, a junior senator from Illinois, announced he was running for president in 2007, al-Shurafa, a Palestinian, had already spent five years in the jail and had been cleared for release by the administration of George Bush, the then-president.

When Obama became president almost two years later and said he would close the prison, 34-year-old al-Shurafa was still being held on the US naval base but should have been one of the first detainees to leave.

Although he had admitted to attending a training camp in Afghanistan, the Pentagon assessed that he posed no threat and should be released. But in the strange world of Guantanamo Bay, degrees of innocence and guilt are only part of the story.

Al-Shurafa's case helps to explain why, six months after ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay, Obama has made so little tangible progress to this end - only 11 of the 242 prisoners he inherited from the Bush administration have been released during his tenure.

Despite being born and raised in Saudi Arabia, al-Shurafa is Palestinian by nationality. His family and friends live in Jeddah, but the Saudi government has so far refused to allow his return from Guantanamo, saying he is not a Saudi national and has no residency rights in the country.

The Palestinians say he would be welcome in the Occupied Territories, but the Israelis will not allow him to enter.

Al-Shurafa has been rendered stateless by the stamp of Guantanamo, despite having never been convicted of a crime.

...

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/07/200972164045977914.html">AlJazeera - read more