Asylum in Europe

Despite numerous references to Guantánamo in the 251,287 US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks, which deal largely with negotiations to rehouse cleared prisoners who could not — or cannot — be repatriated because of fears of torture or other ill-treatment in their home countries, there has been almost no mention of why this need to [...]

Following Wikileaks’ release of 251,287 US diplomatic cables, which has, if nothing else, revealed that secrecy and the Internet appear to be mutually incompatible, a handful of media outlets immediately picked up on references to Guantánamo — and the Obama administration’s negotiations with other countries — in the cables. Britain’s Daily Mail led the way, [...]

Every now and then I’m forcefully reminded of the extent to which Guantánamo is still used by unscrupulous lawmakers as a political plaything, even though it is a place where, by any objective measure, a small number of terrorist suspects are held alongside insignificant Taliban foot soldiers and others unfortunate enough to be in the [...]

Over the last 18 months, as part of the slow-moving process of closing Guantánamo, the Obama administration — having refused to offer new homes on the US mainland to cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture — has prevailed on other countries to help out. To date, 37 former [...]

Six months after arriving from Guantánamo to a new life in the Swiss canton of Jura, Arkin Mahmut (46) and his younger brother Bahtiyar (34), seen for the first time in the photo here, have spoken publicly about their release, stating that they are “happy” in their new home. However, as the Swiss website swissinfo.ch [...]

This is the fourth part of a nine-part series telling the stories of all the prisoners currently held in Guantánamo (174 at the time of writing). See the introduction here, and Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven. This fourth article tells the stories of 19 prisoners seized in [...]

On Thursday, two Guantánamo prisoners were released, to start new lives in Germany, bringing the prison’s population to 174. Announcing their arrival, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière stated that, by taking them in, Germany had “made its humanitarian contribution to closing the detention center.” He also noted that the two men had asked for their [...]

Yesterday, as I explained here, cleared Guantánamo prisoner Nabil Hadjarab wrote a letter to the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, beseeching the President to offer him a home in France, where he has extended family, and where he lived as a child. However, in a horribly swift response to the letter, AFP reports that the foreign [...]

Yesterday, Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity, published a letter to President Sarkozy in which Guantánamo prisoner Nabil Hadjarab pleads to be allowed to live with his family in France. Just 22 years old at the time of his capture, Nabil, who spent much of his childhood in France and has close family there, was [...]

Since the US Supreme Court ruled on July 17 that there was no legal obstacle to the involuntary repatriation of Algerians at Guantánamo, and one man, Abdul Aziz Naji, was promptly flown back to Algiers, opponents of a ruling that saw the Supreme Court playing as fast and loose with the UN Convention Against Torture [...]