Guantanamo Detainees Cleared for Release Face Extreme Delays Due to Nationality

By:  Lindsey Brady
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba - The International Herald Tribune recently asserted that there are many prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay that have been cleared for release but have not been sent home.  The specific case being focused on is the story of a 24 year old Yemeni named Ali Muhammed.  According to the IHT, Muhammed had been told he would be sent home in 2006 but had to wait eighteen months before he was released.  The reasoning behind the delay was Muhammed's country of origin.  When it was revealed that Muhammed was from Yemen and not Saudi Arabia his plane ride home left without him.  IHT has concluded that detainees who are from Saudi Arabia have been released in much greater numbers than those from Yemen due to the fact that Saudi Arabia is a wealthy ally of the United States.  A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington has said that more Saudi detainees have been released because the U.S. ally have created rehabilitation programs for the newly released to be re-integrated into society.  Chris Boucek, a researcher from Princeton University, was quoted by IHT as saying "part of the counseling process is to encourage them to settle down and get married and have kids...[the idea being] the more family obligations there are the less likely these former extremists will get into trouble."

Lawyers for Muhammed said that the U.S. military had classified him as a Saudi because that is where he was born but under Yemeni and Saudi law he is considered a citizen of Yemen where his parent's have citizenship.  The Washington Post quoted Martha Rayner, one of Muhammed's lawyers, as saying "this case was an indictment of a system; still cloaked in the strictest secrecy and largely beyond accountability in which a man who faces no charge and no sentence remains deprived of the freedom he was granted more than a year ago."  The United States, however says that detainees have not been released as frequently as Saudi detainees because Yemen, which is a poor country and weakly tied to the United States, has not created a rehabilitation program that will insure former detainees do not return to their lives as extremists.  IHT said it suspected some of the previously released Yemeni detainees who have gone through a rehabilitation program have become insurgents in Iraq.  Frank Sweigart, from the Pentagon, told IHT, "Saudi Arabia is willing to come up to the plate and mitigate the risk...if more countries followed suit, he said,  more detainees would be released in a heartbeat."

For more information, please see:

International Hearld Tribune - Nationality Plays Strong Role in Who Gets Freed From Guantanamo - 22 November 2007

Washington Post - Yemeni Languishes at Guantanamo Long After U.S. Approved Release - 13 June 2007

Washington Post Projects - Guantanamo Bay Detainees by Age - 2007

Center for Study of Human Rights in the Americas - Yemenis Imprisoned at Guantanamo are Cleared for Transfer Home:  Why is not Happening? - 11 May 2005