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| Detainee’s Case Illustrates Bind of Prison’s Fate |
| By nytimes.com |
| Published: 10/05/2009 |
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WASHINGTON — To understand how hard it is proving for President Obama to close the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, consider the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, Internee Security No. 692. His long-delayed departure last week leaves 97 Yemenis at the complex in Cuba, by far the largest remaining group. It was seven years ago that Mr. Ahmed, then 18, was swept up by Pakistani security forces in a raid on a Faisalabad guesthouse and taken to the prison. It was five months ago that a federal judge, after reviewing all the government’s classified evidence, ruled that his incarceration had never been justified and ordered the government to get to work “forthwith” on his release. But Obama administration officials were worried. Even if Mr. Ahmed was not dangerous in 2002, they said, Guantánamo itself might have radicalized him, exposing him to militants and embittering him against the United States. If he returned to his troubled homeland of Yemen, the officials feared, he might fall in with the growing contingent of Al Qaeda there, one more Guantánamo survivor to star in their propaganda videotapes. So American officials first sought to route him to a rehabilitation program for militants in Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis would take him only if he wanted to go — and he did not. Last weekend, as Judge Gladys Kessler of United States District Court in Washington appeared to be losing patience with the delay in complying with her May 11 release order, an American military jet finally delivered Mr. Ahmed to the Yemeni capital, Sana. “Seven years are gone from his life and can never be gotten back,” said the brother, Wagdi Ahmed, a surgeon’s assistant in the port city of Aden, speaking through a translator. “The feeling of the family is his detention at Guantánamo was not rightful. But nonetheless, we just say, praise God.” Read More. |
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