EU STATES have agreed to share information on former detainees they plan to accept from the controversial Guantánamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.
The decision should pave the way for several dozen inmates to move to EU states such as Ireland, which have agreed to help the US close the centre.
“There is now an EU framework in place which will allow member states to discuss the situation with the US authorities. We have indicated we will look positively at any US request in relation to taking in a detainee or possibly two,” a spokesman for Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said yesterday.
The detention centre in Guantánamo, Cuba, was set up by former US president George Bush in 2002 to hold international terrorist suspects. He signed an order that the US military could hold the detainees indefinitely without recourse to the protections outlined in the Geneva Convention.
President Barack Obama has pledged to close the controversial centre by the end of the year and has asked EU states to take some of the remaining 240 inmates, who cannot be sent back to their home countries.
Several EU states, such as Portugal, France and Ireland, have offered to take inmates as long as an EU framework was put in place to monitor them. But others, such as Austria and the Czech Republic, have ruled out allowing inmates to obtain residency rights, fearing they could be a danger to society.
In Luxembourg yesterday, EU justice ministers agreed a system whereby any states which agree to take in former detainees would inform all others and share information received from the US before taking a final decision.
One EU diplomat said agreeing the system was important because of the principle of free movement within the union. It also meant every member state had the right to refuse to take in any Guantánamo Bay detainee it considered a threat to national security.
Even though Ireland and Britain remain outside the Schengen free border area, all member states have agreed to share information with both.
The EU’s counter-terrorism co-ordinator, Gilles de Kerchove, said the agreement was very important. “It is materialised by a system of information sharing, politically confirmed at the highest level.” Member states will shortly begin detailed talks with the US on accepting detainees.