Barack Obama's visit to Canada highlights Guantanamo detainees

Feb 18, 2009, 17:58 GMT

Montreal - Human rights and church groups in Canada are hoping that US President Barack Obama would raise the issue of Guantanamo prisoners with Prime Minister Stephen Harper Thursday during his six-hour visit to Ottawa.

The Obama administration is already pushing Europe to take in some of the inmates expected to be released after Obama signalled his intention to review all cases and close down the US military prison in Cuba within the year.

In an open letter sent to Harper Tuesday, Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch, pleaded with Canada to also take in some of the detainees.

'Human Rights Watch recognizes that the United States created the problem of Guantanamo and has the primary responsibility for closing it down,' she wrote.

But Mariner noted that the United States was not likely to take in all of the estimated 245 detainees - either for trial or resettlement. Her appeal concerned about 60 detainees - from Algeria, Azerbaijan, China, Egypt, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Russia, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia and Uzbekistan - who have expressed fear of torture or persecution if returned to their home countries.

Canada is the only Western country that still has a citizen at Guantanamo, and human rights groups want Harper's government to seek repatriation of Omar Khadr, 22, who was 15 when arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 on charges of killing a US Special Forces medic.

In a separate action, Canadian church groups were applying to Canada's federal government to sponsor five Guantanamo detainees as refugees.

Anwar Hassan, a Chinese Uighur, has been sponsored by a group of United Church congregations in Toronto. The Catholic Diocese of Montreal has applied to sponsor two other Uighurs whose identities were being kept secret for fear of reprisals against their families by Chinese authorities.

The Anglican Diocese of Montreal has applied for sponsorship of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian national who cannot return to Algeria 'due to a credible fear that he would be tortured or abused,' Mariner wrote. Ameziane lived in Canada's French-speaking province of Quebec for five years and has a brother in Canada.

A fifth Guantanamo detainee, Maassoum Abdah Mouhammad, 37, a Syrian Kurd, has found backing from a United Church congregation in Toronto, the Canadian Council for Refugees said. He was captured in Pakistan in 2001.

Human rights groups were also pressing the Harper government to accept all 17 Chinese Muslim Uighur detainees, whom the Pentagon said it believes are no longer a threat but does not want to return them to China for fears of retribution.

Mehmet Tohti, a Canadian Uighur activist, noted in an interview with CanWest News that Canada came close to accepting the Uighurs in 2006 but backed off for fear of reprisals from China over a separate case not linked to Guantanamo that it was discussing with Beijing at the time. That case involved Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and ethnic Uighur who was arrested in Uzbekistan and extradited to China despite travelling on a Canadian passport.

Canada's efforts to free Celil failed, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism charges in 2007.

Tohti told CanWest News that the bid to bring the Uighurs to Canada has been revived, in part because there is a feeling that Canada has nothing more to lose.

Moreover, permitting them to come to Canada would send a signal of Canada's willingness to cooperate with the Obama administration, Tohti told CanWest News.