ISLAMABAD: Of the 39 remaining prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, 10, including a Pakistani man, are eligible to be transferred out, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden’s administration said on Monday it had transferred its first detainee from the US military prison at Guantanamo, a Moroccan man imprisoned since 2002, lowering the population at the facility to 39. Abdul Latif Nasir, 56, was repatriated to Morocco.
Set up to house foreign suspects following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the prison came to symbolize the excesses of the US “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods critics said amounted to torture.
While former President Donald Trump kept the prison open during his four years in the White House, Biden has vowed to close it, a promise White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated on Monday.
“The list [of those to be freed] may include a Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, who spent 16 years in custody without ever being charged with a crime. At 73, he is the oldest prisoner at the US base in Cuba,” Dawn reported. “Paracha, who is accused of having ties to Al Qaeda, was notified in May this year that he has been approved for release.”
This undated photo made by the International Committee of the Red Cross and provided by lawyer David H. Remes, shows Guantanamo prisoner Saifullah Paracha. (AP)
“Of the 39 detainees remaining at Guantánamo, 10 are eligible to be transferred out, 17 are eligible to go through the review process for possible transfer,” a senior administration official told journalists in Washington, according to Dawb. “Another 10 are involved in the military commission process used to prosecute detainees and two have been convicted.”
Advocacy groups welcomed the move but said more needed to be done.
“The Biden administration urgently needs to negotiate and implement similar decisions for other cleared prisoners,” Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project, said, referring to the Moroccan man’s release.
“Bringing an end to two decades of unjust and abusive military detention of Muslim men at Guantanamo is a human rights obligation and a national security necessity,” Shamsi said.
Opened under Republican President George W. Bush, the prison’s population peaked at about 800 inmates before it started to shrink. President Barack Obama, a Democrat like Biden, whittled down the number, but his effort to close the prison was stymied largely by Republican opposition in Congress.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month the Biden administration was actively looking into recreating the position of a State Department envoy for the closure of the prison at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.
