There remains a key question to be asked: If those remaining are not a risk or a threat then why has it taken a more than a decade to form this conclusion? Additional questions include how much are we paying other countries to take a detainee as no agreements or conditions have ever been published.
Is this the right time to be doing this? Not so much as noted here:
Key takeaways in this month’s Terror Threat Snapshot include:
– There have been 24 ISIS-linked plots or attacks against Western targets in the first half of 2015, up from 19 in all of last year.
– The number of homegrown terror plots since 9/11 has reached 116, tripling in just the past five years.
– Foreign fighters continue to flow into Syria and Iraq. There has been an 80 percent increase in fighters traveling to the conflict zone since ISIS declared its “caliphate” one year ago.
– More than 200 Americans are believed to have traveled—or attempted to travel—to fight in Syria, a 33 percent increase overall since the beginning of this year.
Half of Guantánamo’s uncharged captives are OK’d to go
Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani in a photo from his 2008 prison profile provided to McClatchy by WikiLeaks.
McClatchy: The Guantánamo parole board on Monday said it had cleared a Yemeni captive for release to resettlement outside his homeland, reaching a milestone:
Now, 33 of the last 76 captives at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba can go to nations providing security assurances that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Ten captives are charged with war crimes. So half of those long-held, uncharged detainees are now approved to go.
The figure could rise. Seventeen captives not currently facing charges await their parole board hearings, or decisions from them.
Musab Omar Ali al Madhwani, 36, “never held extremist views or any desire to harm Americans,” his U.S. military advocate told the Periodic Review Board on June 28. “I am confident Musab is honest in his intentions after Guantánamo” to pursue a career as an accountant, marry and have children.
Pakistani security forces captured him on Sept. 11, 2002, in a day of raids in Karachi, according to his 2008 prison profile, parts of which an updated assessment discredited. He arrived at Guantánamo on Oct. 28, 2002, after 30 or more days in CIA custody, according to a portion of the so-called Senate Torture Report on the spy agency’s secret prison network.
At Guantánamo, U.S. military intelligence dubbed him a member of the “Karachi Six,” calling him part of a six-member “al-Qaida operational cell intended to support a future attack” in the Pakistani port city, the country’s largest and most populous.
The decision released Monday by the board, however, noted that by March he had been “reassessed to be that of a low-level fighter” who was probably trying to get home to Yemen when he was arrested. The board said he should be resettled in a third country with “reintegration support” and security assurances.
His lawyer, Patricia Bronte, told the board that her client had grown at Guantánamo into someone she would welcome into her family home. She and two other no-charge defense lawyers who had represented him vowed to attend his wedding “regardless of where it takes place,” she said.
“Musab is no longer the shy, gullible youth whom two men convinced to run away from home and go to Afghanistan,” she said. Once, she added, he was “afraid of being alone in the dark.” Now, “he reaches out to calm his brothers’ fears and resolve their disputes.”
Madhwani was one of two Yemeni clients for whom Bronte bought socks and shoes last year after she noticed the men’s footwear looked scruffy. She said she didn’t mind the expense, but was disturbed by what appeared to be prison camp cost-cutting. The spokesman at the time called reports of shortages at the Most Expensive Prison on Earth “baseless”
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MIAMI (AP) — A review board has decided that a Saudi prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who attended flight school in the U.S. and was trained to make explosives by al-Qaida should continue to be held without charge.
The Periodic Review Board said in a decision released Friday that Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi should remain in custody at the U.S. base in Cuba because he remains a security threat.
Factors cited by the board include what it said was his past involvement in terrorism as well as “hostile behavior” while detained, including organizing confrontations between detainees and the guard force at the detention center.
A short statement added that “the board considered the detainee’s prior statements expressing support for attacking the United States, and the detainee’s refusal to discuss his plans for the future.”
The 41-year-old al-Sharbi attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and later went to a U.S. flight school, where he “associated with” two of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, according to a profile released by the Pentagon before his review board hearing in June.
Authorities said he later received training by al-Qaida in the manufacture of improvised explosive devices and was captured in a raid on a terrorist safe house in Pakistan in 2002.
He faced charges that included providing material support for terrorism before the military commission at the base. But U.S. courts have ruled that material support at the time of the alleged offenses did not constitute a war crime that could be prosecuted at Guantanamo and the case was withdrawn. He cannot be tried in civilian court because Congress has prohibited the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. for any reason, including prosecution.
Al-Sharbi is one of 76 prisoners held at Guantanamo, including 32 who have been approved for release and are awaiting transfer.
