Prisoners, cleared for release, still in Guantanamo

This video is called Guantanamo Bay – USA.

By Andy Worthington, Andy Worthington’s Blog:

Guantanamo Scandal: The 40 Prisoners Still Held, but Cleared for Release at Least Five Years Ago

Friday, 08 June 2012 09:31

One of the greatest injustices at Guantánamo is that, of the 169 prisoners still held, over half — 87 in total — were cleared for release by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force. The Task Force involved around 60 career officials from various government departments and the intelligence agencies, who spent the first year of the Obama Presidency reviewing the cases of all the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo, to decide whether they should be tried, released, or, in some cases, held indefinitely without charge or trial. The Task Force’s final report is here (PDF).

Exactly who these 87 men are is a closely held secret on the part of the administration, which is unfortunate for those of us working towards the closure of Guantánamo, as it prevents us from campaigning as effectively as we would like for the majority of these men, given that we are not entirely sure of their status. Attorneys for the prisoners have been told about their clients’ status, but that information — as with so much involving Guantánamo — is classified.

Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout: “With the continued erosion of civil liberties that began in the Bush years and has expanded in the Obama administration, it was hopeful that a federal judge struck down one of the most chilling laws in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): the right of the government to suspend habeas corpus and indefinitely detain US citizens under military authority”: here.

The US Supreme Court declined to review appellate decisions that shut the door to judicial review of the indefinite detention of Guantanamo prisoners. It also let stand an appellate ruling tossing out a civil law suit by Jose Padilla: here.

The government’s failure to secure the release of the last British resident in Guantanamo is in breach of both the Magna Carta and the Act of Habeas Corpus, campaigners have declared: here.

The tragic case of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif hit a dead end when the US Supreme Court issued an order refusing to hear his case last week. Latif, a Yemeni man, has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002, after being detained while traveling to seek medical treatment: here.