Here's another example of how political expediency will eventually be paid for with the blood of innocent people.
President George W. Bush has agreed to release five “dangerous” detainees from Guantanamo Bay following repeated pleas from British Prime Minister Tony Blair and growing protests from human-rights groups amid disclosures about abuses by U.S. military interrogators at the camp, according to U.S and British officials.Posted by Alan at January 13, 2005 05:33 PMPentagon officials expressed grave misgivings about freeing the five detainees—four Britons and one Australian—who are seen by Washington as hardened Al Qaeda members who could pose a serious terrorist threat if, as seems highly likely, they are soon allowed to walk the streets freely as a result of this week's agreement.
Indeed, in documents filed in federal court just last fall, Pentagon lawyers alleged that one of the detainees, Mamdouh Habib, the Australian, had advance knowledge of the September 11 terror attacks, trained some of the hijackers in martial arts and “planned to hijack a plane himself.”
[T]hose concerns were in effect trumped by Bush’s desire to mollify Blair, who has come under increasing domestic pressure to protect the rights of British citizens held at the controversial U.S. detention camp in Cuba. In a trip to Washington last November, and in follow-up teleconference calls that the two leaders regularly have, Blair made “personal pleas” to Bush to repatriate the British detainees, a British government official said today.
Still, Pentagon officials are ambivalent at best. They acknowledge what they see as mistakes in releasing prisoners in the past: according to some U.S. intelligence reports, between 10 to 12 former Guantanamo Bay prisoners were released—and then returned to the battlefield to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. At a minimum, officials fear a replay of the case of the so-called Tipton 3: three British detainees from a suburb of Birmingham who were released from Guantanamo last year and promptly let go by British authorities upon their return to the U.K. The former Guantanamo prisoners then were celebrated in the British press and used their newfound freedom to denounce the U.S. government for their alleged mistreatment.