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The Joe Biden Administration announced on Monday the release and transfer to his native country of a detainee from the Guantanamo military prison, the first repatriation of an inmate since this controversial prison under the current US president.
With the release of 56-year-old Moroccan Abdul Latif Nasir from the prison at the naval base located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the number of detainees has dropped to 39. Most have been imprisoned for almost two decades without charges against them. and without having been judged.
According to the Pentagon statement, the Guantanamo Periodic Review Board (PRB) had already determined in 2016 that the detention under the US law of war of Abdul Latif Nasir was no longer necessary as it no longer constituted a threat. For US national security, the PRB is the body established under the presidency of Barack Obama in 2011 that determines whether Guantánamo detainees can be released, repatriated to their countries or whether they should continue to be held.
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Although five years have passed since this body recommended that Nasir be sent back to his native Morocco, neither the Obama Administration nor that of Donald Trump, which confirmed the PRB's recommendation in 2018, had repatriated him. After announcing that the prisoner has already been sent back to the Maghreb country, the official US statement this Monday praises Morocco "for its collaboration to guarantee the national security interests of both countries", and thanks its willingness "to support the efforts Americans to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center ”.
According to the documents of his arrest leaked by Wikileaks, Abdul Latif Nasir, 56, a native of Casablanca, was a member of the Al Qaeda military committee and had been in direct contact with the leader of the terrorist group Osama Bin Laden since 1993. The authorities The Americans accused him of having received training in terrorist tactics in various training camps of the terrorist organization in Afghanistan, including advanced training in explosives.
The now released prisoner allegedly participated in combats against the US Army in that Asian country and was responsible for transferring the fighters from the city of Jalalabad to the Tora Bora compound, where he later assumed command of the war front. US espionage believes that he had probably previously formed part of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Al Qaeda-affiliated entity founded in 1995. The suspected Moroccan terrorist was arrested on December 15, 2001 in Afghanistan and handed over to US authorities on December 21. January 2002.
The Guantánamo detention center was inaugurated in 2002 under the presidency of George W. Bush to house those baptized as "foreign fighters", those suspected of terrorism captured by the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001, or handed over to US authorities by third countries. The allegation of keeping people in detention, often without charge or trial, as well as the degrading treatment close to torture that was inflicted on the prisoners, denounced by various human rights organizations, made this prison a symbol of excesses of violence. the so-called "War on Terror" of the United States.
The prison housed 800 inmates before this number began to decline. Before leaving the White House, Bush transferred some 550 prisoners to other countries. His successor in office, Democrat Barack Obama, did the same with about 200. Obama promised to close the prison, but could not fulfill his promise, mainly because of Republican opposition in Congress. The former vice president, Joe Biden, has in turn promised to close this controversial prison, although this task will not be easy as the federal government is still prohibited by law from transferring Guantanamo inmates to prisons in the continental United States. Even within your own Democratic party,Biden does not have enough support to introduce the legislative changes that would allow the closure of the detention center located in Cuba.
On May 18, the Biden government had already announced its approval for another three detainees at the military naval base that the United States has on the Caribbean island to be transferred to countries that promise to impose security measures on them. One of those three men is the oldest prisoner at the prison, 73-year-old Pakistani Saifullah Paracha, who has spent 16 years in US custody. The other two inmates are Abdul Rabbani, a 54-year-old Pakistani, and Uthman Abdul al-Rahim Uthman, a 40-year-old Yemeni; both have been in US military custody for two decades. None of the three has ever been charged with any crime by the American justice system.
