Reprieve in Nairobi

We're here in Nairobi on the eve of the OGOA summit, when the Secretary of State, HiIllary Clinton, is slated to meet various African heads of state. Some of those leaders still have nationals in Guantánamo, including President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the leader of the government of Somalia.

One Reprieve client, Ismail Mohamoud Mohamed, knew Sheikh Sharif very well. Ismail was one of the founding fathers of the 'Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia', the coalition party that won the elections and propelled Sheikhf Sharif Ahmed to the Presidency at the start of this year. With new leaders in the US and Somalia, Ismail and many within and outside Somalia hoped the destructive US policies towards Somalia would finally improve. Dozens of individuals were seized, rendered, and abused with US support in 2006, in the wake of the US-sponsored Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.

Ismail was one of these victims. He was seized en route to a peace conference he organized and taken to Guantánamo. The question now is: will the new leaders who have pledged to move forward and close Guantánamo put Ismail's fate, and the fate of other individuals wrongly seized in the local chapter of the war on terror, on their agenda?

We hope to meet President Ahmed tonight. Time will tell.