EDITORIAL

May 2, 2006
Saudi Arabia - The Saudi Gazzette - Home Page (English)    

Washington Concerned for Detainee Welfare?
The Saudis Are Skeptical. (above).

-------------------------------------------------------------------

IN the "you must be joking!" domain of international affairs, The New York Times reports [] that "long running" efforts by the United States to repatriate prisoners held at Guantanamo have been "stymied" because the returnees might not be treated humanely by their own governments! These are detainees, who have been held without trial and subjected to who knows what horrors for years (if Abu Ghraib is anything to go by) and are now (presumably) being released for lack of evidence against them. The U.S. State Department's human rights bureau is apparently insisting that any transfer deal include clear assurances that prisoners will not be tortured and will be treated in accordance with international humanitarian law, and that those pledges can be verified. The Times has one unidentified Middle East diplomat quoted as saying: "It's kind of ironic that the U.S. government is placing conditions on other countries that it would not follow itself at Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib."

U.S. officials said the talks had been particularly difficult in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. They say Saudi Arabia's record on human rights had emerged as a "central obstacle" to the repatriation of the 128 Saudi nationals still at Guantanamo. An unidentified State Department official, referring to Saudi Arabia, is quoted as saying "We hope to reach the point soon where we are comfortable with the humanitarian arrangements."

Watchtower at Guantanamo. (above).

-------------------------------------------------------------------

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Adel Al-Jubeir, said he could not comment on the specifics of the negotiations, but recalled the United States had earlier insisted foreign governments agree to imprison the repatriated Guantanamo detainees, regardless of whether they had committed crimes at home. "The people coming back from Guantanamo will be questioned and investigated, and if they have blood on their hands, they will face the Saudi justice system," Jubeir told The Times. But he added, "If we have nothing to hold them on, why hold them?"

U.S. officials noted that some Saudi detainees - including Mohammed Al-Qahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan after he had tried to meet up with some of the 9/11 hijackers in Florida - were expected to remain at Guantanamo for years, if not decades, to come.

So that's alright then.

VIDEO FROM CAIRO: MOCK TRIAL OF BUSH, BLAIR AND SHARON

Al-Jazeera TV, Qatar: Excerpts from a mock trial of U.S. President Bush, British PM Blair, and Israeli PM Sharon, staged by the Union of Arab Lawyers , Feb. 5, 00:08:49, Via MEMRI

"These are not suicide operations. ... These are martyrdom-seeking operations, approved by all the authorities of the Islamic nation, who consider them to be the highest level of martyrdom. It is a form of resistance, and resistance against the occupation is legitimate."

Convicted in Absentia ...