Madam, – Tony Allwright (Opinion, March 26th) criticises the Taoiseach for offering “a haven for jihadists”. The Taoiseach is doing nothing of the sort.
Mr Allwright bases his argument on the claim that the US wrongly decided a former Taliban fighter was no longer a threat and released him. This is not true. The US government never claimed he was no longer a threat. He was not released from Guantánamo. He was transferred back to Afghanistan where he was held in the maximum security wing of Pul-e-Charki prison in Kabul. The Afghan government later made a decision to release him and have been much criticised for doing so.
This is completely different to the kind of cases being considered by the Irish Government. Between 50 and 60 of the remaining 250 Guantánamo detainees have been cleared for release. The US government and military has accepted that these men are not a threat, and never were.
They are not Taliban. They are not al-Qaeda. They are not suspects of any kind.
Oybek Jabbarov for example, now in his seventh year of detention, was an Uzbeki livestock trader who accepted a lift from Afghan Northern Alliance militia he met in a teahouse. They then handed him over to the Americans for a bounty. Others are political activists who fled oppression in Uzbekistan, China or Libya. They cannot be returned home because the human rights record of those countries means that sending them there could expose them to further torture, imprisonment or even death.
More than 520 men have been released from Guantánamo since it opened and the vast majority are trying to rebuild their lives.
Claims by the US on numbers of former detainees who have “returned to the fight” have not been backed up with any identifying information or other evidence.
Moreover, the US defence department’s number apparently includes former detainees who have engaged in “propaganda warfare” by speaking out publicly about the abuses they suffered while imprisoned at Guantánamo.
Innocent men have spent years in prison because they were swept up in the confusion of the US invasion of Afghanistan. They suffered imprisonment, degradation and torture. Ireland can help bring this to an end by offering sanctuary to detainees who have been cleared for release. It is an act of moral courage to do so. – Yours, etc,