In the latest move set to infuriate Republicans, moments ago U.S. officials announced that on Monday, 15 inmates from the Guantanamo prison were transferred to the United Arab Emirates, the single largest transfer of Guantanamo detainees during Obama’s administration. Following the transfer of the 12 Yemeni and three Afghan citizens, the total number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay naval base will drop to 61. Most have been held without charge or trial for more than a decade, drawing international condemnation.
In February Obama, who had initially hoped to close down Guantanamo during his first year in office, announced his plan to shut down the facility; however he has faced opposition from many Republican lawmakers as well as some fellow Democrats.
“In its race to close Gitmo, the Obama administration is doubling down on policies that put American lives at risk,” Republican Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “Once again, hardened terrorists are being released to foreign countries where they will be a threat,” he said cited by Reuters.
They may be right. In June, the WaPo reported that at least 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo had launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former U.S. officials. In March, a senior Pentagon official made a startling admission to lawmakers when he acknowledged that former Guantanamo inmates were responsible for the deaths of Americans overseas.
The official, Paul Lewis, who oversees Guantanamo issues at the Defense Department, provided no details, and the Obama administration has since declined to elaborate publicly on his statement because the intelligence behind it is classified.
Lewis’s statement had drawn scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers see the violence against Americans as further evidence that the president’s plans for closing the prison are misguided and dangerous. They also describe the administration’s unwillingness to release information about the attacks as another instance of its use of high levels of classification to avoid discussion of a politically charged issue that could heighten political opposition to its plans
This time, however, will be different: surely the UAE will not allow the onboarded prisoners to leave its sight, and allow them to fight against the US. Again.
Obama’s plan for shuttering the facility calls for bringing the several dozen remaining prisoners to maximum-security prisons in the United States, even though U.S. law bars such transfers to the mainland. For Obama that does not represent a challenge and ee has not ruled out doing so by executive action.
Meanwhile, keeping Guantanamo open exposes US hypocricy. “I think we are at an extremely dangerous point where there is a
significant possibility this is going to remain open as a permanent
offshore prison to hold people, practically until they die,” said
Naureen Shah, Amnesty International’s U.S. director for security and
human rights.
Shah said keeping Guantanamo open gave cover to foreign governments to ignore human rights. “It weakens the U.S. government’s hand in arguing against torture and indefinite detention,” she said.
Of course, if push comes to shove, the US can just drone the living daylights out of anyone it argues with.
“The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists,” Lee Wolosky, the State Department’s special envoy for closing the Guantanamo detention center, said.
Judging by the amount of radical Islamism, pardon, “violent extremism” over the past year, shutting down the facility should promptly unleash a new golden age in US foreign policy.
Or maybe not: “The support of our friends and allies – like the UAE – is critical to our achieving this shared goal,” Wolosky said.
Incidentally, what we said above about the UAE not letting these prisoners out of its sight, we may have been wrong: a State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity said the UAE had resettled five detainees transferred in November 2015. We wonder where these new 15 prisoners will be “resettled” to over the next few months.
via http://ift.tt/2bcXYag Tyler Durden