Washington, April 27: The Obama administration is refusing to consider sending home two Kuwaiti detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay unless new restrictions are placed on two former detainees already released to Kuwait, a lawyer for the prisoners said on Monday.
Last year, two Kuwaiti detainees were sent home from the prison after a U.S. judge ordered their release upon reviewing the evidence about them. Another detainee lost his petition for release but is appealing and a fourth case is pending.
In a letter to President Barack Obama, the lawyer for the Kuwaitis said conditions on men already released was akin to treating them as if they were “paroled criminals instead of men who never should have been imprisoned in the first place.”
The administration has demanded that the two previously released detainees have their passports taken away, be required to check in with local authorities regularly and be under surveillance by the Kuwaiti government for a period of time, the lawyer, David Cynamon, told Reuters.
“This makes no sense, either as a matter of justice or necessity,” Cynamon said in the letter to Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Family members of the Kuwaiti detainees have worked with lawyers to win their release.
A Justice Department spokesman declined comment. A representative for the State Department, which has led negotiations for transferring detainees, was not immediately available for comment.
The Obama administration has been struggling to close the controversial prison that was opened in 2002 to house terrorism suspects. Political and diplomatic problems about dealing with the remaining detainees have slowed emptying the facility.
A U.S. judge last summer denied the petition by Fawzi Al Odah for release, stating that he failed to provide credible explanations for his travels to Afghanistan and found that he became part of the Taliban and al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.
His lawyers had argued it was a case of mistaken identity.
The other remaining detainee, Fayiz Al Kandari, has been accused by the U.S. government of being a confidant of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and being an instructor at training camps. His lawyers have argued he was in Afghanistan to offer relief aid.
The Kuwaitis who returned last year entered a rehabilitation center that gave them access to education, medical care and other services. Cynamon said that the two remaining Kuwaiti detainees have agreed to also go there if released from the Guantanamo prison.
“Kuwait has promised that it will take all security measures necessary for the safety and security, not just of the United States and its citizens, but of Kuwait and its citizens as well,” Cynamon said.
–Agencies