On Guantánamo, the Three Steps Obama Needs to Take Now

Late on Friday evening, RT published an article I had been commissioned to write for them, entitled, “In Guantánamo, fine words are no substitute for freedom.” In it, I examined in detail the parts of President Obama’s national security speech on Thursday that dealt with the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where a prison-wide hunger strike has been raging for nearly four months.

The 166 men still held are expressing their despair at having been abandoned by all three branches of the US government — by President Obama and his administration, by Congress and by the judiciary, and for good reason — 86 of these men were cleared for release three years ago by an inter-agency task force that President Obama established when he took office in 2009, and most of the 80 others would be entirely justified in concluding that, in their cases, justice has gone AWOL.

A month ago, President Obama finally broke his silence on Guantánamo to deliver an eloquent speech at a news conference in which he explained why Guantánamo is such an abomination, but shied away from acknowledging his own part in the failure to close the prison, as he promised when he took office in 2009, and put the blame solely on Congress.

Lawmakers have indeed raised considerable obstacles to prevent the release of prisoners and the closure of the prison, insisting, in the two most recent versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, which funds the military, that the Secretary of Defense must certify that any prisoner that the administration wants to release cannot engage in terrorism (an impossible promise, of course), and preventing prisoners from being released to any country regarded as having harbored even a single “recidivist” (someone who has allegedly “returned to the battlefield”).

However, President Obama can bypass Congress through a waiver in the legislation that allows him to free prisoners if he and the Secretary of Defense believe it to be “in the national security interests of the United States.” Doing so, if Congress refuses to cooperate, has been a key complaint over the last few months from those calling for progress on Guantánamo, as has the need for the President to appoint a senior official to oversee the closure of Guantánamo, and also to drop his own ban on releasing cleared Yemenis, which he imposed in January 2010, following a failed airline bomb plot involving a Nigerian man recruited in Yemen.

As I explained in the article, on Thursday, President Obama made a number of promises — firstly, to appoint “a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries”; secondly, to lift his ban on releasing Yemenis; and thirdly, to “transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries” (“to the greatest extent possible”) — which, as I described it, “appear to show the way forward — and to bring hope to the men at Guantánamo for the first time since 2009 — but they will need close monitoring, and relentless pressure, to make sure they lead to meaningful action.”

In more detailed analysis, I explained:

On the first point … What needs to happen now is for this individual to be named as swiftly as possible, and for he or she to begin to transfer the 30 cleared prisoners who are not Yemenis. If Congress remains obstructive, the President and the Secretary of Defense must use a waiver provision that exists in the NDAA, which allows them to bypass Congress if they regard it as being “in the national security interests of the United States.”

On the second point, lifting the ban on releasing Yemenis is crucial, but there now needs to be immediate action to facilitate the men’s release. Again, the waiver will be needed if Congress refuses to cooperate, but otherwise there should be no obstacles to the successful release of the 56 men. Prior to President Obama’s speech, current and former administration officials told the Wall Street Journal that the transfers to Yemen “would begin slowly, starting with two or three detainees, to ensure Yemen can keep track of the detainees and prevent them from joining militant groups.” The beginning of this process, the official said, “could still be months away.”

I also explained:

The Wall Street Journal also noted that “US and Yemeni officials have held negotiations in recent weeks about restarting the transfers, including promising to share information about former detainees. The Yemeni government has said multiple ministries will monitor the ex-detainees to guard against activities that are potentially threatening to the US and to ensure they receive counseling, job training and other aid to help their reintegration into society.”

On the third point, plans to free the 30 non-Yemeni prisoners cleared for release need to begin immediately, involving the President’s new envoy and, if necessary, the waiver mentioned above. The first to be released should be Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, but there are also five Tunisians, a Saudi, four Afghans and others whose release should not be a complicated matter.

The cases of others — including the last three Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), four Syrians, the last Tajik and the last Palestinian — are more complicated, because it is unsafe for them to be repatriated, and new homes need to be found for them. This is also the case with most, if not all of the last five Algerians. The plight of these men is complicated by the fact that the US refuses to resettle any of these men, but it is anticipated that third countries can be found if the Obama administration provides full backing to the President’s new envoy.

There is more in my article — about the 80 other men, and how they need to have their cases reviewed, and to be tried or released — but I urge you to read the full article on RT to find out more about them. For now, please bear these three points in mind, as, with other campaigners, I am currently working out how best to keep exerting pressure on President Obama and his administration to make sure that these promises are kept.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here – or here for the US).