Washington, January 12: Human rights groups and former inmates took to the streets in Washington Monday to protest Guantanamo Bay, still open and occupied eight years after it housed its first 21 prisoners.
Dressed in orange uniforms similar to the prison garbs first seen on January 11, 2002, some 40 demonstrators marched briefly outside the White House to drive their protest home to President Barack Obama.
Their complaints focused on Obama’s broken promise — sealed in an executive order on January 22, 2009, two days after he took office — to close the US military prison in southern Cuba within the first year of his mandate.
Protesters said Obama was no different than his predecessor, George W. Bush, in wielding his presidential powers to incarcerate suspects at the prison widely seen as a symbol of abuses carried out in the name of America’s “war on terror.
Some 198 detainees still linger at the prison, including dozens already cleared for release.
“Almost one year into the Obama presidency, we now see that President Obama has no intention of returning to the people the power that he inherited from George Bush,” Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) director Vince Warren told reporters.
CCR is the main provider of lawyers to Guantanamo prisoners.
“Nothing’s changed inside the prison, people are still being tortured, still being beaten, psychologically harmed,” Omar Deghayes, a former inmate from Libya raised in Britain, said via video link.
The United States recognizes it made a mistake but refuses to apologize, said former inmate Lakhdar Boumediene, who addressed the press conference by telephone from France.
An Algerian who lived in Bosnia, Boumediene was among the first to be locked up in Guantanamo. He was finally released in May after seven years at Guantanamo, including two and a half years on hunger strike.
“I try but I can’t forget. When I wash my hand, I see the mark of the shackles,” he said.
Furious over the White House’s recent decision to suspend the transfer of Yemeni prisoners — who account for about half the prison population — Warren called the move unjustified.
Obama suspended the transfers after it emerged that the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow himself up aboard a US-bound airliner carrying nearly 300 people was allegedly trained by an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.
“You don’t have to be from Yemen to be in touch with people who plan horrible things,” Warren said.
“When cleared, their situation doesn’t change because a Nigerian trained in their country,” said Human Rights Watch counterterrorism adviser Stacy Sullivan, referring to the still-imprisoned Yemenis.
Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, who was transferred to Somaliland last month, urged Obama to close the prison soon.
“Hurry up and close this prison that has become a blot of shame upon all of America. Do it fast. Do it quickly,” he said.
—Agencies