MANAMA, 17 July 2006 — Families of Bahraini and Saudi detainees have renewed calls to release their relatives and close down the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The plea was made during a protest held on Saturday in front of the UN House in Manama, where 100 orange balloons, the color of jumpsuits that some detainees wear at the camp, were released into the air.
“We still have three of our sons in the jails of Hitler of our time, Bush,” Mohammed Khaled, a member of the Bahraini National Assembly, told the gathering.
Khaled, who criticized the US for holding the detainees with no charges and for supporting Israeli efforts to secure the release of its captured soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon, said that the detainees in Guantanamo were no less valuable to Bahrainis.
“This gathering comes at a time when there are cries for help from the children of Iraq, Palestine and more recently Lebanon,” he said. “Our message to Bush is that, like it is important to the Zionists to secure the release of the captured Israeli soldiers, it is important to us, if not more important, to secure the release of our sons.”
Sons of Bahraini detainee Isa Al-Murbati following the protest issued a letter to Bush asking for their father’s release, while a brother of Saudi detainee Ahmed Al-Dorbai called for the release of his sibling.
