Officials of the Bush administration knew they were imprisoning innocent people, it has emerged. Col Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has revealed that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld all knew that the majority of Guantanamo Bay prisoners were innocent.
166 detainees currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison are finally scheduled for release without charge.
Noor Mir, a member of the peace group CodePink, has criticised the former administration saying:
“Something like that should be tried in The Hague just because that is definitely a war crime. At its peak, Guantanamo housed up to 730 detainees. Right now, there are 86 that have been definitely cleared to leave and that really is a legal travesty.”
She also attacked President Obama and called for his arrest:
“[Obama] has completely turned a blind eye to it. I would say that he is as complicit to this as Bush and Cheney. When we say ‘arrest Bush and Cheney’, we should also be saying ‘arrest Barack Obama’.”
Despite signing an executive order in 2009 to shut down the facility, in 2011 President Obama signed a second executive order but this time to continue indefinite detention and Guantanamo Bay.
At least 21 inmates at the center have staged a hunger strike in protest of their mistreatment. Today the UN called the use of nasal force-feeding by authorities as torture and a breach of international law.