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President Obama signed an executive order to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba by January 2010. That date is getting closer and the remaining detainees there are awaiting their release. The World’s Katy Clark tells us about how former Guantanamo detainees often struggle to reintegrate into society after their release.
- Law professor Mark Denbeaux on archiving Guantanamo cases
- Katy Clark’s Guantanamo coverage (2002-2009)
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MARCO WERMAN: Guantanamo’s detainee population is now down to 223. In the past few years, several hundred men have already been released. A few more have been cleared for release, and are expected to be sent overseas soon for resettlement. For some former detainees, life after Guantanamo is a huge challenge. The World’s Katy Clark reports.
KATY CLARK: It was quite a sight. Four former detainees frolicking in the Atlantic Ocean off the Coast of Bermuda this past summer. It gave the impression that life post-detention might be pretty sweet, but that’s not necessarily the norm. Take the case of Sami Al-Haj, who was on assignment as a cameraman with Al-Jazeera when he was captured in Pakistan in late 2001. He was held for more than six years as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo. During his detention he says he was beaten and sexually assaulted. Then May 2008, Al-Haj was released and returned to his native Sudan. He was never charged with a crime. Yet Al-Haj told Iranian-based Press T.V. that more than a year after his release he remains “A misfit” at home.
AL-HAJ: Still, my son doesn’t deal with me as a normal father, and even my wife and our close family like sister, brother, and even our friend is keeping away from me because they doesn’t want to want to put themselves in trouble and I lost many friends.
CLARK: What Al-Haj is experiencing is part of what Eric Stover calls the Guantanamo Stigma, something that haunts some of the more than 500 freed detainees. Stover is a Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He spent last year interviewing 62 men once held at Guantanamo. He says many of them said they were ostracized by their own families and communities after their release.
ERIC STOVER: We heard of cases in many countries where former detainees were trying to find work but unable to do so. You know, they were away, and a three or four years hole in resume, and if they said they were in US custody, they often didn’t get the jobs they were seeking. We found that in fact six of the 62 former detainees only six had actually found meaningful employment.
CLARK: Without jobs and the proper support networks, Stover says there’s little to stop these men from turning or in some cases returning to Jihad against the United States. Joshua Colangelo-Bryan is a New York based attorney who represented six detainees. All of them are now free. He would like to see the United States and other governments do more to keep these guys on track.
JOSHUA COLANGELO-BRYAN: It certainly is in the interest of all reasonable people to have the Guantanamo detainees who were released integrate themselves back into their societies. Where home countries have the capacity to provide support, be it psychological or material, they certainly should.
CLARK: The State Department has the job of facilitating transfers of released detainees to their home countries or to third countries, but it won’t say whether it does any more than that to help these men readjust. Often the mental wounds former Guantanamo detainees carry with them re-open after their release. Berkeley’s Eric Stover says one man now living in the Middle East whom he tried to interview, went into hiding during the week they were scheduled to talk. Stover describes him as “the worst case scenario” of any of the former detainees he met.
STOVER: The family said that he had left the house without shoes and that this was happening quite often. He just was completely disoriented and was in clear need of psychiatric care.
MOAZZEM BEGG: Where is the welfare for the people who have been tortured? Where is the support system for people who have endured cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment?
CLARK: This is Moazzem Begg speaking at the launch of the Guantanamo Justice Center in London. Begg and other former detainees created the center to help men like themselves who’ve been left traumatized by their experiences at Guantanamo. It’s not the kind of organization that will win plaudits in Washington, but its goals may just coincide with Washington’s so long as those goals focus on former detainees moving past their time in captivity and living peaceful lives. For The World this is Katy Clark.
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Prof Denbeaux was incorrect in stating there was no one jumping up asking for the Gitmo detainees. The 300 almost-former employes of ‘Standish Max’ and their fellow citizens of Standish, MI are. They would be glad to offer some Michigander hospitality and keep their jobs and their town (Pop 1500) alive.
‘Standish Max’ is a maximum security prison in Northern Michigan and would be a fine spot for the remaining Gitmo detainees.
I’ve listen to NPR for a long time and it takes a lot to stun me. So sorry these terrorists are having a tough go of it when they get out of prison. I am supposed to give them my money (that’s the “resources” spoken of) to help them out? The most absurd thing I can think of.