Requests for European Union nations to accept Guantanamo prisoners are being met with resistence. For the incoming President, it’s a new obstacle to his plans to close the prison camp.
“Responsibility for the prisoners interned for years at Guantanamo rests solely with the United States,” said German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble at a meeting with his European Union counterparts in Prague on Thursday. He said he would be willing to repatriate any prisoners who were German citizens, but added he knows of none fitting that description.
French Minister of the Interior Michèle Alliot-Marie expressed the same view. “As far as I know, none of our citizens is being detained in Guantanamo,” she said. “Austria has rejected accepting any Guantanamo prisoners,” said Austrian Minister of the Interior Maria Fekter, adding, “we see this as a purely American problem.” Americans must first solve the installation’s legal problems, where the United States has held so-called “enemy combatants” for years without bringing charges against them.
European Union foreign ministers are scheduled to take up the question at the end of January. According to Schäuble, he knows of no American initiative to transfer the prisoners to other countries. Before Christmas, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had mentioned the possibility of bringing some of the Guantanamo prisoners to Germany.
On that point, Schäuble commented, “Mrs. Merkel and I need no instructions from the parties concerned.” At the beginning of her administration, Chancellor Angela Merkel was successful in effecting the release of Murat Kurnaz, a resident of Bremen, who had spent four years behind bars in Guantanamo. The administration prior to Merkel’s led by Gerhard Schröder in which Steinmeier served as head of the Office of the Chancellor did nothing to gain Kurnaz’s freedom.
President-elect Obama has announced his intention to close the prison camp as quickly as possible. The treatment of prisoners there has been a source of worldwide protest for several years. A few days ago, a member of the Bush administration admitted for the first time that prisoners had been tortured there. Experts, however, expect there will be many legal hurdles that must be overcome prior to closure.
“Responsibility for the prisoners interned for years at Guantanamo rests solely with the United States,” said German Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble
What!?
If the responsibility for the prisoners rest solely with the US that’s pretty much a tacit admission that the EU has no business pontificating on what should be done with them.