Cape Town - South Africa has been called on to provide a home for ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees.
Asim Qureshi, the research director of UK advocacy group CAGE, this weekend called on South Africa to provide refuge for Guantanamo detainees cleared by the US authorities of terrorism-related activities.
Qureshi, together with Sheikh Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, are in South Africa for a presentation to students at the University of Cape Town and to meet members of the local chapter of CAGE which opened in Cape Town three months ago. They are to give a presentation at Wits later this week.
Guantanamo Bay, on the south-eastern coast of Cuba, houses a US military facility which became internationally notorious when it was modified after the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001 to imprison people from across the globe suspected by the US of involvement in terror activities.
To date more than 500 detainees have been released from Guantanamo and resettled, but 91 detainees remain.
CAGE is a UK-based advocacy group that aims to “empower communities impacted by the war on terror”.
Speaking to Weekend Argus on Friday, Qureshi said while dozens of detainees had been cleared by US authorities for transfer from the prison, many were in limbo as few countries were willing to accept people with such histories for resettlement.
“South Africa should open its arms to maybe four or five detainees,” he said.
Given the history of South Africa under apartheid, the country should understand the problem of detention without trial, he said.
However Qureshi does not plan to meet government representatives during his visit.
The government has sharply criticised the continued existence of the Guantanamo detention facility and the presence of the US military base in the area.
In May, Deputy Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Luwellyn Landers said the detention facility and the military base needed to go.
“We must demand the removal of US forces and personnel from Guantanamo Bay, so that Guantanamo Bay is returned to the Cuban people,” Landers said in a speech.
Cuban Ambassador to South Africa Carlos Fernandez de Cossio has also called for the detention facility to close.
US president Barack Obama made closing the detainee facility a centrepiece of his 2008 presidential re-election campaign but this has not been codified into US law because of opposition in Congress.
In late February, Obama outlined his proposal to shut the facility to Congress, noting that of the 91 remaining detainees, 35 were eligible for transfer to other countries.
The plan states the continued operation of the military prison “weakens our national security by furthering the recruiting propaganda of violent extremists”, and it had “hindered relations with allies and was a drain on resources”.
Zaeef, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan at the time of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, was detained at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in Pakistan.
He was released in 2005, and later published a book My Life with the Taliban.
On Friday he said even by the US’s own reckoning, it had no use for the prison anymore.
Asked whether he believed Obama would be able to close the facility before his term ended, he said the US president “would try”, but faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition in Congress, who had pledged to keep it open.
Weekend Argus
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