Obama Administration Has Authorized Transfer of 55 Guantanamo Prisoners

A list of 55 detainees, whose transfers out of the Cuban prison Guantanamo have been approved, was published on Friday, September 21. The Justice Department indicated that there are still 167 prisoners in the prison which Barack Obama had promised to close.

Conspicuous on the list is Shaker Aamer, the last Briton to be detained at Guantanamo, and whose release London requested from Washington in 2010, as well as five Tunisians who are still in the American prison, two Algerians and a Moroccan man.

In 2010, 126 of Guantanamo’s detainees had been given the “approval requirements prior to transfer” by military authority, and yet 89 of them were still imprisoned at the start of 2012. Their names had not been made public so as not to compromise the diplomatic negotiations seeking to reinsert them in a “safe and responsible” way. However, in a document submitted before a Washington court on Friday, the government claimed that the detainees listed do not necessitate “further judiciary protection.”

What is more, the document emphasizes that since Barack Obama was elected to the White House, 28 prisoners have been sent back to their home countries, and 40 others have been transferred to other host countries.

In addition, Daniel Fried, the American special envoy in charge of Guantanamo’s closure, has justified the reason behind these names remaining private. In a letter from 2009, he said that these names must stay secret as a matter of “national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.” He said that “premature disclosure” of the names “presents an opportunity for the country of origin to seek to undermine those resettlement efforts,” and cited China, who put pressure on other countries to refuse to resettle the Uighurs currently imprisoned at Guantanamo, as an example.

Human rights organizations immediately lauded the list’s publication. The American Civil Liberties Union spoke of a “partial victory for transparency, and it should also be a spur to action.” “These men have now spent three years in prison since our military and intelligence agencies all agreed they should be released,” said Zachary Katznelson, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer. He also highlighted that Adnan Latif was not on the list published on Friday as he should have been, owing to the fact that he was recently found dead in his Guantanamo cell. “It is well past time for our government to release and resettle these unfairly imprisoned men,” he said.

“These 55 detainees should be immediately transferred out of Guantanamo to countries that will respect their human rights” said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA.

The Center for Constitutional Rights was very pleased about the “disclosure of this important information which finally dispels the myth that the remaining detainees who are trapped at Guantanamo are too dangerous to be released.” They did, however, note that “the list … is incomplete.”