Wait, no electronic bracelets? No manacles? Terrorists left to roam free and go shopping? Given free lessons in civics and cookery? The end of civilisation in Ireland is nigh…
Whilst US politicians are apparently terrified at the prospect of Guantánamo inmates being transferred to supermax security prisons in their State, the Irish government is letting former inmates roam free and treating them <shock, horror> as human beings!
Former US detainees begin Irish integration – The Irish Times – Thu, Oct 01, 2009
TWO FORMER Guantánamo Bay detainees who arrived in Ireland for resettlement last weekend have begun a 10-week integration programme and are adjusting slowly to their new environment, according to a Government official.
The Uzbeks, Oybek Jabbarov (31) and Shakhrukh Hamiduva, who is in his mid-20s, travelled to Ireland last Saturday after spending seven years in the US-run detention centre in Cuba.
To help them prepare for their new lives in Ireland, the Department of Justice has organised a 10-week series of intensive courses in civics, cookery and other subjects.
Former US detainees begin Irish integration – The Irish Times – Thu, Oct 01, 2009
Under an agreement between the Government and the US administration, the men have been granted humanitarian leave to remain, a legal status that gives them the right to work and access State services.
While they nominally enjoy the right to travel within the EU, the men have not been issued with travel documents and, as Uzbek nationals, would require visas to visit other European states. Officials say they will be eligible to apply for Irish citizenship after five years.
The men flew into Baldonnel aerodrome on Saturday and were brought directly to the west of the country to begin the integration programme. One of the men has a wife and daughter, and officials expect them to join him in Ireland in due course.
As well as taking courses, the men will be assisted in opening bank accounts and dealing with State bureaucracy.
Three officials from the Department of Justice have been assigned to co-ordinate their resettlement, and while interpreters have also been made available to the men, officials say they have been communicating with staff through English.
A source in the Department of Justice said the men were in good health and slowly adapting to their new circumstances. “It’s a major change of circumstances for these people. They have been incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay for seven years, and they’re suddenly in an entirely new environment, in an alien country with different weather,” the source said.
“They didn’t have many clothes when they arrived, so arrangements were made to bring them to buy new shoes. One of the men went, but the other got nervous and decided against . . . We’re taking small steps at a time.
“They’re in a centre now, but even to leave the centre and go down to the local shop is a major adjustment because they haven’t been outside for a long time.”
Plans for the men’s long-term resettlement have not yet been finalised, but it is expected that they will be helped to find social housing elsewhere in the country before Christmas.
“They don’t pose any security threat, and they’re as well adjusted as you can be after spending the period of time they did in Guantánamo Bay,” the source said.
I suppose its the least we can do, given that we quite possibly connived in their extraordinary rendition to Cuba through Shannon. Quite why they were flown into the military airbase at Baldonnel has not been explained. Perhaps the US Air Force feared saboteurs might attack their plane in Shannon.
Let us recall that these men have never been given a trial, never been convicted of anything, and may quite possibly have been victims of mistaken identity or local bounty hunters seeking US rewards for turning in local “terrorists” who just happened to be people they didn’t like. Quite why it took 7 years to release them from the ‘land of the free’ is difficult to understand. Many Nazi war criminals served less time. Lets hope they get used to weather and settle in well here in Ireland.
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Completing this brief guide to the cleared prisoners are the Uzbeks, whose government’s human rights abuses are notorious: Shakrukh Hamiduva, just 18 years old at the time of his capture, who was working as a taxi driver in Afghanistan when he was seized by Afghan bounty hunters; Ali Sher Hamidullah, a drifter who explained in Guantánamo that the Uzbek intelligence agents who visited him told him that “the only thing that waits for me in Uzbekistan is a bullet in my head”; Kamalludin Kasimbekov, who had been forcibly recruited to join the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, allies of the Taliban; and Oybek Jabbarov, a 30-year old father of two, who suffers from health problems related to a botched surgical procedure on a ruptured disk in his back in 2007.
Unwillingly transplanted to Afghanistan along with fighters from the IMU, Jabbarov explained in Guantánamo that he made a living “buying and selling sheep, chicken and goats,” and was told in December 2001 that the government was giving out ID cards to immigrants at Bagram airbase. “There, I saw American soldiers,” he said. “They just took me inside, they questioned me, and they kept me for a few days. I’ve been detained ever since.”
Oybek Jabbarov is known to the Pentagon as Abu Bakir Jamaludinovich. For the story of the Tajik prisoner, Omar Abdulayev, see The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras 9 – Seized in Pakistan (Part One).
“The Pakistanis are making business out of this war, including myself. The detainees are not being captured by US forces, but are being sold by the Pakistani government. They are making [up to] $10,000 to sell detainees to the US … they knew that the more evidence they created, the more dangerous they made me, the more money they would make from the Americans.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Many thanks for this – can I incorporate some of it into diary for Eurotrib?
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Definitely, it’s free to share … all frogs are working for the same goal.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."US House blocks Guantanamo move – The Irish Times – Thu, Oct 01, 2009
The concept of innocence until proven guilty in a court does seem to have been abandoned these days.