A former Interior Minister in the erstwhile Kufuor administration, K.T Hammond, has admonished the government to send the former Guantanamo Bay detainees back to the United States, where they were repatriated from.
He argued that “if a country of America’s might cannot handle a situation of this nature, and they want to redistribute them among the poor countries of the world like Ghana, isn’t that in itself a cause for a serious concern?”
[contextly_sidebar id=”QQdGbymodu3jTuKAvGAeV6GhMUU4JaZp”]Two Guantanamo bay detainees, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby who had been in detention for 14 years, after being linked with terrorist group Al-Qaeda, are currently in Ghana.
This follows assurance from the US government that they pose minimal risk to national security in their country and ought to be transferred.
However, the decision to transfer the two Yemen citizens,in a bid to reintegrate them into society, has been widely condemned.
Speaking to Citi News, KT Hammond, who is also the Member of Parliament for Adansi Asokwa, said Parliament will surely ask government to rescind the decision to host the former detainees in the country.
“I’m so sure that Parliament is going to resolve that it was wrong and these guys should be sent back. I don’t know why they can’t go back to their countries. We are afraid of these terrorists.”
The MP further argued that “these guys were not taken from a tea party in Afghanistan, they were taken out of a war theatre, these guys are committed Jihadists, these guys are completely terrorists. Every intelligence analysis has indicated that it was not possible to assimilate them in any society, of course not in American society. If America cannot plunk these guys from where they are, how are we expected in Ghana to be able to contain this menace.”
KT Hammond further lamented that “we are in the process of creating a Frankenstein monster and if it grows what do we do?”
KT Hammond also chastised the Mahama-led administration for not informing Ghanaians before agreeing to host the ex-detainees in the country.
“I am so afraid, I do not understand why the government did not inform the good people of Ghana in advance. We should have talked about this matter. America allowed its people to talk about this matter.”
Ex-detainees won’t pose threat to Ghana
Meanwhil the US government has allayed fears that the ex-detainees will pose security threats to Ghana.
Public Affairs Counselor at the US Embassy in Ghana, Daniel Fennell told Citi News the move is to enable the detainees to be reintegrated into society.
“My understanding is that the individuals have been cleared, there have been background checks conducted by the various security agencies in the United States over the course of years. So our assessment currently is that these two people coming to Ghana do not pose a security threat. So the programme that Ghana will be bringing them through is a programme to allow them to be part of the society, to have community contact to have access to their families and to be reintegrated into the world, something Ghana is actually very good at and they have taken on board several refugees all at the same time.”
He assured that “they will be monitored and hosted in a very specific way but they will not be placed in prison facilities and they will be reintegrated for the purpose of resettlement.”
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana