Sunday, April 29, 2007

82 Innocent Guantanamo Inmates Still Held

The Washington Post report 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo.

"Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions."

The article merely says they were "cleared" but doesn't that mean "innocent and wrongly imprisoned for years"? in what seems like classic CYA, officials are saying they're approved for release but still calling thing enemy combatants and not exonerating them. Apparently since we've continually called them "the worst of the worst" other countries don't want them back. In some cases ethnic Uighurs were captured and countries don't want them back "for fear of angering China which considers them terrorists for leading a secession movement in the western province of Turkestan."

"Complicating the return process is that virtually all the prisoners at Guantanamo come from countries that the State Department has cited for records of human rights abuses....'It often takes us months and months, or even years, to negotiate the human rights assurances that we are comfortable with before we will transfer someone to another country,' said [John B.] Bellinger, the State Department's legal adviser." So in other words, you can't torture your people, only we can torture your people.

"Only two people have been charged under a military tribunal system approved by Congress last year." Apparently pleading guilty is the best way to get released.

Belinger also says "Countries believe this is not their problem. They think they didn't contribute to Guantanamo, and therefore they don't have to be part of the solution." I think ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner counters this capably with "This is a problem of our own creation, and yet we expect other countries to shoulder the entire burden of a solution."

This situation is just completely deranged.

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