Read the original post on closeguantanamo.com
As Guantánamo campaigners reel from the election victory of Donald Trump, who will undoubtedly seal Guantánamo shut for four years, as he did during his first four years in office, our co-founder Andy Worthington calls on President Biden to take urgent action to free the 16 men still held who have long been approved for release, in the latest article by our co-founder Andy Worthington, Free the Guantánamo 16: A Message to President Biden as His Time Runs Out.
The decisions to release these men were unanimously agreed by high-level U.S. government review processes, but, because they are purely administrative, and no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to free them, they have languished for between between two and four years, and in three outlying cases for nearly 15 years, since those decisions were taken.
Over a year ago, eleven of these men — who cannot be repatriated because of a U.S. law preventing it — were supposed to have been resettled in Oman, but that deal was called off at the last minute, because senior officials regarded the “political optics” of freeing these men as unacceptable following the October 7 attacks in Israel, despite there being no connection between Guantánamo prisoners and Hamas militants, beyond the fact that they are all Muslim.
Shamefully, no new date has been set for the men’s resettlement over the last 13 months, and time is now running out. If Oman is no longer interested, which may be the case as, in August, they repatriated — mostly unwillingly — the 26 Yemenis they had taken in from Guantánamo between 2015 and 2017, then Biden and his officials must work assiduously to locate another suitable location.
It is absolutely unacceptable that, having approved for release these men who, in total, have been held indefinitely without charge or trial for between 17 and 22 years, the Biden administration has so pitifully dragged its heels when it comes to releasing them.For anyone interested in taking action, we include links to our articles providing details of the 99 Democratic lawmakers who, in 2021, wrote to President Biden to urge him to free everyone still held at Guantánamo who had not been charged. If you’re a U.S. citizen and they represent you, I can only urge that you get in touch with them to try and persuade them to come together once again to put pressure on Biden to free these 16 men, and not to leave them to be entombed alive once more at Guantánamo for the next four years under Donald Trump.
The ongoing monthly vigils for Guantánamo’s closure, and the death of a former prisoner
On November 6, as the outcome of the Presidential Election was already clear, campaigners gathered at nine locations across the US, and in London and Brussels, for the monthly coordinated global vigils that Andy initiated nearly two years ago. Please check out Andy’s report, copiously illustrated with photos from the vigils, on his website here.
Please also read Andy’s obituary of Abdul Rahim Rabbani, a Pakistani former prisoner, released in February last year, after a year and a half in CIA “black sites” and eighteen and a half years in Guantánamo, who has died at the age of 57, largely as a result of the lack of medical care at Guantánamo, and the lack of care after his release in Pakistan.
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Thanks, as ever, for your interest in our work.
The “Close Guantánamo” team