USA: FREE THREE PEOPLE CLEARED FOR TRANSFER OUT OF GUANTANAMO

Dear President Trump,

As you move beyond the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and continue to reflect on the history of the United States of America, we urge you to address the detentions at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

It has been nearly 25 years since the first “war on terror” detainees arrived at Guantánamo in January 2002. This detention regime was from the outset, and to this day remains, incompatible with international human rights law, and continues to generate significant concern around the world because of the principles that have been flouted: indefinite detention without charge or trial, military commission proceedings falling short of international fair trial standards, torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and impunity for crimes under international law.

The Guantánamo detention regime is a stain on U.S. history and its present – you can succeed where your predecessors did not — by taking decisive action to resolve this situation and the detainee cases in full compliance with international law.

I am writing to you to ask that as a matter of urgency you ensure the transfer of three of the 15 detainees still held at the base – Muieen Adeen Abd al Sattar (Omar al-Farouq), an ethnic Rohingya man; Guled Hassan Duran, a Somali person; and Ismael Ali Faraj al Bakush, who is Libyan. Each has been in U.S. custody for over two decades. Each has been approved for transfer out of Guantánamo by the U.S. government, based on a unanimous determination by U.S. military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, yet they remain detained and in limbo. They all require resettlement in third countries, which I believe your administration can negotiate.

I urge you to reflect now upon how human rights principles, including the rights to liberty, equality, and human dignity, have been abandoned for decades at the Guantánamo Bay prison. You can and must end this shameful chapter of U.S. history.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]