Guantanamo Prisoner 1030

The world does not usually pay attention to more than one or two things at a time, and this week it has already had enough with Obama’s health care plan and the tension between the U.S. and Israel, its usual ally.

Perhaps this is why another news item, which affects us directly, has passed by unnoticed. Guantanamo prisoner number 1030, Abdul Hafiz, was released from the detention center this past December 19th and sent to Afghanistan for his reintegration. Since his release, Hafiz has come to be the person in charge of the Taliban’s committee of hijackers and blackmailers, under the orders of the mullah, Abdul Qayum Zakir (another ex-prisoner of Guantanamo).

In fact, the principal assessor of counter-terrorism in the White House, John Brennan, has had to admit that about 20 percent of the liberated return to take up their terrorist activities again. And from what we know of the case of Abdul Hafiz, it is taking less and less time for this to happen.

The government of Rodríguez Zapatero, in a gesture of generosity toward Obama, agreed to accommodate various Guantanamo detainees on our soil; detainees who, lacking any supervision in our country, should remain with total freedom. Given the social alarm, the government decided to keep them and granted them limited freedom, still violating the rights of people who have not been accused of anything. It is an intermediate option between the limbo of Guantanamo and Spanish paradise.

This assumes that the government will have a vigilant eye over all their activities and movements. This is for what we, the Spanish, will pay a big bill.

The government says that it cannot do anything else to preserve our security. But it could if it wanted, by imprisoning these prisoners under the accusation of membership of a terrorist organization. Isn’t it, after all, the extent of our universal justice? We would live more securely, and it would cost us less.