It was about six months ago when The Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is moving forward with plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, even appointing a senior diplomat to oversee detainee transfers. The New York Times reported that the administration is slowly making some progress.
A small Central American nation, known for its barrier reef and ecotourism, has taken in a former terrorist turned U.S. government informant whose tale of torture by the C.I.A. moved a military jury at Guantánamo Bay to urge the Pentagon to grant him leniency. U.S. forces released Majid Shoukat Khan, 42, to the custody of the authorities in Belize on Thursday after a two-hour flight from the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
Khan’s resettlement comes on the heels of the U.S. transferring Saifullah Paracha, who was held for nearly two decades without being charged with a crime, to Pakistan.
Revisiting our earlier coverage, The response from Republicans hasn’t exactly been constructive. For example, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, displaying the kind of policy seriousness that’s made him famous, last year accused the administration of wanting to “free more terrorists.” Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, the new Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has also argued, “These detainees are the worst of the worst, and we need assurance that they will never be moved to the United States.”
That’s still not altogether true. Detainees weren’t sent to Guantanamo because they’re the “worst of the worst”; they were sent there because the Bush/Cheney administration wanted to hold the suspects without trial outside of the American judicial system.
As for moving them to the United States, American prisons on American soil already hold plenty of terrorists. The detainees at the facility often known as “Gitmo” don’t have superpowers. Our prisons have proven more than capable of locking up the “worst of the worst.”
What’s especially discouraging is how…
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