President Barak Obama’s swift launch of a process for closing the Guantanamo prison is welcomed today by Erika Mann MEP, a long-time campaigner against the detention facility.Erika Mann urged the US, its allies and international organisations to adopt a resettlement and rehabilitation programme to find homes for detainees who cannot return to their home countries.
“I hope President Obama will restore confidence in the legitimacy of US actions by putting a small number of detainees on trial in regular federal or military courts in America. Once the courts have demonstrated their effectiveness and legitimacy, the remaining detainees selected for trial should be transferred to the US,” says Mann, who is one of the few European politicians to have visited the prison. She did so in the company of European and American colleagues in May 2006.
Mann thinks the detainees could be held at the “Supermax” at Florence Colorado or at the US Military Detention Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, depending on whether they are slated for trial in federal or military courts.
Those detainees captured during military operations in Afghanistan may still represent a threat to coalition forces and could be held in a NATO-controlled detention programme in Afghanistan, adds Erika Mann.
She urges caution on European governments who might be considering taking in Guantanamo detainees that are not European citizens. “I believe that the obligation to take one’s own citizens is clear, but so also is the need to contribute to an international resettlement and rehabilitation programme,” says Mann.
Erika Mann’s campaign against Guantanamo began
early in 2004 when she joined with 84 members of the European Parliament and
other political allies in addressing an amicus curiae letter to the American
Supreme Court demanding better treatment for inmates.
- Thoughts by Erika Mann on the closing of Guantánamo, 22 January 2009 (PDF)
Erika Mann is available for an interview or to provide more information. Please turn to her office in Brussels: Johanna Hasting, Tel.: +32 (0)2 - 284 51 91, Email: erika.mann@europarl.europa.eu , or the office in Hannover: Henning Hofmann, +49 (0) 511 1674 268, Email europabuero-erika.mann@spd.de
