Europe, President Obama needs you

How the European Union is getting in the way of Guantánamo's closure.

It is heartening that even the most world-weary European governments are not immune to the magic of President Obama. It is difficult to imagine a US leader greeted with greater warmth by the European Community - and this has generally translated into concrete support for the Administration's goals.

Yet, in a strange paradox, the unique freedoms enjoyed by EC citizens are proving an obstacle to one of Obama's thorniest missions: to close the notorious prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Everyone agrees that President Obama cannot close Guantánamo without serious international support. This is because vast numbers of cleared prisoners have nowhere to go. Many left their home country to escape persecution and are therefore in the bizarre situation of choosing to stay in Guantánamo – only because they have nowhere safe to go. The US military desperately wants them out.

Reprieve's client Ahmed Belbacha, for example, so fears what awaits him in Algeria that he feels bound to accept the slightly less-bad option, waiting in Camp Six - the prison’s most grim isolation wing — until another country offers him refuge.

In other cases, the US is struggling to get governments to take cleared prisoners who wish to return home. Ayman al Shurafa is one of our clients who slips through the diplomatic cracks: between the Palestinian Authority, the entity from which he holds a passport, and Saudi Arabia, the country where he was born and called home for over twenty years. The Israelis won’t let him go to Gaza (or what is left of it), and the Saudis won’t let him go back to his family.

The clear solution is for 'third countries' to offer these lost prisoners new homes. For this, the United States desperately needs help - yet the Bush Administration has been its own worst enemy. By falsely labelling even cleared prisoners as the ‘worst of the worst’, the previous Administration gave rights-abusing governments an excuse to persecute returning prisoners - and rights-respecting countries an excuse to refuse them refuge.

Lacking support from reliable allies, the Bush Administration transferred a number of prisoners to 'regimes of concern' - including Tunisia and Libya. Secret and unenforceable 'transfer agreements' proved useless - returning prisoners were abused, tortured and in some instances killed.

How can the President Obama break with the past and convince its rights-respecting allies - most importantly, Europe - to help?

At a minimum, Obama will need better support from his own Defence Department - which has not yet learned from its mistakes. Only last month the Pentagon issued a sensational statement that 61 prisoners have 'returned to the fight'. This was both unhelpful and absurdly misleading. The list of ‘recidivists’ includes three British former prisoners whose subsequent ‘terrorism’ involved making a film with Michael Winterbottom - and prisoners in Albania who simply gave a critical interview about their experiences.

Beyond that, securing European co-operation remains difficult - largely due to the region's political freedoms. The EU's Schengen visa allows anyone living in continental EU countries to move from one to the next without border controls. Thus, if a prisoner is accepted by Germany, that would also impact neighbouring countries - who might be less keen on taking prisoners.

There are two ways to deal with this. First, by proving to all EC governments that the prisoners we are discussing will not threaten national security, and second, the proposal we have made on behalf of our clients to enter into voluntary security arrangements, which would police ex-prisoners’ travel, and reassure the public.


With regards to the 'threat', Reprieve is constantly attempting to correct false impressions left by the Bush administration - and President Obama will need to do the same. It helps that most of the prisoners under discussion have been cleared by the US military - as biased a tribunal as one could imagine. Far from wanting to “rejoin” some fight, prisoners would be above all grateful to their adopted countries.

A great example is Nabil Hadjarab, for whom France provided the happiest years of his childhood. After years of abuse by his alcoholic father, Nabil - who had been brought to France from Algeria - was placed with a French foster family in Lyon. He spent six happy years there and attended primary school, until his father reappeared and took him back to Algeria.

As an adult, Nabil immediately applied for the right to resettle in his beloved Lyon. But, like so many others, he was sold to the US military for a bounty while travelling through Pakistan in 2002 - which led to his wrongful imprisonment in Guantánamo .

Nabil was vindicated in 2007. After five years imprisonment, the US military's Administrative Review Board found Nabil posed no "threat to the US or its allies" and had "no intelligence value or significance in terms of law enforcement", and approved his release from Guantánamo Bay. There is a clear case to be made for sending Nabil to France.

Another compelling argument against the 'threat' is that none of the 13 Guantánamo prisoners brought to Britain has had so much as a traffic offence. Moazzam Begg is a good example – he has devoted himself to travelling the country promoting reconciliation.

Prisoners like Sherif El Mashad, who wants to resettle in Italy, could be similarly useful citizens. Sherif lived a happy life as a legal Italian resident for over four years, until he left for a summer break in July 2001. An upwardly mobile young man who built his own business from scratch in Como, his dream was to support his family back home in Egypt, and live a quiet life. He has always denied that he has anything to do with terrorism. Years ago, Sherif was visited by Italian officials in Guantánamo. “They told me they knew I was innocent and they would ask the United States to release me,” he states. 



The second strategy is for prisoners to provide 'voluntary security arrangements' - Reprieve's clients are very happy to do this as they have nothing to hide. While details necessarily must remain confidential, such arrangements might require the prisoner to notify the government before travelling, which would do much to reassure the public.

For now, the Obama Administration is busy conducting a full review of all prisoners remaining in Guantánamo . When that is completed the real work will begin. The President must convince Europe that the new United States is a trustworthy ally, worthy of respect and deserving of help. It is a monumental task – but if he can keep his magic alive, Obama is the man for the job.

This article first appeared in the European Lawyer.