Gitmo update

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Shortly after taking office, President Obama issued an executive order to shut down the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within a year. That year is almost up and and the President’s plan has hit a few bumps in the road. The White House recently acknowledged that it won’t make that January 22nd deadline, after all. There are just under 200 men still being held at the prison camp in Cuba. The World’s Katy Clark has reported several times from the detention facility, now she’s back for an update. Download MP3

• Katy’s previous Guantanamo coverage on The World
• FAQ on closing Guantanamo

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MARCO WERMAN: The would-be bomber on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit reportedly got his explosives and training in Yemen. That’s focused a lot of attention on the country. Yesterday the Obama Administration announced it’s suspending the repatriation of several detainees from Yemen currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The reason given is the deteriorating security situation in their home country.  The World’s Katy Clark is in Guantanamo.  Katy, just how many detainees will be affected by this decision?

KATY CLARK: Well, it’s tough to say. I mean, they won’t go into details about specifics. I was under the impression that fewer than 200 detainees are being held here. A good half of those were to be released to Yemen. Now, I’ve heard various numbers that maybe it was 75, maybe it was as many of 91, but they are in a holding pattern right now. So that’s a good size of the population still being held here.

WERMAN: Have you had a chance to speak with any of the detainees?

CLARK: No, that’s never an option here. They are kept very much for their own privacy reasons away from reporters whenever reporters come here.  So basically what I know about what’s going on with them is what I am told from the guards, from the people in charge of the mission here. And we’ve asked whether or not the current situation has people frustrated. People were getting ready to get on an airplane to go home or to go to Yemen anyway, or to go to somewhere else, and that that’s all been put on hold. But the guards say right now that they haven’t seen any overt frustration on the part of the detainees. Maybe it’s just, you know, that they’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting and this is just waiting some more.

WERMAN: How do the detainees know what’s going on? Do they have access to newspapers or radio?

CLARK: They do and that’s actually one of the changes that I’ve been seeing since my previous trips here. They have access to three newspapers in different languages. They have access to satellite television. Some of the detainees could watch television 20 hours a day if they wanted to so they could be following the news. They also get news bulletins posted in their recreation areas, but it seems to be that the newspapers and the satellite TVs, they’re really keeping them plugged in.

WERMAN: If they are in this limbo state for right now, is there any sense of what will happen to these detainees instead of repatriation to Yemen?

CLARK: No, nobody seems to know and every time you ask that question here, people say, “Our job is just to make sure things run smoothly here. Any of those types of decisions are happening in Washington and we’re just waiting word on that.”

WERMAN: The World’s Katy Clark speaking with us from the U.S. Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Thank you very much, Katy.

CLARK: My pleasure, Marco.

WERMAN: By the way, when Katy Clark says prisoners are not allowed to give interviews for privacy reasons, this is in fact in accordance with the policies of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Geneva Conventions prohibit prisoners of war being paraded or subject to public humiliation. There’s no outright ban on media interviews, but according to the ICRC, it’s better to discourage interviews since it’s impossible to tell if a prisoner is being forced to say things.

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