Fears for Guantánamo Prisoner Resettled in Serbia, Where the Government Wants to Get Rid of Him

Former Guantanamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi in a screenshot from a video made by Canada's CBC Radio last month. Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.




 

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Here at “Close Guantánamo,” we have long taken an interest not just in getting the prison closed, and telling the stories of the men still held, to dispel the enduring myth that they are “the worst of the worst,”, but also in following up on prisoners after their release, and to that end we are delighted that Jessica Schulberg of the Huffington Post has recently highlighted the story of Mansoor Adayfi.

A Yemeni, Adayfi (identified in Guantánamo as Abdul Rahman Ahmed or Mansoor al-Zahari) was resettled in Serbia in July 2016, nine months after he was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, a parole-type process introduced by Barack Obama in his last three years in office, which led to 36 prisoners being approved for release, men who had previously been categorized — often with extraordinarily undue caution — as being too dangerous to release.

Adayfi’s story is fascinating. An insignificant prisoner on capture — with the US authorities eventually conceding that he “probably was a low-level fighter who was aligned with al-Qa’ida, although it is unclear whether he actually joined that group” — he only ended up being regarded as threat to the US because of his behavior in Guantánamo. Read the rest of this entry »

Fan of Shakira, Taylor Swift and Game of Thrones Asks Review Board to Free Him from Guantánamo, As an Afghan is Approved for Release

Mansoor-al-Zahari, a Yemeni prisoner at Guantanamo, in a photo included in the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011.I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Last week, Mansoor al-Zahari, a Guantánamo prisoner from Yemen, who has embraced western culture, becoming a fan of Shakira, Taylor Swift and Game of Thrones, became the 19th prisoner to have his case reviewed by a Periodic Review Board — the review process, established two years ago, to review the cases of all the prisoners not facing trials (just ten of the 114 men still held) and not already approved for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in January 2009 (43 others).

The PRBs consist of representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and, since January 2014, they have approved the release of 14 men — and have only approved the ongoing detention of two others. The process is moving far too slowly — 50 others are awaiting reviews, and at the current rate the first round of reviews will not be completed until 2020 at the earliest. In addition, of the 14 approved for release, just three have been released — in part because, like 37 of those approved for release by the task force but still held, six of the 11 approved for release by the PRBs but still held are Yemenis, and the entire US establishment is unwilling to repatriate Yemenis, because of the security situation in Yemen, and third countries must be found that are prepared to offer them new homes. Read the rest of this entry »

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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