WASHINGTON: The Obama administration initiated its plans to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this week, by flying a detainee to face a federal trial in New York and lining up a Pacific island to host Gitmo’s Chinese Muslims.
The arrival of Ahmed Ghailani to New York happened on Tuesday, despite bipartisan opposition in Congress to bring Guantanamo prisoners to the US for trial, resettlement or continued detention.
These congressmen vehemently oppose resettling in the US any detainees who have been ordered released by the court, a stance that has complicated efforts to persuade US allies to accept some inmates who cannot be sent home because of fear of torture or execution.
Congressional Republicans have repeatedly contended that transferring terrorist suspects to US soil would threaten public safety. The fate of Guantanamo detainees has seemed one of the few issues falling the Republicans’ way, as polls suggest that most Americans want to keep the Cuba-based prison operating.
House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio labeled Ghailani’s move as “the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America.”
But if Ghailani can be handled without serious incident in New York and elsewhere, the GOP argument may lose steam and Congress may rethink its refusal to fund the closing of Guantanamo. The move also could bolster President Barack Obama’s efforts to persuade other nations to accept some detainees from the prison.
Obama has said keeping Ghailani from coming to the United States “would prevent his trial and conviction” for terrible crimes.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, the Pacific island nation of Palau agreed to take in 17 Chinese Muslims now held at Guantanamo Bay, the country’s ambassador to the United States said yesterday.
Details of the transfer are still being worked out, Ambassador Hersey Kyota told reporters that his country, a former US Pacific trust territory, has agreed to take in the ethnic Uighur detainees “for humanitarian reasons” and because of the “special relationship” between Palau and the United States.
The agreement includes some US aid for Palau, Kyota said, but added that those details remained to be worked out.
The country, about 1,000 miles southeast of Manila, Philippines, has relied heavily on US aid since its independence in 1994 and depends on Washington for defense.
The imprisoned Uighurs have been accused of receiving weapons and military training in Afghanistan.
Some of the prisoners have been cleared for release since 2003, but the United States will not send them back to China out of concern that Chinese authorities would torture them. They say they were sold “like slaves” by Pakistanis who found them on their land, arrested them, and were given a $5,000 ransom by the American military for each one of them. Four years ago US authorities cleared the Uighurs, but they have been stuck at the US-run prison in Cuba due to fears that Beijing would torture them if they returned to their homeland in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu told reporters in February that the men “must be handed over to China and brought to justice.” In October 2008, a federal judge had ordered the Uighur released in the United States, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in February.
The Uighur detainees have been in limbo since the Obama administration asked the US Supreme Court to reject a request by the Uighur to be released on US soil.
The White House contends that the decision whether to allow aliens to enter the United States rests solely with the political branches of government.
Only two out of the Guantanamo Bay facility’s roughly 240 detainees have been able to leave the camp since January because of the difficulty in finding third countries to take them in.
Obama has promised to close down the detention center by January 2010, and hopes to convince other countries to take in some of the 50 detainees cleared for release.
But, one might ask, is Palau a good place the send the Uighurs who have been ordered released?
Palau will present a deeply unfamiliar landscape to the Chinese Uighurs. This remote succession of islets in Micronesia is known principally for some of the best scuba-diving in the region, and offers typical Pacific scenery: rolling hills, coconut plantations and lush tropical jungle.
Many Palauns live by subsistence farming and fishing, but the islanders heavily count on imports of many essential goods and staples from the US, which is also their major aid donor.
In the US Palau is best known as the scene of intense fighting between the US and Japan during World War II. Today, some 40,000 Japanese and Korean tourists arrive by charter flight for some tropical relaxation.
