Obama’s “Humane” Guantánamo Is A Bitter Joke

Obama’s “Humane” Guantánamo Is A Bitter Joke

23.2.09
Andy Worthington

The “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the majority of the remaining 241 prisoners have been held for seven years without charge or trial, “complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Conventions,” according to a government official who spoke to the New York Times after reading an 85-page report prepared for President Obama by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations.

The report was commissioned by the President, on his second day in office, as part of an Executive Order dealing with the closure of Guantánamo. In it, he directed defense secretary Robert Gates to ensure that the Guantánamo prisoners were being held in conditions that comply with the Geneva Conventions regarding the humane treatment of prisoners, adding, “Such review shall be completed within 30 days and any necessary corrections implemented immediately thereafter.”

According to the government official, the report’s only recommendations for improving conditions at Guantánamo are “to increase social contact among the 16 prisoners described by the Bush administration as ‘high-value detainees,’” who are held in seclusion in Camp 7, and to allow more communal recreation time for prisoners in Camps 5 and 6.

The former, modeled on the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Indiana, and used, initially at least, to house non-compliant prisoners and those regarded as being of significant intelligence value, was long regarded as the most oppressive of Guantánamo’s cell blocks (outside of the specific isolation blocks, including the notorious Camp Echo, where a small number of prisoners are held in permanent solitary confinement), but it soon lost its reputation after Camp 6 opened in December 2006. Modeled on a maximum-security prison in Lenawee County, Michigan, Camp 6 is one of Guantánamo’s busier blocks, and is used to house prisoners of no particular significance, as well as others who have been cleared for release, even though their confinement involves incarceration in solid-walled, windowless cells for up to 23 hours a day.

Improvements at Guantánamo

Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that the authorities at Guantánamo had “recently increased detainees’ opportunities for recreation and social interaction,” and her comments were endorsed by Candace Gorman, the lawyer for two prisoners, who described on her website, The Guantánamo Blog, a visit to her client Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi on February 4:

[I]n camp 6, they have now started “movie night.” Imagine my surprise when Mr. al-Ghizzawi mentioned a movie he was watching the week before my arrival. I actually stopped him in mid-thought and said, “Excuse me, movie night? When did that start?” He then explained that they have had movie nights once a week for a couple of weeks.

I of course asked if there was anything else that was new and he told me that the four cages that were the outdoor rec [recreation] area for Camp 6 were torn down and now there was one big cage and one little cage. Now eight men can go out together in the big cage and the small cage is for prisoners on punishment. How sad it is that this is a major improvement, but it is. It gives the men a chance to socialize, a chance to be a part of humanity, instead of being stuck in total isolation.

The last change he told me about was the opening of a new rec area, completely outside of Camp 6, a rec area where they can actually see the mountains in the distance, the trees, the sky, the sun (for four hours once every four or five days). The Camp 6 rec area is confined to the courtyard of Camp 6, so it is surrounded by the concrete facility that is several stories tall. All they could see in that outdoor area was the sand floor and the concrete building.

However, although these are significant changes, allowing the men, as Gorman observed, “a chance to socialize, a chance to be a part of humanity, instead of being stuck in total isolation,” it completely fails to address other outstanding problems with the treatment of the prisoners, which cannot be swept away by allowing them some limited respite from the prolonged isolation that has driven many of them to suffer severe mental health problems.

Profound isolation

Consider, for example, how the Pentagon continues to defend holding men in profound isolation, who, for the most, have never been charged with a crime, and who, in all cases, have never been convicted in a court of law. As the Times described it, the Pentagon “has long insisted that none of the men are held in solitary confinement. Military officials instead have said the prisoners are held in ‘single-occupancy cells.’” This is the kind of semantic maneuvering that typified the Bush administration, and it is, of course, brazenly dishonest. Although the report apparently concedes that “some detainees have great difficulty communicating from cell to cell,” the truth is that they are held, almost permanently, in a state of chronic isolation, which cannot be wished away by describing it as detention in a “single-occupancy cell,” and cannot be effectively mitigated by allowing the prisoners a few hours’ escape to watch a movie or chat with their fellow inmates.

James Cohen, who visited Guantánamo in February 2007, soon after Camp 6 opened, explained that conditions were worse than in any Supermax prison on the US mainland. He described a system of almost complete isolation, and pointed out that, “although the prison was built with communal areas, such as those where US maximum-security prison inmates are permitted to spend their time during the day, the prisoners of Camp 6 are not permitted access to these areas.” He contrasted this with the conditions in maximum-security prisons on the mainland, where “it is common for inmates to have jobs, to eat communally, to receive visits from family and friends and to have social contact with other inmates.”

For some first-hand perspective on the profound isolation of the cells in Camp 6, this is how I described the experiences of the Bahraini prisoner Isa al-Murbati (who was released in August 2007), as related just before his release by his lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan:

Colangelo-Bryan reported that the guards in Camp 6 “run large fans,” which “sound like jet engines and prevent captives from communicating and deprive them of sleep,” and explained, “In his cell, Isa cannot see other detainees and he can barely communicate with them. He told me that it is possible to speak with his brothers through an air conditioning vent in his cell. However, to reach the vent, Isa has to stand on his cement bunk. Most often if he tries to talk to others this way, guards tell him to get off his bunk. They also threaten to take away the few items that Isa has in his cell if he does not follow their directions,” which “forces him to crouch to talk under the door, for which he is also berated if caught.”

In May 2008, Sabin Willett, who represents the 17 Uighurs in Guantánamo who have been cleared of being “enemy combatants,” but who are still held because no other country has been found to accept them (and the United States will not take them), gave the following testimony about two of his clients to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight:

You try talking to a man who only wants to see the sun. You will never forget the experience … In his cell, Huzaifa Parhat can crouch at the door, and yell through the crack at the bottom. The fellow in the next cell may respond, or he might be curled in the fetal position, staring at the wall. Another Uighur told us of the voices in his head. The voices were getting the better of him. His foot was tapping on the floor. I don’t know what’s happened to him: he doesn’t come out of the cell to see us anymore.

Other reports were blunter still. “I am in my tomb,” Abdulli Feghoul, an Algerian released last August, explained. Another prisoner said, “I look alive, but actually I’m dead.”

The illegality of force-feeding prisoners

More worrying still are Adm. Walsh’s opinions about the hunger strike that has been raging at Guantánamo since the start of the year, and which involves at least one-sixth of the prison’s total population, who are being force-fed against their will, using restraint chairs and tubes inserted into the stomach through the nose.

As medical practitioners have made clear for decades, and as the Lancet explained in an editorial last September, force-feeding mentally competent prisoners has no place in civilized society. The editors, recognizing that “Refusing to eat may be a prisoner’s only weapon for making demands, to get access to justice or to protest against their conditions,” stated, “Prisoners or detainees who choose to become hunger strikers are entitled, worldwide, to the highest clinical standards of care available.” They added, pointedly, “Force-feeding has no place in that care,” and also explained, “Force-feeding used to be common in many countries, and is still used in Guantánamo Bay, despite the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, and the fact it is banned by the World Medical Association (WMA) in Declarations, to which the American Medical Association is a signatory.”

Despite this, Adm. Walsh’s report turns the medical community’s opinion on its head. According to the Washington Post, the report concludes that force-feeding prisoners in Guantánamo is actually “in compliance with the Geneva Conventions’ mandate that the lives of prisoners must be preserved.”

Presumably, Adm. Walsh also believes that any method used to coerce reluctant prisoners to be force-fed is also justified by the Geneva Conventions. Two weeks ago, I reported on a visit to Binyam Mohamed (the British torture victim who has just been released from Guantánamo), by his military defense attorney, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, who noted:

At least 50 people are on hunger strike, with 20 on the critical list, according to Binyam. The JTF [Joint Task Force] are not commenting because they do not want the public to know what is going on. Binyam has witnessed people being forcibly extracted from their cell. Swat teams in police gear come in and take the person out; if they resist, they are force-fed and then beaten. Binyam has seen this and has not witnessed this before. Guantánamo Bay is in the grip of a mass hunger strike and the numbers are growing; things are worsening.

It is so bad that there are not enough chairs to strap them down and force-feed them for a two- or three-hour period to digest food through a feeding tube. Because there are not enough chairs the guards are having to force-feed them in shifts. After Binyam saw a nearby inmate being beaten it scared him and he decided he was not going to resist. He thought, “I don’t want to be beat, injured or killed.” Given his health situation, one good blow could be fatal.

Random violence at Guantánamo

What is particularly disturbing about this report is not just the mass force-feeding, but the violence used by the “Swat teams” — the armored five-man teams, known as the Extreme Reaction Force (ERF), or the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) — who have been used throughout Guantánamo’s history to quell even the most minor infractions of the rules with appalling brutality.

Moreover, the very latest report from Guantánamo suggests not only that the ERF teams are dealing heavy-handedly with the hunger strikers, but also that they are regularly involved in random assaults, as numerous prisoners have stated over the years, which have led to fractures and broken limbs, and, in two cases, to the loss of an eye, and damage to an Egyptian prisoner’s back that was so severe that he will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

In a report on the medical examinations of Binyam Mohamed that were undertaken last week by British doctors who were allowed to visit him to ascertain if he was well enough to be flown back to the UK, the Observer stated that Mohamed “will return to Britain suffering from a huge range of injuries after being beaten by US guards right up to the point of his departure from Guantánamo.” During the medical examinations, he “was found to be suffering from bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments as well as profound emotional and psychological problems which have been exacerbated by the refusal of Guantánamo’s guards to give him counseling.”

Binyam’s civilian lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said that his client has been beaten dozens of times “for no reason,” with “the most recent abuse occurring during recent weeks,” and Lt. Col. Bradley added, “He has been severely beaten. Sometimes I don’t like to think about it because my country is behind all this.”

A whitewash?

Clearly, the Guantánamo described by the British doctors who visited Binyam Mohamed last week is not the same as that envisaged by Adm. Walsh. Is this, then, a deliberate whitewash? Probably not. Like all official reports, Adm. Walsh’s report was not based on detailed, fly-on-the-wall observation of the conditions at Guantánamo, but on other reports submitted up the chain of command, in which the kind of brutality described — and suffered — by Binyam Mohamed simply does not register. Nevertheless, it will, presumably, be read as though it provides a true picture of the prison, even though what it leaves unsaid would drive anyone who truly believed in the humane treatment of the prisoners to fly out to Guantánamo immediately and personally direct an overhaul of the prison operations that, once and for all, did away with the casual brutality that is built into the fabric of the place, and that has dominated its malign history for the last seven years.

Speaking of the early days of Guantánamo, Asif Iqbal, a British prisoner who was released in 2004, explained how several guards told him they had been briefed that the prisoners were “wild animals,” who “would kill them with our toothbrushes at the first opportunity, that we were all members of al-Qaeda and that we had killed women and children indiscriminately.” That was seven years ago, of course, but I very much doubt that new guards arriving for their tour of duty at Guantánamo are now being told that the status of the prisoners is unknown, and that they should be regarded as innocent men until proven guilty in a court of law. Instead, I strongly suspect that the Bush administration’s myth of Guantánamo — as the repository of “the worst of the worst” — lingers on throughout the chain of command at the prison, essentially unchallenged, and still promoted virulently in the right-wing media, and, occasionally, in the liberal media too.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

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Free the Uighurs (Editorial)

Free the Uighurs
It's time to untie the legal knot keeping 17 Chinese Muslim dissidents at Guantanamo.
February 23, 2009

Abetting the unfairness of the U.S. treatment of inmates at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, a federal appeals court has ruled that the government may continue to imprison 17 Chinese Muslims even though it no longer considers them enemy combatants. Fortunately, the Obama administration has the authority to cut through the legal knot created by the decision and release the prisoners and allow them to be resettled in the United States

The detainees are Uighurs, a minority of Turkic origin living in western China. They were taken to Guantanamo in 2002 after being captured in Pakistan, where they had relocated after receiving firearms training in Afghanistan related, they said, to their resistance to Chinese oppression. Once it was clear that their continued imprisonment was unnecessary, the Bush administration tried to persuade some nation other than China -- where they might have faced persecution -- to accept them, but that task was complicated by the reluctance of several countries to alienate Beijing. Meanwhile, the Uighurs languish in what passes for luxury accommodations at Guantanamo.

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A federal judge ruled in October that, given the government's failure to relocate them, the Uighurs must be released and allowed to remain in the United States. The government appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and last week the court decided that the judiciary couldn't approve the release because immigration decisions are the preserve of Congress and the president. Sympathy for the Uighurs' long confinement, Senior Judge Arthur Raymond Randolph wrote for the three-judge panel, isn't "a legal basis for upsetting settled law and overriding the prerogatives of the political branches."

Judge Judith W. Rogers, while concluding that the lower court acted prematurely in ordering the Uighurs' release, rejected Randolph's assertion that courts have no power to order that aliens be allowed to remain in this country. Alluding to a 2008 Supreme Court decision granting Guantanamo inmates the right to challenge their confinement by seeking writs of habeas corpus, Rogers insisted that "the power to grant the writ means the power to order release." The implication was that if the U.S. couldn't safely transfer non-dangerous detainees to another country, they must be given their freedom in this one.

Actually, the law isn't that clear. In its 2008 ruling, the high court stopped short of requiring that a successful habeas corpus petition result in a prisoner's release, let alone his remaining in the United States.

The justices might consider that issue in the future, but even under the appeals court decision, there is a way to redress this injustice. President Obama, who has been adamant about ending abuses at Guantanamo, can order Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. to grant political asylum to the 17 Uighur detainees. That would accomplish what the appeals court refused to order: just compensation for their ordeal.

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U.S., China Debate Over Uighur Gitmo Detainees

U.S., China Debate Over Uighur Gitmo Detainees

by Anthony Kuhn




Gent Shkullaku

This May 2006 photo shows two Chinese Uighur Muslims at the Albanian National Center for Refugees in Tirana. They had been released from Guantanamo Bay prison camp earlier that month. AFP/Getty Images



Morning Edition, February 20, 2009 · Efforts by President Barack Obama's administration to close down the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay came under more pressure Wednesday, as a federal appeals court overturned a district court ruling that would have released 17 Chinese Muslim detainees into the United States.

The 17 men are ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who inhabit parts of China bordering on Central Asia. Their plight exposes deep political differences between the U.S. and China about counterterrorism: China considers the men terrorists and has warned other countries against harboring them.

Wednesday's ruling by the federal appeals court said it was up to the executive branch — not the judicial — to decide whether the Uighurs could stay in the U.S.

The Uighurs' supporters say this gives the Obama administration an opportunity to set an important precedent in the resettlement of detainees. It would also be a small step, supporters say, in making up for the Uighurs' seven years of wrongful imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay.

In 2004 and 2005, Guantanamo detainees went before military tribunals to determine whether the detainees were enemy combatants. One of the Uighurs, a man named Hassan Anvar, explained in a written statement to the tribunal why he went to a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan before being captured and handed over to the U.S.

"I went there so I could train to fight against the Chinese, not against the Americans," Anvar said. "I have no reason to fight against the U.S."

Most of the Uighurs had similar explanations. They were either fleeing or resisting Chinese government repression in their homeland in China's northwest Xinjiang province. At most, they said, they had a few hours of training on an AK-47 rifle.

It was this explanation and a lack of other evidence that finally convinced the U.S. government that the Uighurs were, in official parlance, "no longer enemy combatants."

Beijing: Detainees Are Anti-China Terrorists

Li Wei is a counterterrorism expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a government think tank in Beijing. He has studied the transcripts of the tribunal hearings, and he says the U.S. decision smacks of a double standard.

"What would the American government think if China sheltered people who threatened America's national security? They would probably see it as a provocation towards the U.S.," he says.

Li says the men are all members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, which Beijing and Washington have listed as a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Critics say the U.S. agreed to list ETIM as a terrorist group in order to secure Beijing's acquiescence to its invasion of Iraq. Lawyers representing the Uighurs say this was also the U.S. government's motivation in allowing Chinese interrogators to question the Uighurs in Guantanamo.

The U.S. will probably ignore Beijing's request to send the Uighurs back to China, for fear they might be imprisoned and tortured there.

"What is completely laughable is that the Americans have already tortured detainees at Guantanamo," says Li, "but then they say that these detainees might be tortured if returned to other countries."

Uighurs: Fight For Freedom From Authoritarianism

That the U.S. may be willing to harbor men who intended to fight China says a lot about the mistrust and political differences between the two nations, and the tentative nature of their cooperation on counterterrorism.

Gardner Bovingdon is an expert on the Uighurs at Indiana University in Bloomington. He says that Uighur political views run the gamut from Islamism to nationalism, peaceful to violent resistance, and autonomy to independence. But Beijing commonly lumps all of these views under its definition of terrorism.

"The war on terror dramatically changed the playing field for anti-state movements around the world, because it provided an opportunity for even very oppressive governments to label anti-state movements of any sort as terrorist movements," he says.

Alim Seytoff, a former Uighur official in Xinjiang, is now secretary general of the Uighur American Association.

"We are one of those peoples who became terrorists for demanding our rights from the authoritarian Chinese government," he says.

His group portrays Uighurs in a way that appeals to American concepts of "freedom fighters" and minority rights.

"We expect American support on this side, to put more pressure on the Chinese government so that the Chinese government will respect our culture, our language, our way of life, and also respect the so-called Uighur autonomy," Seytoff says.

Seytoff notes that the plight of the Uighurs is similar to that of China's Tibetan minority, but with several key differences. One is that the Tibetans are Buddhists, while the Uighurs are Muslims, which has increased post-Sept. 11 suspicions of associations with terrorism. The other is that while India and Nepal have given shelter to Tibetan refugees, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other Central Asian nations have repatriated Uighurs to China, where some have been executed.

Economics, Geopolitics Override Other Concerns

Some Uighurs have hoped that the U.S. might intervene in Xinjiang the way it helped Albanians in Kosovo a decade ago.

But Bovingdon says U.S. economic and geopolitical interests in China outweigh any such possibility.

"The executive, I will venture to say, will never do anything to put pressure on China actually to change the autonomy regime in Xinjiang, and it will certainly never do anything like what the United States did in Kosovo," he says.

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Free the Uighurs (Editorial)

Free the Uighurs
They lose one in court. They should win in the White House.




AFEDERAL appeals court has handed the Obama administration an opportunity to reverse some of the damage done by disastrous Bush administration anti-terrorism policies. President Obama should act with all deliberate speed.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled yesterday that a lower-court judge erred last year when he ordered 17 Chinese Uighurs held at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, freed and released into the United States. The Uighurs are a Muslim minority of western China with no animus toward the United States; these 17 were picked up in Pakistan. There was no question that the Uighurs deserved their freedom; even the Bush administration, after a resounding rebuke by the D.C. federal appeals court, ultimately acknowledged that it lacked any legal basis for continuing to hold them as enemy combatants.

But the administration could not send the Uighurs back to China for fear that the men would be mistreated or even tortured there; no third country would accept them, and the Bush administration stubbornly refused to admit them. An understandably frustrated Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered in October that the detainees be brought to the United States and released here. This week, the appeals court concluded that the judge lacked the legal authority to do that. Quoting the late Justice Felix Frankfurter, the appeals panel said that the prerogative to allow individuals into the country rests solely with the political branches and is "wholly outside the concern and competence of the Judiciary."


This reversal places the Obama administration in a position of strength. The president should use his authority to bring a measure of justice to the 17 detainees.

Many U.S. allies balked at taking the Uighurs for fear of angering China, which made no secret of its displeasure that Uighur separatists it considers terrorists could find shelter in third countries. The Obama administration should repudiate the violent means favored by some affiliated with the separatist movement. But there is no evidence that any of the 17 in detention have had a hand in such violence. Also galling to allies was U.S. resistance to accepting one or more of the detainees into this country. The Bush administration was considering such a move before it left office but never took action. Mr. Obama should.

The International Uighur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation, a well-regarded organization based in Washington, has vouched for Huzaifa Parhat, the lead plaintiff in the Uighur matter, and offered to facilitate his transition into the country. Mr. Obama could pave the way by granting Mr. Parhat asylum -- a power that clearly rests with the executive. Such a move could go a long way toward persuading other countries to open their doors, too, to these and other Guantanamo Bay detainees.

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Obama visit to Canada puts spotlight on Guantanamo prisoners

Obama visit to Canada puts spotlight on Guantanamo prisoners
By eNews 2.0 Staff
12:17, February 18th 2009

Montreal - Human rights
and church groups in Canada are hoping that US President Barack Obama would raise the issue of Guantanamo prisoners with Prime Minister Stephen Harper Thursday during his six-hour visit to Ottawa.

The Obama administration is already pushing Europe to take in some of the inmates expected to be released after Obama signalled his intention to review all cases and close down the US military prison in Cuba within the year.

In an open letter sent to Harper Tuesday, Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch, pleaded with Canada to also take in some of the detainees.

"Human Rights Watch recognizes that the United States created the problem of Guantanamo and has the primary responsibility for closing it down," she wrote.

But Mariner noted that the United States was not likely to take in all of the estimated 245 detainees - either for trial or resettlement. Her appeal concerned about 60 detainees - from Algeria, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Russia, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Uzbekistan - who have expressed fear of torture or persecution if returned to their home countries.

Canada is the only Western country that still has a citizen at Guantanamo, and human rights groups want Harper's government to seek repatriation of Omar Khadr, 22, who was 15 when arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 on charges of killing a US Special Forces medic.

In a separate action, Canadian church groups were applying to Canada's federal government to sponsor five Guantanamo detainees as refugees.

Anwar Hassan, a Chinese Uighur, has been sponsored by a group of United Church congregations in Toronto. The Catholic Diocese of Montreal has applied to sponsor two other Uighurs whose identities were being kept secret for fear of reprisals against their families by Chinese authorities.

The Anglican Diocese of Montreal has applied for sponsorship of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian national who cannot return to Algeria "due to a credible fear that he would be tortured or abused," Mariner wrote. Ameziane lived in Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec for five years and has a brother in Canada.

A fifth Guantanamo detainee, Maassoum Abdah Mouhammad, 37, a Syrian Kurd, has found backing from a United Church congregation in Toronto, the Canadian Council for Refugees said. He was captured in Pakistan in 2001.

Human rights groups were also pressing the Harper government to accept all 17 Chinese Muslim Uighur detainees, whom the Pentagon said it believes are no longer a threat but does not want to return them to China for fears of retribution.

Mehmet Tohti, a Canadian Uighur activist, noted in an interview with CanWest News that Canada came close to accepting the Uighurs in 2006 but backed off for fear of reprisals from China over a separate case not linked to Guantanamo that it was discussing with Beijing at the time. That case involved Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and ethnic Uighur who was arrested in Uzbekistan and extradited to China despite travelling on a Canadian passport.

Canada's efforts to free Celil failed, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism charges in 2007.

Tohti told CanWest News that the bid to bring the Uighurs to Canada has been revived, in part because there is a feeling that Canada has nothing more to lose.

Moreover, permitting them to come to Canada would send a signal of Canada's willingness to cooperate with the Obama administration, Tohti told CanWest News.


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Sweden accepts ex-Guantanamo man

Sweden accepts ex-Guantanamo man

Adel Hakimjan

Mr Hakimjan says he was sold to US authorities by Pakistani farmers

Sweden has agreed to give asylum to a Chinese Muslim man who was held at Guantanamo Bay for almost five years.

The migration court accepted that Adel Hakimjan, from China's Uighur minority, was not a terrorist and granted him permanent residency as a refugee.

There are still 17 Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay. They refuse to return to China because they fear persecution there.

Activists welcomed Sweden's move and urged other countries to follow suit.

Zachary Katznelson, legal director of UK-based rights group Reprieve, said Britain and Sweden had led the way in accepting former detainees.

"We hope this is the first step for countries across Europe in accepting the men from Guantanamo who cannot be returned to their home countries," he said.

Humanitarian concerns

The 17 Uighurs still being held at Guantanamo have all been cleared for release, but the US cannot find any country willing to take them.

Beijing has labelled them "terror suspects" and said it "strongly opposes" any country taking them in.

Kauser, Adel Hakimjan's sister
Mr Hakimjan's sister Kauser had not seen her brother in a decade

The authorities in China accuse some of them of being members of the East Turkestan Independence Movement - a Muslim separatist organisation Beijing says uses terrorist tactics.

Mr Hakimjan says he fled persecution in China in 1999 intending to travel to Turkey to find work.

But after the US invasion of Afghanistan, he claims he was sold to the US authorities by Pakistani farmers for about $5,000 (£3,500).

In 2006 he was finally released along with four other Uighurs. They went to Albania because it was the only country willing to accept them.

According to Swedish newspaper The Local, he filed an application for asylum in Sweden after taking part in a conference there in late 2007.

Initially his application was turned down under what is known as the first country of asylum principle - he had already been granted asylum in Albania - and he was due to be sent back there.

But he appealed on the grounds that his sister - his only living relative outside China - lives in Sweden.

Migration Judge Carl-Otto Schele said Mr Hakimjan's family connections and humanitarian concerns had contributed to the court's decision to overturn the deportation order.

He said the court had found "sufficiently compelling reasons to make an exception from the first country of asylum principle and grant him permanent residence as a refugee".

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Alienated in Xinjiang

Alienated in Xinjiang

Joshua Kurlantzick, National Post Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Related Topics



Uighur Muslim worshipers attend an early afternoon prayer session at the Kashgar Idgah mosque in Xinjiang province.Nir Elias, ReutersUighur Muslim worshipers attend an early afternoon prayer session at the Kashgar Idgah mosque in Xinjiang province.

In October, in a landmark decision, a U. S. federal judge ordered the White House to release 17 men, Muslim Uighurs from China, from Guantanamo Bay into the U. S. For six years, after they were swept up while studying in Afghanistan, the U. S. had held them at Guantanamo, though they'd long ago been cleared of being "enemy combatants." If released to China, they could be treated as dissidents and tortured or killed, and Washington had thus far failed to find another nation to take them.

The decision quickly met both cheers and fears. Among human rights advocates, the release proved a great victory, since the men clearly were not terrorists yet were suffering in prison camp. For its part, the Bush administration quickly warned the decision could allow actual hardcore militants at Guantanamo to also demand to be freed to the U. S. The White House obtained an emergency stay of the Uighurs' release and appealed the decision, though it remains unclear what President Obama, who has vowed to close Guantanamo Bay, plans to do with them.

But inside Xinjiang itself, the vast western region of China home to most Uighurs, a Muslim people ethnically close to the Turkic nations of Central Asia, virtually no one would have heard this news anyway. For while eastern China develops into a land of factories, fast cars and five-dollar lattes, far-western Xinjiang, a land more reminiscent of the Middle East than the Middle Kingdom, remains stuck in the totalitarian China of the past. While China becomes freer, in Xinjiang the heavy hand of the Chinese state still dominates people's lives, even controlling their personal religious beliefs -- and actually sparking local anger and, potentially, terrorism China long has feared.

In many ways, Xinjiang towns like Kashgar, a historic trading post near the border with Central Asia, barely resemble China. For centuries, Xinjiang, a landmass larger than much of Western Europe, was more closely tied to Central Asia. The Uighurs even had an independent state in the early 20th century. Today, in the historic central square of Kashgar, Uighur men still look West, rather than East to Beijing, for their cues; as the call of the mosque rings out, they congregate in back alleys, chewing over Iranian-style nan flat breads and haggling over hand-woven rugs.

Most Uighurs also have little interaction with their Chinese peers -- Kashgar itself is essentially divided into Uighur and Chinese areas. "I didn't really know any Chinese [students] in high school," one Uighur girl told me in Kashgar, though her classes were nearly half Chinese. "The only time the boys would meet them was when they fought."

These fights are hardly unique. For years, Uighurs have simmered against rule by Beijing. In the early-1990s, this anger exploded into large-scale street protests in several Uighur cities. Worried, China launched new policies in an attempt to better integrate Xinjiang into the rest of the country.

But Beijing's policies designed to pacify Xinjiang have backfired. In the past decade, as part of a multi-billion-dollar campaign called "Develop the West," China has encouraged vast domestic and foreign investment in Xinjiang and other western provinces, while building a modern rail and road network through the province.

Today, the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi looks like a bizarre combination of modern-day Denver and a medieval town. Against the backdrop of vast plains, new hotels and neon-lit skyscrapers now dominate Urumqi's downtown. In another part of the city, next to a new supermarket selling imported cheese and coffee, Uighurs trade handmade pots and sheep's head soup off the back of donkey carts.

Develop the West, unfortunately, has not benefited many Uighurs. As part of the program, the government has used a range of incentives to encourage westward migration by Han Chinese, who staff the new construction projects sprawling across the arid moonscape of Xinjiang's vast deserts. While Uighurs once made up over 90% of the province's population, today they comprise less than half, according to several estimates.

Now, Chinese traders and migrant workers dominate much of the economy of cities like Urumqi, even dressing up like Uighurs to appeal to Chinese tourists, who come for a glimpse of their "Old West" like Americans visiting the frontier in the 19th century. On the dusty ring roads surrounding the city, Uighur beggars sleep in alleys or stop motorists for tiny bills. According to one study by the Asian Development Bank, Xinjiang has the worst income inequality of any province in China -- a significant feat, given that supposedly "communist" China now boasts income inequality rivaling some of the most stratified Latin American nations.

Westward migration and construction also has damaged Xinjiang's fragile, arid environment, making life even tougher for local farmers trying to grow grapes and the sweet local Hami melons famed across China. Indeed, a study of Xinjiang's environmental woes by the NGO Human Rights in China found drying-up lakes, destroyed water reservoirs and other catastrophes. A recent petroleum boom in Xinjiang -- local gas production has more than doubled since 2000 -- will probably make these pollution problems far worse.

The local government also practices a subtle form of discrimination. Though Beijing reserves some government-linked jobs for Uighurs, people throughout Xinjiang told me that, at higher levels, all major positions are given only to ethnic Chinese. One study, by the Washington-based Congressional-Executive Commission on China, found that one of the organs of the local government in Xinjiang reserved 800 out of 840 positions for ethnic Chinese.

Unlike in other parts of China, where rules on personal freedom became relaxed over the past decade, in Xinjiang Beijing has retained draconian Mao-era controls. Fearing that Uighur anger will turn into radical Islam, despite no history of radicalism in the region -- many Uighurs I met downed cheap local alcohol, mixing it with soda or ice -- Beijing tightly monitors and restricts prayer. At mosques in the province, Uighurs told me, Beijing closely watches and often handpicks imams. Unlike in other parts of China, government workers in Xinjiang are not allowed to practise their religion.

According to one comprehensive report on Xinjiang by Human Rights Watch, Chinese security forces often arrest Uighur activists -- even though they have no extremist religious links -- torture them and even kill them, sometimes in public executions more reminiscent of the Taliban than modern Chinese cities like Beijing. In recent months, Beijing even has enacted new laws limiting Uighurs' ability to teach Islam to children.

China's strategy has only made the Uighurs more alienated. With the influx of Chinese migrants, Uighur small businesses in Xinjiang cities are failing, and the petroleum boom has resulted in few local hires and little revenue sent back to the province. New construction in towns like Kashgar has decimated old Uighur homes, mud-brick buildings with maze-like interior courtyards. On one visit to Kashgar, I wandered through the older, Uighur section of town, only to find many of the adobe-like homes marked for destruction. The next time I returned, most of the old courtyard homes were gone.

In some ways, the White House under George W. Bush, while publicly expressing support for the Uighurs' rights, actually helped Beijing repress them. To enlist China's support in the global war on terror, in 2002 the White House agreed to list an obscure Uighur organization, ETIM, on the State Department's roll of global terrorist networks, alongside such real threats as al-Qaeda. Beijing began using the U. S. action as pretext to enact even tighter controls in Xinjiang.

And when the Uighurs first arrived at Guantanamo, the Bush administration allowed Chinese intelligence officials to question them, according to transcripts of the Uighurs' military tribunals that I obtained--even though the State Department has repeatedly criticized Chinese intelligence for its harsh treatment of detainees. By locking them in Guantanamo, the administration essentially branded the men as terrorists, whether or not they were actually guilty --a decision that only made it harder to find any country to take them as refugees.

Ironically, after years of falsely seeing terrorism in every Uighur protest, today China may actually face a real terror threat. During the first week of the Beijing Olympics, militants launched a series of attacks in Xinjiang. In the most stunning demonstration, one group of militants allegedly rammed a bus into a police post in Kashgar and set off explosives before jumping out and stabbing the police, killing 16 people. Then, militants bombed areas of Kuqa, another town in Xinjiang.

Unfortunately, after failing to pacify Xinjiang when the region faced no terror threat, Beijing now has no idea how to combat real terror. Cracking skulls has not allowed Chinese forces to gain access to terror cells -- one reason why even Chinese officials admit they know little about Uighur militant organizations that may be forming. Indeed, Beijing's repression actually may be creating what it long has feared -- real, well-organized Uighur militant groups, which clearly did not exist in the past.

jkurlantzick@ceip.org - Joshua Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy and author of Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World

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Written testimony of Amy Reger, researcher at the UAA/UHRP, at the CECC

Written testimony of Amy Reger, researcher at the UAA/UHRP, at the CECC panel entitled "Human Rights in Xinjiang: Recent Developments



CECC Roundtable- February 13, 2008
Human Rights in Xinjiang: Recent Developments

Amy Reger
Researcher
Uyghur American Association/Uyghur Human Rights Project

During this week’s Universal Periodic Review of China at the UN, a member of the Chinese delegation asserted that there is no ethnic conflict in the People’s Republic of China. Chinese ambassador Li Baodong emphasized what he called “preferential policies” for Uyghurs and other minority nationalities, citing lower score requirements for university entrance exams. According to the Chinese delegation, the only discontent that exists among Uyghurs is sown by hostile foreign forces aiming to split China- and this discontent does not represent the happy majority.

Unfortunately, the reality for Uyghurs in the PRC is much different than the Chinese delegation’s rhetoric would have us believe. It is hard to reconcile these remarks with security clampdowns that have been ongoing in East Turkestan (also known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) in the past year, and a human rights situation for Uyghurs that is more severe than it has been in many years. The year 2008 was one of disappointment for those who hoped that the Olympics might expand freedoms for Uyghurs.

Underlining the PRC’s massive campaign against Uyghurs in 2008 was a rise in reported arrests for terrorism, extremism and other state security charges in East Turkestan. According to an official Chinese newspaper report, nearly 1,300 people were arrested in East Turkestan on state security crimes in 2008, marking a steep increase over previous years. The 2008 figures marked a very sharp increase over 2007, which saw only 742 people arrested on state security crimes throughout the entire PRC. Under Chinese law, individuals can be prosecuted for “endangering state security” if they are believed to have engaged in subversion, “splittism”, and “illegally providing state secrets to overseas entities,” all charges that are of a highly subjective nature in the PRC.

The PRC government has undertaken a fierce campaign of repression in East Turkestan since the Olympic Games period, when a series of violent attacks took place in and around the cities of Kashgar and Kucha. Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan announced a “life or death struggle” in East Turkestan on August 14, as well as a hardening of measures designed to manage Uyghur issues.

One of these measures, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, was the deployment of around 200,000 public security officers and armed police to East Turkestan to “prevent terrorist attacks” in the post-Olympic period. News reports have indicated the implementation of intensified ideological campaigns throughout the region in subsequent months.

While PRC authorities claim the security measures are aimed at punishing individuals involved in the violent attacks that took place during the Olympics period, the scope of the crackdown represents a broad, far-reaching campaign of intimidation and fear aimed at the Uyghur community.

Security measures carried out in 2008 targeted large numbers of Uyghur civilians, including many not suspected of involvement in any crime, in contravention of both Chinese law and international law. Particularly in the period leading up to and during the Olympics, UHRP noted a widespread clampdown among Uyghurs and a corresponding rise in arrests and detentions. These included the arrests of more than 1,000 individuals in security sweeps in the cities of Kashgar and Kucha, and the arrest of 160 Uyghur children, aged 8 to 14 years old, for participating in “illegal religious activities”. Authorities also used the tactic of detaining family members and associates of alleged attackers in an attempt to bring in suspects.

Emerging evidence has undermined the basis for the PRC’s government’s repression in East Turkestan. Chinese government officials accused a number of Uyghurs of conducting the attacks in the Kashgar and Kucha areas, adding that the suspects had received substantial assistance from international terror groups. However, no evidence has ever been produced to support the allegations of international assistance in the attacks.

A September 29 New York Times article cast doubt on Chinese government claims about the deadliest of the attacks, in which 16 people reportedly died in Kashgar. Independent photographs suggest that events did not occur as the Chinese government claims. The photographs show men in police uniforms carrying out the attack against other policemen, casting doubt on Chinese government claims that a vegetable seller and a taxi driver were responsible.

In the first half of 2008, the PRC government issued a series of specific Olympics-related terrorism claims, without providing evidence to support its accusations. These included an alleged plot by a young Uyghur woman to blow up or crash an airplane on its way to Beijing on March 7, and the arrest of some 45 people in April on suspicion of planning to kidnap athletes and carry out suicide bomb attacks to sabotage the Olympics.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, PRC authorities have used the “war on terror” as a pretext for cracking down on religious and political dissent in the region. Tens of thousands of Uyghurs are believed to have been detained in the years since 2001, and hundreds are believed to have been executed. Individuals caught up in this campaign include Tohti Tunyaz, a PhD scholar who was released this week from prison after serving an 11-year sentence for conducting historical research in East Turkestan deemed subversive by government officials, and Nurmemet Yasin, a young Uyghur poet and intellectual who was imprisoned for writing an allegorical story that was viewed as separatist.

Uyghurs in East Turkestan suffer a broad scope of abuses to their civil, political, economic and social rights, including the fierce suppression of their religion, the use of the legal system as a tool of repression against Uyghurs who voice discontent with the government; PRC government support of the influx of huge numbers of Han Chinese economic migrants into East Turkestan; the forced transfer of young Uyghur women to work in poor conditions in eastern China; discrimination in hiring practices; unequal access healthcare services; and the elimination of Uyghur language schools under the current “bilingual education” policy.

“Bilingual” education in East Turkestan has evolved in an increasingly repressive political environment, as one aspect of a government-driven project to assimilate

Uyghurs by attacking and diluting their culture. It was conceived around the time of the founding of the post-Soviet Central Asian states in 1991, a turning point in the PRC’s view of East Turkestan, when the government began to become obsessed with “security” and “stability” in the region. Drives to expand “bilingual education have paralleled heightened campaigns to promote security and battle separatism. For instance, in 2004, the year in which a particularly harsh “strike hard, extreme pressure” campaign aimed at repressing “the three evils” of “separatism, extremism, and terrorism” resulted in the arrest of hundreds of Uyghurs, the rate at which “bilingual” education was eliminating Uyghur from East Turkestan’s schools increased dramatically.

A recent Xinhua news article described the policy as aiming “to encourage Xinjiang native teachers to teach both languages as a way to safeguard culture and promote the national standard.” According to Chinese government propaganda, “bilingual education” is being put into place throughout East Turkestan to improve educational and employment opportunities for Uyghur children. One of the major problems with this type of justification is that “bilingual education” is not “bilingual” at all, but rather monolingual. Another situation that challenges the Chinese government’s official assertions regarding its motivations of providing a truly bilingual education is the removal of Uyghur children from their cultural environment and their placement into Chinese-language “Xinjiang classes” located in 12 inland Chinese cities. This program has not been well-received among Uyghurs in East Turkestan, who view “Xinjiang classes” as an attempt to Sinify young Uyghurs, while there exists no parallel effort to educate young Han Chinese students in the Uyghur language and culture. A third challenge to the official portrayal of the “bilingual education” program lies in the relative lack of access to English-language instruction for Uyghur students at the high school and university level. Uyghur high school students who study at “minkaomin” schools (schools in which they receive Uyghur-language instruction) are not given any English-language instruction, while English-language instruction is widespread at “minkaohan” schools (schools in which courses are all taught in Chinese). Uyghur university students are required to study Chinese as their second language, and not English.

The “bilingual education” policy has been pursued for the past decade, but with increasing intensity since 2002. Past policies were more egalitarian and allowed Uyghur parents more of a choice in their children’s languages of instruction. Over the past seven years, government efforts at eliminating Uyghur language schools have accelerated dramatically, as compulsory Chinese language education has been expanded at every educational level and every township in East Turkestan. The ultimate goal of “bilingual” education appears to be to replace Uyghur language instruction with Chinese language instruction in all areas of East Turkestan, and to phase out the use of spoken Uyghur among the young Uyghur population.

Since 2002, with the exception of Uyghur languages and literature, classes at Xinjiang University have been taught solely in Chinese, virtually removing Uyghur as a language of instruction at the region’s most prestigious university. Local governments have committed to eliminating Uyghur language instruction, even in areas with large majority Uyghur populations. “Bilingual education” was implemented in high schools, middle schools and elementary schools, and in 2005, the “bilingual” education push was expanded into East Turkestan’s preschools.

At least one official newspaper reported that the number of students in “bilingual education classes” in East Turkestan grew from 5,533 students in 1995 to 294,000 in 2007, and the number of schools offering “bilingual classes” grew from 220 in 1995 to 8,788 in 2007. Official sources reported recently that within the next five years, the state would provide free training to 11,264 bilingual pre-school teachers, and within the next six years, the XUAR would recruit around 16,000 teachers to supplement the current pool of bilingual primary school teachers. Xinhua reported that since 2003, China has invested 130 million yuan, or 19 million U.S. dollars, to train bilingual teachers for elementary and high schools. Xinhua also reported that there were 18,000 “bilingual teachers”, 5,000 bilingual classes and 150,000 bilingual pupils in East Turkestan in 2008.

The bilingual teachers who are set to be trained in the next several years will almost certainly be drawn from the Han Chinese population, and many Uyghur teachers who cannot pass stringent language tests may be expected to lose their jobs. Many Uyghur teachers throughout East Turkestan have already been fired from their jobs, and many others have been forced to completely stop teaching their students in Uyghur and use only Chinese, even if all of the students are Uyghurs.

Remarks by Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan at the National Party Congress in March 2008 indicate that provincial authorities, with the support of the central government, plan to invest 3.7 billion yuan in order to implement “bilingual education” programs in 85% of the region’s kindergartens in the next three to five years.

As the Han population has increased, Han individuals have also received a greater share of the economic benefits from East Turkestan’s growth, including economic and employment opportunities not available to Uyghurs. While the Chinese government asserts that “bilingual education” will provide ethnic Uyghurs with the Mandarin language skills necessary to succeed in China’s competitive job market, many Uyghur graduates who are fluent in Mandarin Chinese report facing employment challenges due to rampant ethnic discrimination among employers. As one former Uyghur teacher recalled, when he traveled with his Chinese-speaking Uyghur students to job fairs, they observed signs flatly stating ‘we don’t want minority people’.

The program of the “Xinjiang classes” mentioned above was established in inland

Chinese cities in 1997. “Xinjiang classes” remove top minority students in East Turkestan from their cultural environment and enroll them in classes with Chinese language instruction in high schools in large inland Chinese cities. Parents of such students report being pressured into sending their children.

Official media have quoted Xinjiang Party Secretary Wang Lequan as saying that the chief goal of “Xinjiang classes” is “political thought training”, not academic preparation, and other government officials have described the program as a way to “deepen national feelings” and “strengthen correct political attitudes” as part of a “long term important strategic policy decision… to protect the unity of the motherland and safeguard the nation’s long and peaceful order”.

In some of these schools speaking Uyghur is prohibited, even in student dormitories, where pupils are watched by an on-site monitor. Children from one “Xinjiang class” in Qingdao were forbidden to communicate in Uyghur, even when visited by an officially approved ethnic Uyghur journalist. By 2006, “Xinjiang classes” had been expanded from 12 to 26 Chinese cities and had a total enrollment of over ten thousand students.

By forcing Uyghur children to study in a language other than their mother tongue, the PRC government is in clear violation of its own laws and agreements, including Article 4 of the PRC’s Constitution, Compulsory Education Law and Ethnic Regional Autonomy Law. The PRC is also a signatory to the International Covenant on

Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which guarantee minorities protection of their language rights. In addition, the PRC’s “bilingual education” policy, as it is being implemented, serves to increase tensions between Han Chinese and Uyghurs in East Turkestan.

The PRC should end its current policy of eliminating Uyghur language education from East Turkestan and, at a minimum, return to the policy of allowing for both Uyghur and Chinese language education systems. “Bilingual education” will work only if authorities support schools in which both Uyghur and Chinese are recognized as important regional languages and serious academic classes are offered in both languages. Government support of the Uyghur language would both improve ethnic relations and contribute to economic growth in East Turkestan. Many observers have noted that language issues play a large role in the ethnic tensions of the region. A commitment to Uyghur language on the part of the government would ultimately contribute to the goal of stability by easing an area of serious Uyghur discontent.

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Closing Guantanamo

Closing Guantanamo

Author:
Greg Bruno, Staff Writer

February 12, 2009


Introduction

On his second full day in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order calling for the closure of the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. White House officials say the move is part of an effort to repair America's image abroad and will include assurances that the United States does not torture. "We will uphold the rights of those who we bring to justice," Vice President Joe Biden told European leaders in Germany in February 2009. "And we will close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay." The order has been met with praise from many lawmakers and human rights advocates, though recently departed U.S. officials have voiced skepticism. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with Politico, called Guantanamo a "necessary" facility that, if closed, would put Americans in danger and increase the recidivism rate of terrorists.

For some Guantanamo inmates, "we are going to have to give them some kind of residency.” -- Noah Feldman, CFR adjunct senior fellow

But Obama's departure from the policy of the Bush administration poses a string of legal and security issues--from how to charge inmates, to how to safely release those no longer deemed a threat--that will test his deadline of January 22, 2010, as the date for Guantanamo's closure. "The public debate has really shifted from the issue of whether to close Guantanamo, to how," says Matthew Waxman, a CFR adjunct senior fellow and former deputy secretary of defense for detainee affairs in the Bush administration. The how questions, he says, are more difficult, but "in many ways more consequential."

The Guantanamo Inmates: Who Are They?

As many as 800 prisoners have passed through the Guantanamo prison camp since its inception in 2002; about 250 remain. The majority of these prisoners were captured in Afghanistan or along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the early U.S.-led efforts to shut down safe havens linked to terrorists who plotted the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. Of those, more than one-third are Yemeni nationals, though the facility holds prisoners from thirty countries, including Algeria, China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Canada, according to an analysis of military documents by the New York Times. Alleged charges range from suspected support to Taliban and militant organizations, to serving as a security guard for Osama bin Laden.

The inmates fall into three distinct legal categories (PDF), legal experts with the U.S. Congressional Research Service conclude in a January 2009 assessment: so-called enemy combatants held to prevent them from returning to the battlefield; enemy combatants who are pending or likely to face criminal charges for terrorist activity; and prisoners who have been cleared for transfer or release to a foreign country but remain in U.S. custody because of concerns they may be mistreated upon transfer. Each one of these categories carries specific legal issues the Obama administration will be forced to contend with before deciding inmates' fates, experts say.
The Guantanamo Inmates: How to Try Them

The first step to closing the camp will be to determine how many of the inmates can actually be charged with a crime, and experts say determining that has a number of components. For one, U.S. officials will have to decide which inmates can be charged with an identifiable crime, such as conspiring to wage an attack. Once that list is made, authorities will then have to wade through evidence to identify which cases to bring forward. Finally, the government must make determinations on which cases have evidence that is admissible, "i.e., did you get it by waterboarding somebody, or is it fourth-party hearsay," says Feldman. If, after answering all these questions, U.S. authorities decide to pursue charges, the Obama administration will have to determine where to try them. The following are the options most often mentioned:

* Military Commission: Such commissions were created to try "unlawful enemy combatants" and legalized under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. In particular this system sought to limit detainees' ability to challenge their detention via habeas corpus petitions (a ruling that was later overturned); allow hearsay evidence into trial; and keep the death penalty as an option. Approximately twenty detainees are currently facing charges before these commissions, according to the Congressional Research Service. Some legal scholars and human rights activists have criticized them as unconstitutional.

* Military Court-Martial: While court-martial proceedings have not been used to try detainees, legal experts say the Obama administration would have the authority to charge suspects under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Some, including legal experts with the Congressional Research Service, suggest the current UCMJ structure might run counter to constitutional protections such as the right to a speedy trial.

* Federal Civilian Court: Obama has called for an examination of whether detainees could be prosecuted in federal civilian courts, an option some legal advocates have pushed for years. A September 2008 assessment (PDF) by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says federal courts have a proven track record in trying international terrorism cases: 145 convictions since 2001, versus just two for Guantanamo military commissions. Yet even this option has potential legal hurdles, experts say, notably statute of limitation concerns. Concerns about hearsay evidence and coerced evidence gathered during detention could also complicate future proceedings. A top Bush administration official told the Washington Post in January 2009 that she refused to recommend charges for a Saudi national accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks because of concern evidence was gathered during torture. CFR's Waxman says the Obama administration "is likely to break from the Bush administration" and pursue the federal court option.

* National Security Court: Lastly, some legal experts have backed the creation of a new hybrid court combining elements of civilian and military systems. A Wall Street Journal editorial says such a system would "allow the military to avoid compromising intelligence sources and methods, as well as admit intelligence gathered under battlefield conditions." Georgetown Law professor Neal K. Katyal, who has been tapped to serve as a principal deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, says while such a system must be crafted with caution, it may be the best option. But Deborah Colson of Human Rights First warns (NYT) that such a system would ensure "fewer due process protections than those guaranteed in ordinary criminal courts," and would create a "state-side replica of the Guantanamo legal regime."

The Guantanamo Inmates: Where to Send Them

President Obama's order states that persons in detention at Guantanamo at the time of closure "shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third country, or transferred to another United States detention facility in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States." The order also calls for review of individual cases to assess whether charges will be forthcoming, and how to proceed. Making good on executive intent will take creative legal solutions, experts say. Most legal scholars believe the eventual solution will incorporate a mixture of the three scenarios described below, though each option carries significant legal landmines:

* Transfers Abroad. The majority of prisoners that have already passed through Guantanamo were transferred to third countries for continued detention or eventual release. Most of those went to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, according to a December 2008 analysis by the Brookings Institution (PDF). But while sending inmates abroad, either to their home country or a third country that agrees that take them, may be the United States' preferred option for detainees who remain, international law could prevent the United States from doing so in some cases. Under Article 3 of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (to which the U.S. is a signatory) it is illegal to "expel, return, or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." The United States has been in negotiations with Yemen to accept inmates who are Yemeni nationals, but negotiations have broken down over concerns detainees could be tortured. Revelations that former inmates returned to violence in Yemen is also likely to complicate plans for Guantanamo's closure (NYT). In December 2008, Portugal offered to take some inmates off U.S. hands, and since then France, Spain, and Sweden have expressed willingness. But other nations have voiced reluctance (Deutsche Welle).

* Transfers to U.S. Soil. Given the legal obstacles to relocating hard-to-place inmates abroad, most experts believe a portion of the camp's population will be transferred to U.S. soil. But this option, too, will present a number of challenges. Political skirmishes are likely to emerge in legislative districts where inmate transfers are proposed; Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) says he will "keep up the fight" (AP) in his state's efforts to prevent Washington from using the military brig at Fort Leavenworth. There are also immigration issues to consider. Experts say noncitizen detainees transferred to the United States may have different rights under immigration law than they did in Guantanamo. Some scholars say the Immigration and Nationality Act forbids such transfers; the law bars entry of aliens suspected of terrorist-related activities. And while legal work-arounds are possible, others note loopholes could open the door for detainees to apply for asylum once in the United States. Yet as CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Daniel B. Prieto notes, federal prisons already hold a number of international terrorists, including Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Mohamed Salameh, convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.
* Release: In cases where detainees are not expected to be charged and are no longer deemed a threat to the United States, release might be an option. This could mean handing over prisoners to home countries. Yet in cases where returning inmates could open them to possible torture, the United States might opt to release them domestically. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor and CFR adjunct senior fellow, says top candidates for this option include Yusef Abbas and sixteen other Chinese Uighur Muslims cleared for release in October 2008 (NYT) but who remain in U.S. custody. "We've ascertained they are not dangerous, but nobody will take them except for China," where the United States fears they might be tortured, Feldman says. "We are going to have to give them some kind of residency."

Constitutional and Other Considerations

The Bush administration created Guantanamo in January 2002 to detain terrorism suspects beyond the reach of U.S. laws while restricting the ability of inmates to challenge their detention. The system has faced a string of legal challenges. Notably in June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the constitutional right to challenge one's detention--the writ of habeas corpus--extends to inmates held in Guantanamo. Yet even this landmark case--a significant blow to Bush administration policies--did not settle the question of constitutional protections to noncitizens held at the facility. Officials in the Obama administration such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have said these outstanding concerns may need to be addressed with new legislation.

Beyond the prison and the specific legal issues with shutting it down are a series of more philosophical concerns. Broadly speaking, legal experts believe there remains a credible legal basis for the continued detention of terrorism suspects in America's war against terror. But there is wide disagreement on how the United States should redefine its counterterrorism policies, and ensure the detention, treatment, and prosecution of suspects meets ethical and legal norms. CFR's Prieto argues in a February 2009 working paper that these changes are needed "to allow the United States to end its war about terror and remove what is currently a damaging and self-imposed obstacle to achieving broader U.S. foreign policy objectives."

Laws governing the treatment of terrorism detainees, which experts say would remain unchanged in the wake of Guantanamo's closing, will also be closely watched by foreign governments critical of the Bush administration's approach to detention matters. While detainee interrogations are now governed by the United States Army Field Manual, White House leaders have hinted they may want to keep their options open. During his Senate confirmation hearing on February 6, the nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Leon Panetta, said he would examine the effectiveness of coercive interrogation techniques used by the intelligence agency, prompting some to speculate the CIA may seek the use of techniques that go beyond those used by the U.S. military (LAT). There are also questions about U.S. detention policies elsewhere, notably Afghanistan. Roughly six hundred prisoners continue to be held in a prison at the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan. In a 2008 confidential memo reviewed by the New York Times, the International Committee of the Red Cross reportedly voiced concern over the treatment of some prisoners detained at the base, charges the Defense Department would not discuss. President Obama, meanwhile, has called for the attorney general and defense secretary to conduct a comprehensive review of the government's policies on military detentions.



Weigh in on this issue by emailing CFR.org.

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Italy 'may take Guantanamo inmates'

Italy 'may take Guantanamo inmates'
'Recognition of part in terror fight' says minister
(ANSA) - Sassari, February 13 - Italy could meet a US request to take some inmates from Guantanamo, the controversial US prison President Barack Obama is closing this year, Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa said Friday.

Speaking on a visit to Sardinia, La Russa said he and Premier Silvio Berlusconi had ''accepted this invitation,'' which he said should be seen as recognition of Italy's part in the fight against terrorism.

La Russa did not say how many of the 60 or so inmates Italy might take.

The US has asked the European Union to take the inmates because they cannot go back to their home countries and the EU has left the matter up to individual states.

Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has said he is against the idea.

So far only Portugal has said it will definitely resettle inmates while Spain, France and Luxembourg, along with Italy, have expressed willingness.

Britain, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Poland have said they will not take any.

The Pentagon has released or transferred abroad some 500 detainees since Guantanamo opened almost seven years ago but always on the basis of a military court order.

In one of his first moves after taking office, Obama said he would shut down the camp by the end of the year.

The camp was set up in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in January 2002 to house suspected terrorists following the September 11 attacks in the US by al Qaeda.

It currently holds some 250 detainees, many of whom have been held for years without being charged.

The US has so far cleared about 60 detainees for release but says they cannot be repatriated because of risk of mistreatment or worse.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini recently said Italy could take some of the group, whether by granting political asylum or putting them in Italian jails.

The centre-left opposition has urged the government to provide hospitality for detainees who could be persecuted at home.

CHINESE, NORTH AFRICANS, AFGHANS, IRAQIS 'AT RISK'.

The US has cleared several members of China's ethnic minority Uighurs but it has been unable to repatriate them because of human rights concerns.

China accuses Uighur dissidents of seeking an independent homeland in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

The opposition said other detainees at risk if repatriated included Tunisians, Algerians, Libyans, Yemenites, Iraqis, Afghans and Saudi Arabians.

In June opposition politicians formally asked the centre-right government to explain the alleged role played by the Italian secret service in the 2002-2003 abduction and interrogation of six Tunisians detained in Guantanamo prison.

A Council of Europe (COE) probe last year concluded that 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe and rendered to a country where they might be tortured between 2001 and 2005.

The CIA has admitted 'extraordinary rendition' but said the COE's report was ''biased and distorted'' and stressed that the agency had operated lawfully.

In Milan, in the world's first rendition trial, 26 CIA agents and seven Italian spies are accused of the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian cleric who was rendered not to Guantanamo but to Egypt where he says he was tortured.

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Letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
February 12, 2009

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520

VIA FACSIMILE

Dear Secretary Clinton,

As you prepare to make your first trip to the People's Republic of China as Secretary of State, our organizations strongly urge you to make human rights issues a prominent topic in your public and private discussions with the Chinese leadership and people.

Your visit will set the tone for the US-China relationship in the new Obama administration. This will be the crucial moment to signal to the Chinese government that the quality of its relationship with the United States will depend in part on whether it lives by universally accepted human rights norms in its domestic and foreign policies. Sending such a signal in Beijing will be especially important given the United States' unfortunate absence from China's Universal Periodic Review on February 9 at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Most important, the Obama administration has pledged to return the United States to a position of leadership in defending human rights; doing so with a rising power such as China will be a key test of that commitment.

Thirteen years ago in Beijing, you spoke eloquently about the duty of all governments to respect the fundamental human rights of women and men. Respect for human rights, you said, means "not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions."

In recent years, however, human rights concerns have been pushed progressively further to the margins of the US-China relationship. The Chinese government's growing financial, diplomatic, and military strength, coupled with its hostility to reforms that challenge the Chinese Communist Party's grip on power, make China a difficult country in which to effect change.

But the advancement of human rights in, and with, China is arguably more central to US interests than ever before. Press censorship in China makes it possible for toxic food and public health crises to spread globally. Suppression of dissent removes internal checks against environmental damage that has global impact. Abuses of low-wage labor implicate international firms operating inside China and compromise goods that come into the US. The government's control of mass media and the internet allow it to stoke nationalist anger against the United States in moments of crisis. The export from China of internet-censoring technologies and its provision of unconditional aid to repressive regimes increases the US's burdens in fighting censorship and human rights crises worldwide.

As much as the Chinese government appears to resist outside pressure to improve its record, experience suggests that it does respond to such pressure. American interventions on behalf of jailed government critic Hu Jia contributed to his being moved to a prison closer to his family; sustained international pressure on the Chinese government to permanently relax rules on foreign journalists in China resulted in success. Ordinary people in China will also appreciate hearing the United States raise human rights issues in ways that echo their own day to day concerns about rule of law and government accountability. And we urge that you be mindful of the converse: that the Chinese government and people take careful note when the US is silent.

While the Chinese government has taken some steps to promote human rights, such as enshrining the concept in the Constitution, the gap between its rhetorical commitments and the reality on the ground remains vast. We urge that you raise on this visit the following issues:

* Tibet and Xinjiang. Tibetans and Uighurs continue to suffer indiscriminate crackdowns on their rights, typically on the grounds that their peaceful calls for genuine autonomy are in fact a cover for "separatist activity." You should press Beijing to end the criminalization of peaceful advocacy in and to engage in constructive dialogue over the future of both regions.
* Torture. As documented most recently by the United Nations Committee Against Torture's review of China, police torture remains a serious problem, yet evidence obtained through torture is routinely admitted in Chinese courts. You should urge Beijing to alter this policy, and put in place mechanisms whereby alleged incidents of torture are consistently and impartially investigated and evidence procured through torture excluded.
* Censorship of the domestic press. The Chinese government continues to strictly control Chinese journalists; at least 26 remain in prison due to their work, many on ambiguous charges including "revealing state secrets" and "inciting subversion." You should urge the Chinese government to cease its widespread media and internet censorship, and fully honor its obligation to guarantee freedom of expression, information, and freedom of the press under Article 35 of the Constitution and international standards.
* Abuses of human rights defenders, including Huang Qi and Liu Xiaobo. Rather than embrace those who urge greater rights protections, the Chinese government continues to persecute those who publicly criticize it. Veteran dissident Huang Qi faces a possible three year prison term as he reportedly faces trial in Sichuan on charges of "possessing state secrets," in a prosecution linked to his investigation of poorly constructed schools destroyed in the May 2008 earthquake. Writer Liu Xiaobo, a veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has now been held by Chinese police since December 2008 for his involvement in organizing Charter 08, a petition calling for greater respect for human rights and democracy in China.
* The use of extrajudicial forms of detention. Chinese police continue to make frequent use of house arrest, residential surveillance, and administrative detention. There is no basis for these tactics in Chinese law, and you should urge the Chinese government to publicly eschew further use of them.

We strongly urge that you raise these issues early in your tenure as Secretary. We are acutely aware that the US's agenda with China is a broad one, but we believe that the desired economic, security, and diplomatic progress can be reinforced through more vigorous and public defense of human rights.

Ken Roth
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch

Jennifer Windsor
Executive Director
Freedom House

Jean-Francois Julliard
Secretary-General
Reporters Without Borders

Mary-Beth Markey
VP for International Advocacy
International Campaign for Tibet

Sharon Hom
Executive Director
Human Rights in China

Elisa Massimino
Executive Director and CEO
Human Rights First

Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA

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Lithuania considers taking 10 Guantanamo prisoners

Lithuania considers taking 10 Guantanamo prisoners
The Associated Press
Published: February 11, 2009


VILNIUS, Lithuania: Lithuania is ready to start talks with the U.S. administration about accepting as many as 10 Guantanamo Bay prisoners, officials said Wednesday.

President Valdas Adamkus' office said in a statement that the country's defense council had authorized the Foreign Ministry to open talks with the U.S. to "determine the circumstances necessary to take a decision on this issue."

The European Parliament has urged its members to help President Barack Obama by accepting Guantanamo prisoners. In his first week in office, Obama ordered the prison in Cuba to be closed within a year.

In Washington, Lithuanian Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene said she expected Guantanamo to come up in a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday.

"Lithuania is preparing to help solve this problem as best as we can according to our capabilities," she said.
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Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jurgita Dapkute said Lithuania, a Baltic country and a staunch U.S. ally that joined NATO and the European Union in 2004, would consider taking up to 10 prisoners.

There are up to 60 Guantanamo inmates who, if freed, cannot be returned to their homelands because they could face abuse, imprisonment or death. They come from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

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Fifth Guantanamo detainee gets sponsored to live in Canada

Fifth Guantanamo detainee gets sponsored to live in Canada
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 | 5:12 PM ET Comments109Recommend35
CBC News

A fifth Guantanamo detainee has secured sponsorship from a Canadian church to resettle in Canada, the Canadian Council for Refugees says.

Maassoum Abdah Mouhammad, who has been detained at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2002 is being sponsored by a United Church congregation in Toronto.

The 37-year-old Kurd from Syria joins four others who have had refugee sponsorships submitted on their behalf. The detainees, who have been cleared of terrorist charges, fear they will be persecuted if they return home.

"[Maassoum's] a person the [U.S.] government has expressed no interest in prosecuting for any crimes. He was not a soldier, he was not involved in terrorist activities," Matt O'Hara, his U.S. lawyer, told the Canadian Press.

Maassoum was living in Kabul looking for work and trying to find a wife when he left for Pakistan after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, the Canadian Council for Refugees said. He was later arrested by Pakistani officials.

"He was caught up in really a whole chain of events that put him in the wrong place at the wrong time and it's time for him to get out of prison. It's time for this suffering to stop and for him to go on as best he can with a normal life."

The new sponsorship application comes as the Canadian Council for Refugees called on the Canadian government to resettle "without delay" some of the detainees.

Other refugee sponsorships include:

* Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian detained at Guantanamo for seven years, sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of Montreal.
* Anwar Hassan, a Uighur from China, detained at Guantanamo for seven years, sponsored by a group of United Church congregations in Toronto.
* Two Uighurs from China, detained at Guantanamo for seven years, sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Montreal.

U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Jan. 22 to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

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UAA commends delegates for addressing Uyghur human rights issues at the United Nations

UAA commends delegates for addressing Uyghur human rights issues at the United Nations
For immediate release
February 10, 2009, 6:00 pm EST
Contact: Uyghur American Association +1 (202) 349 1496

The Uyghur American Association (UAA) commends those nations who raised concerns about human rights for Uyghurs during the February 9 Universal Periodic Review interactive dialogue session focused on human rights in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Delegates from Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Japan, France, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Austria, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Brazil and other countries raised questions directly or indirectly related to Uyghur issues.

Concerns raised by these delegates included criticism of the execution of Uyghurs labeled as terrorists; the need for “ethnic minorities’” to have greater rights to participate in government; and a need for greater cultural freedoms for Uyghurs. The delegate representing the Czech Republic, in particular, urged the PRC government to review its laws and procedures with regard to Uyghurs; end restrictions on Uyghurs’ religious practices; end restrictions on freedom of movement and peaceful assembly; and put a stop to other policies and procedures affecting Uyghurs, including “Strike Hard” campaigns, the use of torture, the practice of refoulement, the absence of fair trials, and the use of the “state secrets” crime to prosecute individuals for peaceful dissent.

In contrast to these concerns, PRC delegates asserted that “ethnic minorities” are afforded preferential treatment, including lower test scores required to enter universities. The PRC asserted that no ethnic conflict exists between the country’s different nationalities, and that any conflict that does arise stems only from a few people in East Turkestan (also known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) and Tibet who are led by foreign forces trying to split the country.

“Sadly, the PRC’s assertions are starkly divorced from reality,” said Uyghur democracy leader Rebiya Kadeer. “Instead of addressing critical human rights issues for Uyghurs, the PRC remains interested only in whitewashing the systematic abuses that take place in East Turkestan, Tibet and elsewhere. PRC leaders cannot merely sweep these problems under the rug- the unequal treatment of Uyghurs must be addressed in order for real stability to be achieved in East Turkestan. One step that the PRC could take toward achieving this would be the ratification of the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).”

The interactive dialogue session was part of a review program started in 2007 that will appraise all United Nations member states every four years.

The Uyghur American Association/Uyghur Human Rights project submitted a joint document to the Universal Periodic Review, together with the World Uyghur Congress, documenting the human rights abuses of Uyghurs in East Turkestan. The document details the dismantling of Uyghurs’ language and culture; the abuse of the war on terror to persecute Uyghurs; arbitrary detention and torture; economic discrimination; and other issues. It also addresses ways in which the PRC government must implement Uyghurs’ rights according to UN instruments, including the CRC, CEDAW, ICESCR, and CAT.

Prior to the questioning session, the PRC issued a report evaluating its own human rights record. However, as noted by Amnesty International, the PRC’s report omitted any reference to the severe crackdown in East Turkestan, the ongoing crisis in Tibet, and the ongoing persecution of religious practitioners throughout the PRC. Amnesty also noted that the PRC government had failed to engage seriously with domestic NGOs and activists in preparation of its UN submission.

Representatives of Nigeria, India and Canada are due to present recommendations on China’s human rights record later this week, as part of the Universal Periodic Review process. UAA urges these nations to call upon the PRC to implement measures in East Turkestan according to the international instruments ratified by the PRC.

Guantánamo’s Refugees

Guantánamo’s Refugees
by Andy Worthington, February 9, 2009

The continued imprisonment of at least 61 prisoners at Guantánamo, who have been cleared for release after multiple military review boards (or, in recent months, after rulings in a U.S. court), was an affront to notions of justice when the Bush administration was in power, and is even more so now that Barack Obama, who has pledged to close Guantánamo, is president.

Many of these prisoners have been cleared since 2006, and yet the majority of them are still held in conditions of profound isolation. At the very least, President Obama should be ensuring that all the prisoners are held in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, as he promised in a presidential order on his second day in office, and that the cleared prisoners are held in Camp 4, away from the isolation blocks, where the fortunate few are allowed to live communally.

However, as I reported last week, with a mass hunger strike currently raging at the prison, and at least 42 of the remaining 242 prisoners being force-fed, severe doubts remain about the ability of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ensure that Guantánamo conforms to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions within the deadline of a month that was established by the president.

European support for accepting Guantánamo prisoners

For the prisoners who have been cleared for release, there was, however, some good news last week, when, by an overwhelming majority of 542 votes to 55 (with 51 abstentions), the European Parliament passed a resolution on Guantánamo, which, as the BBC reported, “called for EU states to accept low-risk prisoners who cannot be sent home for fear they might be mistreated.”

Although there were dissenters — the right-wing German politician Harthmuth Nassauer, for example, claimed that many of the men “remain potential terrorists” — British MEP Graham Watson caught the general tone of the decision when he said, “Europe cannot stand back and shrug its shoulders and say these things are for America alone to sort out.” He stated that a crucial lesson to be learned from the Bush administration was that, “in the administration of international justice, the go-it-alone mentality ends in a cul-de-sac of failure,” and urged member states to recall that, although the Bush administration had led the way in the “war on terror,” European countries also bore their share of the blame. “Too often member states from our union were complicit in what the Bush administration did,” he said.

Since Barack Obama was elected in November, the countries of Europe have struggled to present a coherent view on Guantánamo. In December — on the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — Portugal was the first country to state openly that it would accept some of the cleared prisoners, but other countries were slow to follow the Portuguese example.

However, with Barack Obama now installed in the White House, the European Parliament’s enthusiastic support for resettling Guantánamo prisoners may now yield some tangible results. On Saturday, in his first visit to Europe, Vice President Joe Biden said that it was “time to press the reset button and revisit the many areas where we can and should work together.” Using Guantánamo as an example, he stated, “As we seek a lasting framework for our common struggle against extremism, we will have to work cooperatively with other nations around the world — and we will need your help.”

In the last few days, media outlets throughout Europe and beyond have been buzzing with claims that European countries are now prepared to help out. On Friday, it was reported that the Spanish government had “expressed its willingness” to consider accepting prisoners “on a case-by-case basis within the context of a European Union consensus on the issue,” and that the Czech foreign minister had said that, “if the United States asked the EU to accept some Guantánamo prisoners, the Czech Republic would consider the request.”

Courting the Uighurs

Even more significantly, the municipal council of Munich indicated that it was backing a motion submitted by the Green Party to accept Guantánamo’s most famous cleared prisoners, 17 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), who had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution by the Chinese government. The Uighurs are unique in that they are the only prisoners who, through a resounding court victory last June, managed to persuade the Bush administration to drop its claim that they were “enemy combatants,” and their settlement in Munich would make sense, as the Bavarian city is home to the largest Uighur community outside of China.

Munich’s municipal council is acting unilaterally (with no guarantee that the German chancellor will back the motion), but is not the only party interested in accepting the Uighurs. Last week the Associated Press reported that three of the Uighurs had applied for settlement in Canada, although the reporters also pointed out that previous attempts by the U.S. to re-house the Uighurs in Canada had been unsuccessful. In February 2007, notes prepared for Peter MacKay, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, indicated that it was probable that they would be “inadmissible under Canadian immigration law.”

When the news about the Uighurs’ claim was announced last Tuesday, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, the former chairman of the Canadian Senate’s national security and defense committee, stated that he supported the return to Canada of its only citizen in Guantánamo, Omar Khadr, a teenager at the time of his capture who has been repeatedly ignored by successive Canadian governments, but added that he had no interest in accepting any other prisoners. “Why should people clean up their dirty business?” Kenny asked, adding, “I don't have much sympathy with the Americans for creating that prison.”

On Wednesday, however, it was revealed that Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (no relation) was contemplating whether to accept the Uighurs’ request, and was looking at the viability of issuing “temporary residence permits,” valid for up to three years, which would “allow the detainees to bypass the backlogged refugee process.”

These developments are a positive step for the Uighurs, of course, especially as countries willing to take them risk a diplomatic rift with China by doing so. As the Canadian story surfaced last week, the Chinese foreign ministry made a point of issuing a statement about the Uighurs. Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Fu said, “As for those Chinese terror suspects that are kept in Guantánamo, as we have stated before, we strongly oppose any country accepting these people.”

Why the Uighurs are an American problem

Nevertheless, there are two problems with this focus on the Uighurs. Firstly, as I have made clear in previous articles, when Judge Ricardo Urbina reviewed their case in October (almost exactly four months ago), he ruled that their continued detention in Guantánamo was unconstitutional, and, because no other country had been found that was prepared to accept them, ordered them to be delivered to his courtroom so that he could make arrangements for them to be resettled in the United States, in the care of communities in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee, Florida, which had prepared detailed plans for their welfare and support.

The Bush administration shamelessly appealed, protesting that the men still posed a threat — even though it had conceded that they did not — and insisting that a District Court judge did not have the right to order their release into the United States. This too was also a false assertion, as Judge Judith W. Rogers, one of the appellate court judges explained in a dissenting opinion, when her colleagues approved the stay on Judge Urbina’s ruling that had been requested by the government. As a result, I believe that the obligation to re-house the Uighurs still rests with the U.S. government, and I join with Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the Uighurs, who has spent long years publicizing their plight, in asking Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder to release them into the United States.

As Willett stated in a letter on January 23:

We urge the government to release the Uighurs immediately in the only place they can be released — the United States. Not only would this be just, but it is in our national interest. By accepting the Uighurs, we would encourage other countries to accept the significant number of Guantánamo detainees who are cleared for release but who cannot be repatriated. Bringing the Uighurs here is thus an important early step toward carrying out President Obama’s Executive Order and removing a stain on our National character.

The second problem with the widespread focus on the Uighurs is that it detracts from the cases of the other men held at Guantánamo who desperately need third countries to re-house them. Of the 44 cleared prisoners who are not Uighurs, 23 more men are currently seeking new homes. Three — of Palestinian origin — are essentially stateless, as it has proven impossible to negotiate their return with the Israeli authorities, and the other 20 — five Algerians, an Egyptian, a Libyan, a Tajik, eight Tunisians and four Uzbeks — cannot be repatriated because their safety cannot be guaranteed in their home countries. Last year, when two Tunisians were repatriated, these dangers were demonstrated with an alarming clarity. On their return, despite an agreement with the U.S. government that they would be treated fairly, the two men were subjected to show trials based on evidence extracted through the torture of another prisoner, and given jail sentences of three and seven years.

It is clear that none of the cleared prisoners poses a threat to anyone, for the simple reason that, in a prison based on the presumption of guilt — in which everyone has been held as an “enemy combatant” without rights, solely because the president said they were — those who have been approved for release, after multiple military reviews, have only succeeded in doing so because the authorities have concluded that they do not pose any danger to the United States or its allies.

So who are these other men?

There is not the space here to discuss all their stories, but they include Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who fled persecution by Islamists and came to the UK, where he settled in the seaside town of Bournemouth, and received a tip and a thank-you note from Britain’s deputy prime minister, after cleaning his room during a political conference. Ahmed’s only mistakes were to take a holiday in Pakistan in the fall of 2001, and to do so before his asylum application was complete.

Another is Nabil Hadjarab, a young Algerian from a broken home, with relatives in Lyon, who was only persuaded to travel to Afghanistan because he was caught in limbo between Algeria and France as his family disintegrated around him, and another is Rafiq al-Hami, a 39-year old Tunisian who had lived in Germany, where he had worked in restaurants and for a Turkish cleaning company. Seized randomly in Pakistan, far from the battlefields of Afghanistan, al-Rami was nevertheless sent to the CIA’s notorious “Dark Prison” near Kabul, which resembled a medieval torture dungeon, but with the addition of painfully loud music, blasted into the cells 24 hours a day.

Then there are seven Tunisians, who were all Italian residents. I covered the stories of five of these men last year, and one of them, to give just one example, is Adel al-Hakeemy, who had lived in Italy for eight years, working as a chef’s assistant in several hotels in Bologna, before traveling to Pakistan to get married. “I lived with Italians in their homes,” he explained to his lawyers. “I am used to their culture. The Italians worked alongside me, they respected me, they treated me as their brother.”

While these prisoners already have connections with specific European countries, others, like the Libyan Abdul Rauf al-Qassim, do not. Cleared since 2006, al-Qassim — essentially a refugee from Libya who married an Afghan woman and had a daughter he has not seen since she was a baby — was also seized in Pakistan at a time when bounty payments for “terror suspects” were widespread, and foreign Arabs were easy prey, and he has been fighting in the U.S. courts to prevent his repatriation for nearly two years.

Another is Adel Fattough Ali El-Gazzar, an accountant and a former officer in the Egyptian army, who had traveled to the Pakistani border to provide humanitarian aid to Afghan refugees, but was caught in a U.S. bombing raid. “I saw a light and heard a voice and then I lost consciousness,” he explained in Guantánamo. “When I woke up I was in a Pakistani hospital. I lost my coat, my passport, my money, everything. And I lost my leg also.”

Then there are the Palestinians: Ayman al-Shurafa, a student whose education In Gaza was disrupted by the Intifada, who was persuaded to travel to Afghanistan for jihad, but who regretted his decision and never raised arms against anybody; Assem Matruq al-Aasmi, another duped young recruit, who was wounded by a grenade; and Mahar al-Quwari, an older man, with a wife and children, who had drifted to Afghanistan in search of work after a fruitless trip to visit the UN in Pakistan, to sort out papers for his family, but who ended up being sold by Afghan villagers to the Northern Alliance, who in turn sold him to the Americans.

Completing this brief guide to the cleared prisoners are the Uzbeks, whose government’s human rights abuses are notorious: Shakrukh Hamiduva, just 18 years old at the time of his capture, who was working as a taxi driver in Afghanistan when he was seized by Afghan bounty hunters; Ali Sher Hamidullah, a drifter who explained in Guantánamo that the Uzbek intelligence agents who visited him told him that “the only thing that waits for me in Uzbekistan is a bullet in my head”; Kamalludin Kasimbekov, who had been forcibly recruited to join the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, allies of the Taliban; and Oybek Jabbarov, a 30-year old father of two, who suffers from health problems related to a botched surgical procedure on a ruptured disk in his back in 2007.

Unwillingly transplanted to Afghanistan along with fighters from the IMU, Jabbarov explained in Guantánamo that he made a living “buying and selling sheep, chicken and goats,” and was told in December 2001 that the government was giving out ID cards to immigrants at Bagram airbase. “There, I saw American soldiers,” he said. “They just took me inside, they questioned me, and they kept me for a few days. I've been detained ever since.”

His lawyer, Michael Mone, who recently explained that he had taken on Jabbarov’s case because “I felt I could no longer stand on the sidelines and permit this gross executive power grab, which is how I view [Bush's] actions as they relate to torture, rendition, and the creation of Guantánamo as this [legal] black hole,” stated that his client had also been threatened by Uzbek intelligence agents. “They at one point showed him a photo array and asked him if he could identify any of the individuals,” Mone said in a recent interview. “And when he couldn't identify any of them, one of the Uzbeks banged his fist on the table and said, ‘When you get back to Uzbekistan, you will know these things.’ And Oybek took that to mean that when he got back to Uzbekistan, they would torture him until he told them what they wanted to hear.”

I leave the final word to Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, who has not always been a voice of reason when it comes to assessing the threat posed by terrorism, but who, on this occasion, captured a truth to which governments — including the US government — should pay close attention. As reported in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Garzon said, “We have to confront the reality that some bad people will end up walking the streets, like the former rapists, robbers and terrorists whom we have walking the streets once they complete their sentence and are released. We have to take the risks that are necessary in a democratic society.”

The alternative, lest we forget, is Guantánamo, as conceived by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, a place where, ideally, everyone is presumed guilty, no one is ever charged or tried, and no one is ever released.

Note: For those who are keeping count, the other 21 cleared prisoners are not apparently in immediate need of the assistance of third countries. Six are Saudis, whose release should be straightforward, as the Saudi government has run a successful rehabilitation program and has processed 109 returned prisoners in the last two years (with a low rate of recidivism, contrary to some recent reports), twelve are Yemenis (and there are hopes that the long diplomatic impasse between the US and Yemeni governments will soon be resolved, so that they can be repatriated), and the release of the other three — two Bosnians of Algerian origin, and Mohammed El-Gharani, a resident of Chad — was ordered by District Court Judge Richard Leon, when he recently ruled, in their habeas corpus reviews, that the government had failed to establish a case against them.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk.

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