U.S. to transfer some Guantanamo detainees to Afghanistan

Friday, August 5, 2005

Afghan citizens currently held captive in US prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Bagram will be transferred to the custody of Afghan authorities following an agreement reached Thursday between United States diplomats and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The agreement did not immediately establish a timetable for the repatriation. None of the detainees have been charged with any crimes.

Karim Rahimi, the Afghani presidential spokesman said today, "Afghanistan and the United States reached an understanding that will allow for the gradual transfer of Afghan detainees to the exclusive custody and control of the Afghan government."

The U.S. government spokesman Lou Fintor said, "The United States intends to assist the government of Afghanistan in building its capacity to detain these individuals, this process is part of our ongoing efforts to transfer detainees to their home countries as appropriate and when we receive assurances that the country can and will take appropriate steps to ensure that these individuals do not pose a continuing threat."

Fintor said the decision was reached after, Pierre-Richard Prosper, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, and Matthew Waxman, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, met with President Karzai on Thursday. There are still 520 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.

Related news

"Guantanamo prosecutors call trials a "fraud"" — Wikinews, August 1, 2005

Sources

Daniel Cooney. "U.S. Sending Afghan Detainees Home" — AP, August 3, 2005
"U.S. agrees to hand over Afghan detainees in Cuba" — Reuters, August 4, 2005

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article has been released into the public domain. In the event that this is not legally possible, this article may be used for any purpose, without any condition, unless such conditions are required by law. This applies worldwide. Copyright terms on images, however, may vary, so please check individual image pages prior to duplication.
Please note that this only applies to Wikinews content created prior to September 25, 2005. All content created after that date is released under a Creative Commons license which is mentioned at the bottom of each article. This is currently the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.