Aziz Huq: "Will Religion Decide the Fate of the Guantánamo Bay Detainees?"
Will religion decide the fate of the Guantánamo Bay detainees?
The first 20 prisoners arrived at the Guantánamo naval base 12 years ago, on 11 January 2002. In total, 779 prisoners would be brought to the Cuban facility for detention as “enemy combatants”. Only one has ever been charged in an ordinary criminal court. For the rest, detention was at the Pentagon’s caprice.
Yet releases did happen – in surprisingly bipartisan stream. Between January 2002 and December 2008, the Bush administration released about 520 detainees – two-thirds of the overall detainee population. At the end of the Obama administration, only 41 men remained. Five of them were also cleared for release.
They still are. The last departures from Guantánamo happened almost a year ago on President Obama’s watch. Refusing to make a single release, the Trump administration has broken from a bipartisan policy of drawing down the Guantánamo population. Instead, he has even taken the startling move of suggesting that he would start sending some arrested in the US mainland there.
Read more at The Guardian