In the waning days of the Biden Administration, we have seen some remarkable movement on the GTMO front, as eleven prisoners (of the fourteen remaining who were cleared for transfer) were abruptly transerred to Oman. These prisoners were Yemeni nationals who because of the security situation in their home country could not be transferred there, and so, were sent to Oman, a nation with a supposedly successful record of “rehabilitating” former Guantanamo prisoners (notwithstanding that most of them never really had any actual connection to terrorism or Islamic extremism).
As we approach some of the coldest, darkest weather of the winter, and of course, perhaps the darkest time that the American republic has faced in over 150 years, I’ll take a small window of anything hopeful, and certainly, those of us who have been on the GTMO beat for the nearly 23 years it has been open are delighted to see any day where the population of America’s Caribbean gulag is reduced for any reason other than death of prisoners, and in this case, in the last few weeks, the Biden Administration has reduced the detainee population from 30 to 15.
Now, for the first time in the prison’s history, the majority of men held there are [at least] accused of war crimes in the legally “controversial” military commissions (designed to whitewash torture). Perhaps some of the remaining prisoners can reach guilty plea deals, and eventually be released on that basis (pretty much the only “deals” Donald Trump has been known to keep). Who knows?
Saturday, January 11th, will mark the 23rd anniversary of the opening of the detention center at GTMO. I expect to be at the event at the NY Public library (1:00 p.m., weather permitting I suppose). Bittersweet: nice to see the ongoing moral stain that is GTMO that much smaller, but sad that the project itself remains ongoing, even with far fewer men held prisoner. Does this signal a decline in our empire? I suspect far less demonstrably than the election of a man committed to our national destruction does; it is not without irony that this announcement occurs on the 4th anniversary of the January 6th Capitol Tourist Invasion, the same day that said man committed to our national destruction is certified as our next President. Maybe we’ll somehow survive; I am glad that at least these 11 men, if not myself, will no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of an ever more arbitrary United States government.
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