Shutting Guantanamo On Time, US Deligation Confident

LONDON: The US official in charge of closing Guantanamo Bay voiced confidence on Thursday of meeting a deadline set by US President Barack Obama for shuttering the controversial detention centre.

Daniel Fried said resettling the detainees to countries worldwide was “a huge problem and a complicated one,” but he was confident of meeting the January 2010 deadline announced by Obama when he took office.

“I’m confident that we’re going to make the right decisions and we’re going to close the place,” said Fried, the special envoy to Guantanamo, in an interview with the BBC.

Fried also said some of the detainees, captured during the “war on terror”, should never have been held at the US camp in Cuba in the first place, describing them as “relatively benign.”

Fried said he was asking European countries to look at accepting detainees who were not hardened terrorists nor organised fighters.

“Some (detainees) really are awful. Some qualify as the worst of the worst as we’re going to put those on trial,” he said.

“Some frankly should not have been in Guantanamo for the past seven years.”

Asked if they were innocent, he said: “I look at their files and some of them seem relatively benign and I have in mind the Uighurs, in particular, but others.” “There is such a thing as the average Guantanamo detainee, it’s someone who was a volunteer, a low level trainee, or very low level fighter in a very bad cause, but not a hardened terrorist, not an organised fighter.”

“And it is those people who we are asking Europeans to take a look at, and each government has to evaluate the background of each individual and make a decision.” Britain was angered in June when Bermuda agreed to take four Uighur, or ethnic Chinese Muslim, detainees onto the British overseas territory without consulting London first.

The envoy said he had since been “admonished” by Britain over the move, but defended the resettlement as successful.

“I will say that I have been admonished by the British government in very clear terms,” he said. “I have been told, to use my words not theirs, that it was a process foul. But it has been a successful resettlement.”

Fried said more detainees could be settled worldwide if the United States had been willing take some, a move blocked by the US Congress.

“The United States could resettle more detainees had we been willing to take in some. That I think is a fair analytic statement.”

The US administration has made closing Guantanamo a key priority, but has faced difficulty deciding how to deal with about 226 detainees still held at the base. Since Obama took office, 14 detainees have been repatriated or given asylum by third countries.

But the administration has yet to announce how many of those left over will be prosecuted before military courts, how many will be tried in civilian courts, and how many will be held indefinitely without a trial.

Fried acknowledged the difficulty of his job. “It’s miserable because you are cleaning up a problem and the most we can do is close Guantanamo, that is solve a problem and do so in a way that is the best possible.”

“It’s not like we’re advancing liberty or making peace. But cleaning up a problem is important too.”