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WASHINGTON – The Biden administration moved its first inmate out of Guantánamo Bay on Monday, repatriating a Moroccan who was recommended to be released from the prison of war in 2016, but who nonetheless remained there during the Trump years.
The transfer of the man, Abdul Latif Nasser, 56, was the first sign of a renewed effort under President Biden to winnow the prison population by sending them to other countries that promise to ensure that the men remain under security measures. Mr. Nasser has never been charged with a crime.
The transfer process, pursued by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, had atrophied under Donald J. Trump. With Mr. Nasser’s departure, there are now 39 prisoners at Guantanamo, 11 of whom have been charged with war crimes. At its peak in the years following the September 11, 2001 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, the US Naval Base prison complex housed approximately 675 men.
Much more complex political decisions regarding transfers await Team Biden, including whether or not to transfer mentally ill Saudi Arabian Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was tortured at Guantanamo and is seen as one of many candidates. to be a potential 20th hijacker on 9/11.
The 28 other prisoners who have not been charged in the nearly two decades of detention are being held as Mr. Nasser was – as indefinite law-of-war detainees in the armed conflict against Al -Qaida. Of these, 10 were recommended for transfer with safety provisions by a federal panel similar to parole.
The Biden White House, while supporting the goal of closing the prison, has taken a low-key approach in this effort. Mr. Obama made it a signing policy, ordering the prison to be closed during his first year in office – and failed in the face of intense opposition from Congress. Mr Biden and his associates have sought to avoid triggering the same type of backlash by working quietly to start reducing the prison population again.
“The United States is grateful to the Kingdom of Morocco for its willingness to support ongoing American efforts to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center,” a senior administration official said on Sunday as the transfer was underway. , and therefore refused to be identified by name. . The official said the White House was “dedicated to a deliberate and thorough process of responsible reduction of the prison population and ultimately the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.”
Military intelligence officials introduced Mr. Nasser as a Taliban veteran who fought invading US forces in the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001. He told an interagency panel five years ago by the through a representative that he “deeply regrets his past actions,” and his release was approved by the government panel on July 11, 2016, on condition that he be sent only to his native Morocco with guarantees of security of his government.
Details of these arrangements are not public, but during the Obama years they generally included not letting the former detainee travel overseas for several years and a commitment to monitor him and share information with the US government. about her.
US forces handed Mr. Nasser into the custody of the Moroccan government on Monday morning. Mr. Nasser’s family members in Casablanca have pledged to support him by finding him work at his brother’s pool cleaning business, said his attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin of Chicago.
Mr. Durkin, who has represented Mr. Nasser for more than a decade, noted that Mr. Nasser was on the verge of release in early 2017 when the Trump administration halted all transfers and closed the office of the state department that negotiated the security agreements for such deals.
Only one inmate left prison during the Trump years, and under very different circumstances: An avowed Qaeda terrorist was repatriated to Saudi Arabia to serve a prison sentence imposed by a US military commission, under an earlier plea agreement .
In a statement, Mr. Durkin called the last four years of Mr. Nasser’s detention “collateral damage to the crude policies of the Trump administration and the Republican hawks zealous in the war on terror,” adding: “S ‘This was a wrongful conviction case in Cook County, it would be worth $ 20 million.
“We applaud the Biden administration for no longer causing damage,” he said.
The Biden administration did not renegotiate the Obama-era deal to repatriate Mr. Nasser, the senior official said, but the State Department had to “reaffirm” the terms of the transfer agreement with the government. Morocco. They were not disclosed.
A public radio personality with a similar name, Latif Nasser, now a member of the public radio show “Radiolab”, devoted a six-part audio series to questions of whether the activities of his close namesake, including a passage in a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, has earned two decades of US military detention.
Mr. Nasser, the Guantánamo detainee, was captured in 2001 by Pakistani security forces, who handed him over to the US military.
As part of its low-profile approach, the Biden team did not revive the Obama-era position of a special envoy to travel the world by negotiating deals for other countries to take in lower-level inmates. Instead, regional diplomats and career employees of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Office held talks with the Moroccan government, according to officials familiar with the matter.
“We are trying to find a way to act on each individual case,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said during a human rights discussion in Paris on June 25. “In some cases you have to find a country that is ready to welcome the person in question.
Once a country is identified, he said, “we have to be sure that the rights of these people will be protected in that country. It is not easy either.
The administration has reinvigorated a parole-like process that was established in the Obama years to examine every inmate who has not been charged with crimes, to decide whether to recommend that he be returned to the custody of another. country. The Inter-Agency Periodic Review Board has announced five decisions since Mr Biden took office, and all of those detainees have been approved for transfers – including the oldest man held in Guantánamo, a 73-year-old Pakistani suffering from heart disease and other geriatric conditions.
The panel includes representatives from six national security agencies, including the Intelligence Directorate, the Pentagon Joint Staff and the Department of Homeland Security, but a transfer recommendation does not guarantee release. The State Department must still enter into a transfer agreement, and the Secretary of Defense must personally approve it and notify Congress.
The council also held a hearing on May 18 on whether to recommend the transfer of the Saudi prisoner who was tortured at Guantanamo, Mr. Qahtani, but did not announce a decision.
He has a separate trial pending in federal court over whether his psychiatric condition, acute schizophrenia, warrants repatriation to medical care in Saudi Arabia because he cannot receive adequate care at the naval base. As part of the lawsuit, his lawyers obtained a court order for a panel of doctors, including two non-Americans, to examine him.
The Justice Department during the Trump administration had opposed the trial, and days before Mr. Trump stepped down, his secretary of the military amended regulations to attempt to disqualify all prisoners at Guantanamo. , notably Mr. Qahtani, of the possibility of an independent external review ordered by the court. doctors.
Some Democrats in Congress, signaling their impatience with the pace of efforts to close the prison, have proposed legislation to the Appropriations Committee that would fund the Guantanamo detention operation, which has been estimated at more than $ 13 million per prisoner and per year.
To do so, however, would require finding a place to go for the remaining 39 detainees. And even if Mr Nasser’s transfer to Morocco turns out to be the first in a flurry, transfers of lower-ranking inmates alone will not close the prison.
Some prisoners are expected to be taken to the United States, potentially to a military detention center, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has yet to stand trial as the mastermind accused of the 9/11 attacks.
Current federal law from early 2011 prohibits such transfers. The Biden White House’s 2022 budget proposal would restore presidential authority to transfer Guantánamo inmates to a mainland prison facility. But that would depend on Congress.
Republicans and some Democrats have opposed the transfer of Mr. Mohammed and others to custody in the United States and have sought to stoke fears that their trial on American soil or simply their detention on the mainland would be more of a danger to the United States. national security. . Opponents of the restrictions say the federal government is already holding many convicted terrorists on national soil safely and bringing Guantanamo detainees to similar detention would be no different.
As a sign that such political messages could return soon, on May 25, eight Republican senators wrote to Mr Biden to oppose his plan to close the detention center through transfers.
“The remaining 40 inmates are all at high risk,” the senators wrote. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma led the effort. The other signatories were Marsha Blackburn, Kevin Cramer, Ted Cruz, Steve Daines, James M. Inhofe, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis.
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