MANY NON-TERRORISTS LANGUISH AT GUANTANAMO

Why must the United States through George Bush continue to hold prisoners at Guantanamo who have done nothing wrong and who have been cleared by U.S. authorities? To claim that these men are being held because no country wants to take them is transparently specious. If they have done nothing wrong, why not allow them to live in the U.S.? Or why not seek the help of the United Nations.

Craig Whitlock in today's Washington Post Foreign Service reports on the plight of those unfortunates who happened by chance to be thrown into the pit at Guantanamo. Who knows, they may never be released. I wrote on the hopelessness of Guantanamo on April 27, 2007.

"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."

"Some human rights advocates said the Bush administration could speed things up by asking the United Nations or another international body for help. Manfred Nowak, an Austrian law professor who serves as the U.N. special monitor on torture, said European allies and other countries would continue to duck requests to accept released prisoners as long as the U.S. government approaches them separately. An international commission responsible for finding a solution, he said, might carry more weight."


"If the U.S. is willing to do something to close down Guantanamo, then it should be done in a cooperative manner with the international community," Nowak said. "It's a question of burden-sharing. Otherwise, every individual country that the U.S. approaches says, 'Why us?' ""