Congratulations to the Swiss Canton of Jura, which recently accepted the asylum claims of two Uighur prisoners at Guantánamo, and to the Swiss federal government for agreeing to accept Jura’s decision on Wednesday. The two men in question — Arkin Mahmud, 45, and his brother Bahtiyar Mahnut, 32 — were seized with 20 other Uighurs in December 2001.
Barring some frankly unattainable miracle, this will be the week that President Obama’s international credibility, regarding his promises to undo the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” detention policies, takes a nosedive. The President began well, freezing the much-criticized Military Commissions trial system on his first day in office, and, on his second day, issuing executive orders requiring Guantánamo to be closed within a year, and upholding the absolute ban on torture that had been so cynically manipulated by the Bush administration.
The Christmas Day attempted bombing of an American airliner had nothing directly to do with the Yemeni detainees cleared for release from Guantánamo, writes journalist Andy Worthington, who has exhaustively chronicled the stories of those held in the island prison. And by capitulating to the unprincipled fearmongering following the bomb plot, the Obama administration is playing into the hands of those whose only wish is to keep Guantánamo open forever.
In the first detailed announcement about prisoners cleared for release from Guantánamo since September 28, when a military spokesman announced that a list of 78 cleared prisoners had been posted in the prison, defense secretary Robert Gates told a Senate hearing last Thursday that officials were “in the process of identifying detainees that we believe can be transferred to other countries” and “we’ve identified I think 116 at this point.”
The Obama administration indicated in court papers it may appeal a federal judge’s ruling ordering the Justice Department to release portions of the transcribed interview between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the roles Bush administration officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson six years ago.
In a recent article, I examined the implications of an announcement that 75 of the remaining 223 prisoners in Guantánamo have been cleared for release. This came by way of a list posted in the prison, identifying the prisoners by nationality, and a statement by a military spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, who explained, “It was an opportunity to just provide better communication. There’s a lot of information out there and you get a lot of things from a lot of different angles. It helps put it in a more succinct context for them [the prisoners].”
In an interview for Radio 4’s Today program, which was partly filmed and televised on BBC News, Fried gave Jon Manel a largely spin-free account of the problems he faces, some of which have been exacerbated by the US government’s unwillingness — or inability — to resettle some cleared prisoners on the US mainland.
A month ago, rulings made by District Court judges in the habeas corpus appeals of prisoners held at Guantánamo seemed, for the most part, to confirm that the courts were uniquely placed to deliver justice to the prisoners after their long years of imprisonment, largely without charge or trial.
President Obama can’t be expected to personally vet every military officer who is up for promotion, and, for all but those in the highest ranks, would obviously just rely on the recommendations of the superiors of officers on the promotions lists, but I have to wonder how the president would feel about having rubber stamped the promotion of an officer who said that blacks were better off as slaves.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, writing last week on health care reform, said, “There’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness.” But as I read his column, my brain seemed to wander, not to health care, but to another major news event of that week: The visit to the White House of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
