Board frees more prisoners after extensive reviews
MIAMI — In the last comprehensive review of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, the U. S. government decided almost 50 were “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution,” leaving them in open- ended legal limbo.
Now it seems many may not be so dangerous after all.
A review board that includes military and intelligence officials has been taking a hard look at these men and helping to steadily chip away at the list of indefinite detainees, who are a significant obstacle to President Obama’s push to shut down the detention center at the U. S. military base in Cuba.
The first 23 decisions announced by the Periodic Review Board as of this month have skewed heavily in favor of the prisoners. It has unanimously cleared 19 for release, and said others will continue to be held but will be re- evaluated again later. Some of the approved have already left Guantanamo while the rest are expected to depart over the summer.
Lawyers for detainees welcomed the initial results, although they say the men shouldn’t have been held without charge for so long in the first place.
“These people have not been reviewed in over six years. They have changed, circumstances have changed, and they have needed a fresh look,” said Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York who represented a prisoner cleared by the Periodic Review Board.
The deliberations of the board are private. But David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School who has analyzed records of the proceedings released by the Pentagon, said the members appear to be treating past assessments of prisoners “with a healthier degree of skepticism.”
Detainees approved for release by the board over the past two years have included a Saudi accused of being a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden who waged one of the longest hunger strikes while at Guantanamo and a Kuwaiti who was alleged to be a “spiritual adviser” to the al Qaeda leader, though he would only have been about 20 at the time.
A Yemeni prisoner was cleared in January after authorities determined he was just a low- level jihadist fighter but had been mistaken for an al Qaeda facilitator or courier with a similar alias.
In Congress, where there is strong opposition to closing the detention center, the administration is seen as moving too fast to release men some fear will resume the behavior that got them locked up in the first place.
Ninety- one men are held at Guantanamo, down from almost 250 when Obama assumed the presidency.