I've long thought that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is an aberration and has to be closed. There, the US has held hundreds of people without charge for years on end, many of them guilty of no crime, with no way to challenge their imprisonment. Many have been tortured, in contravention of international laws that the US has itself signed. In doing so, the US made itself an even greater target of derision and hatred, and justifiably so.
So I welcomed the election of President Obama and his announcement, shortly after his inauguration, that he would close Guantanamo within a year. Naively, however, I believed this meant he would prosecute those suspected of guilt in American courts, and either return the others to their native countries or give them the right to settle in the US. So today's announcement that four Chinese Muslims would be resettled in Bermuda, and given status here, came as a shock.
If the four Muslims are indeed innocent of any crimes (and I assume that both the British and Bermuda governments have carefully reviewed the men's cases to satisfy themselves of this), then I have no objection to them coming here. Admittedly, it rankles that they would be given status so quickly when even those of us married to Bermudians and with Bermudian children have to wait ten years for the privilege. But I can live with it.
What really pisses me off, however, is the way the US has ducked its responsibilities. Ignore, for now, the irony of the US being reluctant to send the men back to China for fear that they will be tortured. If, as Minister of Home Affairs David Burch claims, the men were cleared of terrorism allegations in a US court, why did the US not allow them to settle there, and give them US citizenship? Why can the men not even return to the US without prior permission? For years of wrongful imprisonment you would think it would be the least the US could do.
Regardless of their guilt, I certainly hope that Premier Ewart Brown extracted some significant concessions from the US in return for accepting the men. Bermuda has recently come under fire from US legislators jealous of our attractiveness to international business. If the Premier did not take this opportunity to obtain some cast-iron promises to turn down the heat it would be little short of negligence.
