MEPs demand action to close Guantanamo and EU help to settle detainees

3.37.00pm GMT Tue 9th Feb 2010

The European Parliament is today debating progress in closing Guantanamo and resettling detainees and EU-US cooperation in doing so, on the basis of ALDE group questions to the Council and the Commission.

Sarah Ludford (LibDem, UK), ALDE member of the justice & civil liberties committee and human rights sub-committee, is a long-term campaigner against Guantanamo, torture, rendition and other 'war on terror' abuses. She was the EP rapporteur on Guantanamo from 2003 and was instigator and vice-chair of the European Parliament temporary committee on 'extraordinary rendition' which reported 3 years ago. She said:

"MEPs had spent many years calling for the closure of Guantanamo, so we warmly welcomed the announcement by President Obama to close it by January 22nd 2010. While understanding the difficulties in unravelling the mess left by George Bush, the delays which mean nearly 200 men remain there are extremely frustrating."

"Even more, we strongly dispute the intention to keep 47 men in indefinite detention without charge in a US prison, under Bush era powers which Congress has never approved. Guantanamo represents a huge violation of international law and of human rights and it must not just be relocated onto US soil"

"We will continue to push EU governments to take more detainees for resettlement who cannot safely return to their home countries. This is their duty both out of transatlantic solidarity and out of guilt at their own complicity. Chinese threats concerning resettled Uighurs, who in China have long been an oppressed group, must be given short shrift."

"My own constituent Shaker Aamer, a legal UK resident whose family of a British wife and four British children live in Battersea in London, is still marooned in legal limbo. He appears to be the victim of a pass-the-parcel whereby the US and UK governments may be colluding to bundle him off to his home country of Saudi Arabia. Since Shaker Aamer is a direct witness to his own and others' torture not only by the US but also by UK secret agents, this would be very convenient in preventing his testimony before UK courts."

ENDS