Post by Logan on Jan 22, 2016 2:01:59 GMT -6
Guantánamo detainee declines release; 2 others sent to Balkans
The Pentagon disclosed Thursday that it sent two Guantánamo captives to start new lives in the Balkans in its continuing efforts to close the prison camps in southeast Cuba.
But in a strange twist, a cleared Yemeni prisoner named Mohammad Bwazir, 35, declined to leave Guantánamo for a nation that offered him sanctuary and was still at the detention center Thursday, dashing Obama administration hopes of downsizing to 90 detainees this month.
Bwazir’s lawyer, John Chandler, said the slight, sometime hunger striker feared going to a country where he didn’t have family. Chandler declined to say which country offered the Yemeni sanctuary — “It’s a country I’d go to in a heartbeat” — but said Bwazir couldn’t bring himself to board the U.S. military flight early Wednesday that delivered detainee Tariq el Sawah, 58, an Egyptian, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Yemeni Abdulaziz al Swidi, 41, to Montenegro for resettlement.
“He’s been in Guantánamo so long that he was terrified about going to a country other than one where he had family,” Chandler told the Miami Herald. Bwazir understood he couldn’t go home to his native Yemen but wanted to go to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Indonesia where he had his mother, brothers or aunts and uncles.
Read more here: www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article55820920.html
The Pentagon disclosed Thursday that it sent two Guantánamo captives to start new lives in the Balkans in its continuing efforts to close the prison camps in southeast Cuba.
But in a strange twist, a cleared Yemeni prisoner named Mohammad Bwazir, 35, declined to leave Guantánamo for a nation that offered him sanctuary and was still at the detention center Thursday, dashing Obama administration hopes of downsizing to 90 detainees this month.
Bwazir’s lawyer, John Chandler, said the slight, sometime hunger striker feared going to a country where he didn’t have family. Chandler declined to say which country offered the Yemeni sanctuary — “It’s a country I’d go to in a heartbeat” — but said Bwazir couldn’t bring himself to board the U.S. military flight early Wednesday that delivered detainee Tariq el Sawah, 58, an Egyptian, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Yemeni Abdulaziz al Swidi, 41, to Montenegro for resettlement.
“He’s been in Guantánamo so long that he was terrified about going to a country other than one where he had family,” Chandler told the Miami Herald. Bwazir understood he couldn’t go home to his native Yemen but wanted to go to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Indonesia where he had his mother, brothers or aunts and uncles.
Read more here: www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article55820920.html