Five Years of Illegal Detention at Guantanamo: Send Back Our Citizens

BCHR urges GCC governments to demand the repatriation of its nationals

Bahrain Center for Human Rights
7 January 2007

Ref: 07010700

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights was pleased to note the demand made last month by Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in which he called on the US government to hand over Yemeni citizens who remain incarcerated without trial at Guantanamo Bay. We urge the governments of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to take similar steps to demand the repatriation of their citizens who are being illegally detained at the prison.

BCHR urges GCC governments to demand the repatriation of its nationals

Bahrain Center for Human Rights
7 January 2007

Ref: 07010700

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights was pleased to note the demand made last month by Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in which he called on the US government to hand over Yemeni citizens who remain incarcerated without trial at Guantanamo Bay. We urge the governments of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to take similar steps to demand the repatriation of their citizens who are being illegally detained at the prison.

The Yemeni government’s move should indicate to other countries in the region that they can — and should — speak out directly on behalf of their own citizens against the US government’s disastrous policy in the ‘war on terror’.

“This plea is particularly urgent as the world prepares to mark the deplorable fifth anniversary of the day when men were first brought to Guantanamo Bay, on January 11, 2001,” BCHR vice president Nabeel Rajab said.

“The Gulf and US governments have long-standing and extensive ties,” he added. “We expect that if this demand were made by such a close ally to the United States, it would surely merit some positive action from their government.

“January 11 will mark the fifth year in an ongoing humanitarian travesty. The human rights of detainees and their families have been violated for too long – it is time to bring home the remaining people from Guantanamo Bay.”

‘Legal equivalent of outer space’

Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” Articles 10 and 11 state that anyone charged with a crime is entitled to a public and independent hearing, in which they shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The United States government blatantly violates all three of these articles by continuing to hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Of the approximately 775 detainees who have been held at Guantanamo in the past five years, only 10 have been charged for trial by military commissions, which were then ruled unlawful by the US Supreme Court. None of the detainees have been convicted of a criminal offence by the USA.

As one US official has called it, the detention center is the “legal equivalent of outer space”, for the detainees can not be tried in US courts, and the US government refuses to grant them full POW status. All of this does not even mention the well-documented allegations of torture and degrading treatment.

For these reasons, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights joins countless prominent international rights organizations – the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, to name just a few – in calling for the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp to be shut down and for the immediate repatriation of GCC citizens who are being held there extrajudicially. The GCC governments need to play their crucial role in protecting the rights of its citizens by voicing this demand to the US.