Monday, November 29, 2010

WikiLeaks: America plays 'Let's Make a Deal' with foreign governments over Guantanamo prisoners

By David Gardner
Last updated at 10:08 PM on 28th November 2010

American diplomats played a high stakes game of ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ with foreign governments to try and empty terror suspects from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, according to the leaks.

Barack Obama had hoped to shut down the controversial Cuban outpost within a year of becoming president.

But State officials came up against a brick wall both in the U.S. and abroad with fierce opposition over plans to resettle the detainees.

Blight: Terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay (file photo)

Now, with Mr Obama’s deadline long gone, the cables released by Wikileaks show just how desperate the U.S. became to offload foreign Gitmo inmates.

Slovenia was apparently told that if it wanted a meeting with the president, it would have to accept a prisoner.

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Cables recounted how the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees.

American diplomats also appealed to the vanity of foreign leaders, suggesting the U.S. would look kindly on countries that helped most to clear Guantanamo’s cells.

Tensions: Canadian detainee Omar Khadr

Belgium, for instance, was apparently told that accepting more prisoners would be a ‘low-cost way’ to ‘attain prominence in Europe.’

There had been fears that the documents would also detail the pressure put on Canada to repatriate Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr.

Khadr, the only western detainee remaining at Guantanamo Bay, pleaded guilty last month to five war crimes, including the murder of a U.S. soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002.
Canada has long resisted repatriating him, despite pressure from both American and Canada's federal courts.
The stalemate is thought to have caused tension between the two countries. Among the documents released so far, however, none yet appear to detail the pressure that the Obama administration has put on Canada to repatriate Khadr.

Guantanamo, established by the Bush administration in 2002 to hold prisoners from the so-called war on terror in Afghanistan and later, Iraq, still holds 174 detainees.