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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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October 17th, 2006 - U.S. Faces
Obstacles To Freeing Detainees |
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U.S. Faces Obstacles To
Freeing Detainees Allies Block Returns From Guantanamo By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, October 17, 2006; A01 Berlin - British Foreign
Secretary Margaret Beckett last week issued the latest European demand to
close down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The existence of
the prison is "unacceptable" and fuels Islamic radicalism around
the world, she said, echoing a recent chorus of complaints from Europe about
U.S. counterterrorism policy. Behind the scenes, however,
the British government has repeatedly blocked efforts to let some prisoners
leave Guantanamo and return home. According to documents made
public this month in London, officials there recently rejected a U.S. offer
to transfer 10 former British residents from Guantanamo to the United
Kingdom, arguing that it would be too expensive to keep them under surveillance.
Britain has also staved off a legal challenge by the relatives of some
prisoners who sued to require the British government to seek their release. Other European governments,
which have been equally vocal in assailing Guantanamo as a human rights
liability, have also balked at accepting prisoner transfers. A Turkish
citizen who was born and raised in Germany was finally permitted to return
from Guantanamo in August, four years after the German government turned down
a U.S. proposal to release him. In addition, virtually every
country in Europe refused to grant asylum to several Guantanamo prisoners
from China who were not being sent home because of fears they could face
political harassment there. The Balkan nation of Albania agreed to take in five
of the Chinese in May, but only after more than 100 other nations rebuffed
U.S. pleas to accept them on humanitarian grounds, State Department officials
said. "In practical terms,
it's not enough to say, 'Guantanamo should be closed,' without suggesting the
next sentence: What do you do with the people who are there?" John B.
Bellinger III, the State Department's chief legal adviser, said during a visit
to Berlin last week to meet with German counterterrorism officials. There are about 435
prisoners from about 40 countries at Guantanamo, according to the Pentagon.
Military tribunals have concluded that about one-quarter of the prisoners are
not a security risk, or are otherwise eligible for release or transfer. Ultimately, Bellinger said,
U.S. officials expect 60 to 80 prisoners to face trial by military
commission. The rest will be released, though many of them might face charges
or other restrictions in their home countries. But those whom the Pentagon
wants to free often have nowhere to go. In many cases, their native countries
don't want them or have challenged their nationalities. Also slowing the
process is a U.S. policy stipulating that prisoners cannot be transferred to
nations with a record of human rights violations unless there are written
assurances that they won't be mistreated. The Pentagon has already
freed all but a few European citizens from Guantanamo. But U.S. officials
have struggled to persuade Britain, Germany and other allies in Europe to
accept prisoners who once had legal residency there, or who are effectively
stateless. "We think countries
whose nationals are in Guantanamo ought to take responsibility for
them," Bellinger said. "We have also, in certain cases, encouraged
European governments to see if they would be eager to take detainees of other
nationalities." So far, there have been few
takers. Although Albania agreed to
accept the five Chinese prisoners - all ethnic Uighur Muslims - the United
States is still looking for a home for 17 Uighurs who remain at Guantanamo.
Several European countries with small Uighur immigrant populations declined
to give the prisoners asylum after receiving pressure from the Chinese
government, which wants to extradite the Uighurs and try them on terrorism
charges, according to U.S. and European officials. Among those countries is
Germany, which also balked for years at allowing a German native, Murat
Kurnaz, to return even though U.S. military intelligence and German law
enforcement officials had largely concluded there was no information tying
him to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities, U.S. and German documents show. In 2002, U.S. officials
indicated they were willing to release Kurnaz, who was born and raised in
Germany but holds Turkish citizenship. But the German government barred him
from returning. The official explanation:
Kurnaz had failed to renew his German residency permit while he was locked up
at Guantanamo. But German diplomats acknowledged that they saw no reason to
take Kurnaz back and that they considered him an American problem. "It was a shame what
happened," said one of his attorneys, Bernhard Docke. "It was a
kind of excuse for being passive and just watching what was going on. If
Germany had done something then, it would have kept him from having to spend
another four years in Guantanamo." European officials say the
United States deserves the bulk of the blame for delaying the release of
inmates who have been found not to be a threat. In January, new German
Chancellor Angela Merkel raised Kurnaz's case in visits to the White House
and said her country had changed its mind. But it took until August to secure
his release, largely because U.S. officials insisted he be indicted or placed
under 24-hour surveillance. The Bush administration ultimately relented after
Germany refused, according to German officials and Kurnaz's lawyers. Some of the strongest
resistance to helping Guantanamo inmates has come from Britain, America's
closest ally on counterterrorism matters. Despite the presence of
British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a longtime special
relationship between U.S. and British intelligence agencies, British
officials have become increasingly blunt in their calls for the closure of
Guantanamo on moral and legal grounds. Beckett, the foreign
secretary, said Thursday that Guantanamo was "unacceptable in terms of
human rights" and added that it was "ineffective in terms of
counterterrorism." In an interview last month
with The Washington Post, Charles Falconer, one of the highest-ranking
justice officials in Britain, accused the United States of a willingness
"to do things beyond the law." He has also called Guantanamo
"an affront to the principles of democracy." While all British citizens
in Guantanamo were freed starting in 2004, Britain has balked at allowing
former legal residents of the country to return. British officials say they
are under no legal obligation to intercede on their behalf because they lack
citizenship. It's unclear exactly how
many British residents remain in prison at the U.S. military base in Cuba.
British officials said there are nine who were residents of the United
Kingdom at one time, four of them illegally. U.S. officials say there are 10,
court papers show. According to an affidavit
filed in a London court case by David F. Richmond, director general of
defense and intelligence for the British Foreign Office, U.S. officials
informally floated a proposal in June to see whether Britain would be willing
to accept the transfer of all 10 prisoners. Court papers show that Britain
nixed the idea, saying it would be too costly and difficult to meet U.S.
conditions to keep the men under constant surveillance. George Brent Mickum IV, a
Washington lawyer, represents two of the British residents, Jamil el-Banna, a
Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship who legally moved to Britain in 1994,
and Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen who immigrated to Britain as a teenager
in 1984. He said his clients would much rather return to London, even if it
meant restrictions on their liberty there. But he said Britain was clearly
opposed to the idea, under any circumstances. "As far as I'm
concerned, they can put them under whatever surveillance they want - they're
infinitely better off in Britain," Mickum said. "But the British
have indicated to me that they are adamant. They do not want these guys
back." The British security service
known as MI5 played an instrumental role in sending Banna and Rawi to
Guantanamo in the first place. The men were seized in 2002
during a business trip to West Africa, taken to a secret CIA prison in
Afghanistan and later shipped to Cuba. Documents show that British agents
tipped off the CIA to the men's whereabouts after they had refused to work as
informants for MI5 in London. Researcher Julie Tate in
Washington contributed to this report. © 2006 The Washington Post
Company External link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/16/AR2006101601339.html Germany probes abuse of
ex-Guantanamo inmate: lawyer By Louis Charbonneau Reuters Tuesday, October 17, 2006; 5:20 AM Berlin - Germany is
investigating claims by a Turkish man with German residency who says he was
abused by German soldiers in Afghanistan before being sent to the U.S.
Guantanamo Bay prison camp, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Murat Kurnaz, who spent
nearly five years at the prison before his August release, said in a magazine
interview that two German soldiers had pulled him by the hair and slammed his
head into the ground in front of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. "Bodily harm is a
crime. The state prosecutors in Potsdam have therefore launched an
investigation against unknown perpetrators," Kurnaz's lawyer Bernhard
Docke said in an e-mail. "Simultaneously the
defense ministry has set up an internal working group to clarify the
allegations. This commission has stated its interest in personally
questioning Kurnaz about the allegations," Docke said. Docke said his client had
doubts about the readiness of the defense ministry to conduct a transparent
investigation after its initial denials and had decided not to cooperate with
it. Kurnaz would, however,
cooperate with the Potsdam prosecutors' investigation and was also willing to
testify before a parliamentary inquiry that is investigating possible German
cooperation with the CIA, Docke said. The prosecutor's office in
Potsdam had no immediate comment. If confirmed, Kurnaz's
allegations could embarrass Germany, already defending itself against
allegations that the previous government secretly aided a U.S. program to
kidnap and fly terrorism suspects to third countries for interrogation. German citizen Khaled
el-Masri, whose story of "rendition" has already been a source of
embarrassment to the German government, said he was interrogated by a German
while held in Afghanistan. Germany has some 2,900 troops in Afghanistan as
part of a NATO peacekeeping mission. Kurnaz was freed after more
than four years in captivity and returned to Germany in chains on a U.S.
military aircraft. German media reports have
said Berlin turned down a U.S. offer to return Kurnaz to Germany made some
four years ago. Dubbed the "Bremer
Taliban," Kurnaz, born in Germany in 1982, was in the process of
becoming a German citizen when he was arrested in Pakistan in late 2001. He was taken from there to
Guantanamo in Cuba, where the United States is holding hundreds of people it
suspects are linked to al Qaeda or Afghanistan's Islamist Taliban. Kurnaz has said he suffered
abuse at Guantanamo and interrogation techniques including sexual
humiliation, water torture and the desecration of Islam. The United States has been
criticized by human rights groups and some of its allies for holding suspects
at the naval base without charge. © 2006 Reuters External link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101700223.html |