XPost: rec.scouting.usa, alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.california
XPost: sac.politics
Dear America,
Obama hates you.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has approved the release
of 15 detainees from the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
to the United Arab Emirates, a move derided Monday night by a
leading member of Congress as reckless.
Rep. Ed Royce, the California Republican who chairs the Foreign
Affairs Committee, called the released detainees "hardened
terrorists" who will be a threat for years.
"In its race to close Gitmo, the Obama administration is
doubling down on policies that put American lives at risk,"
Royce said in a statement. "Once again, hardened terrorists are
being released to foreign countries where they will be a threat."
The Pentagon, in a statement, said an inter-agency review board
considered their potential threat to security and unanimously
approved six of the 15 for release, A consensus was reached on
release of the remaining nine. There are 61 detainees remaining
at Guantanamo.
According to the Pentagon, the 15 prisoners are Abd al-Muhsin
Abd al-Rab Salih al-Busi, Abd al-Rahman Sulayman, Mohammed Nasir
Yahi Khussrof Kazaz, Abdul Muhammad Ahmad Nassar al-Muhajari,
Muhammad Ahmad Said al-Adahi, Abdel Qadir al-Mudafari, Mahmud
Abd Al Aziz al-Mujahid, Saeed Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah Sarem
Jarabh, Mohammed Kamin, Zahar Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun, Hamid al-
Razak (aka Haji Hamidullah), Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed, Ayub
Murshid Ali Salih, Obaidullah, and Bashir Nasir Ali al-Marwalah.
Six of the 15 — al-Busi, Sulayman, Kazaz, al-Muhajari, al-Adahi,
and al-Mudafari — were unanimously recommended for release by
the inter-agency Guantanamo Review Task Force, the Pentagon said.
The other nine were recommended for release by the periodic
review boards monitoring Guantanamo prisoners, the Pentagon said.
When President Obama took office in 2009, there were 242
detainees still in the Guantanamo Bay prison, down from a high
of almost 700. That number has dropped as the Pentagon has
transferred lower-risk detainees to other countries — meaning
that the prisoners who remain tend to be considered higher
security risks.
Obama earlier this year announced a plan to close down the
facilities at Guantanamo, arguing that the keeping them open was
"contrary to our values."
The plan included transferring detainees to other countries, and
imprisoning those who could not be moved to existing facilities
in South Carolina, Kansas and Colorado or at new prisons at
military bases.
The administration estimates that it would cost $290 million to
$475 million for the Pentagon to renovate an existing state or
federal prison, which would be dedicated to holding only
detainees from Guantanamo. The Pentagon estimates housing the
detainees in the United States could save $65 million to $85
million a year, recouping construction costs in about five years.
Law prohibits the president from transferring the Guantanamo Bay
detainees to American soil where there are only a handful of
maximum-security prisons deemed appropriate to house them.
Located on the eastern edge of Cuba, the Naval Station at
Guantanamo Bay has housed prisoners taken captive in war on
terror since 2002. Since it exists on a base on Cuban soil but
held by the United States under a 113-year-old lease, the
prisoners are in what some human rights organizations call a
"legal black hole."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/08/15/pentagon- releases-15-more-gitmo-detainees/88802522/
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