Ireland should be humane and offer a home to Guantanamo prisoners

The report “Decaying Guantánamo Defies Closing Plans” (New York Times, Sept 1) makes depressing reading. Not only is the prison camp decaying, so are its prisoners. 

Seventy-nine prisoners, considered low-level risk, have been awaiting release for several years, but Congress refuses to allow them be released in the US, and the US has been unable to persuade other countries to take them. Seventy higher-risk prisoners should be transferred to prisons in the US, where they would be subject to constitutional laws, including habeas corpus proceedings, but this has also been blocked by Congress.

Some prisoners have been in Guantanamo for 12 years without trial. The report, by Charlie Savage, refers to Guantanamo’s “decaying infrastructure and aging inmates” and cites the prison doctor that “20 to 25 prisoners have conditions… such as diabetes and high blood pressure. He expects other problems, like heart disease, strokes and cancer, to arise in coming years”.

Two prisoners from Guantanamo were resettled in Ireland in 2009. As a humanitarian gesture, Ireland should resettle more such prisoners, particularly given that the Irish government facilitated the transfer of prisoners to Guantanamo by allowing CIA and US military aircraft, which were engaged in the so-called extraordinary rendition programme, to be refuelled at Shannon airport. Some prisoners on hunger strike are being forced-fed, and at least nine prisoners have died in Guantanamo, including six by suspected suicide.

Edward Horgan

Newtown

Castletroy

Limerick