Steven Edwards: Would you want these Guantanamo suspects living next door?
Please read it all:
The latest way to seek an immigration pass into Canada appears to go like this: Act suspiciously like a terrorist or even become one; spend a few years at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; get your name on a refugee-status claim form for review by Canadian immigration officials based in Jamaica.
Canadian church groups and others have filed to “sponsor” five Guantanamo Bay detainees for immigration to Canada as refugees.
Three Uyghur separatists of China are among the group. The U.S. has formally cleared them of having terrorism intentions — against the West, at least. An Algerian and a Syrian — the latter the Canadian sponsors made public just this week — are the others. Interpretations of their backgrounds vary according to who is making them.
What should the average Canadian make of this?
Generally, the anti-Guantanamo crowd has argued many — if not a majority — of those who’ve passed through or remain at the detention camps fell into U.S. custody because they were in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”
One such case of “mistaken identity” was that of Ugandan-born Jamal “Tony” Kiyemba. He spent his teen years in London before becoming a pharmacy student at a university in Leicester. He decided in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks that Pakistan would be a good place to visit to “study Arabic and the Koran.” Following his arrival, his “vacation” took him to the Afghan-Pakistan border, where Pakistani forces nabbed him. In exchange for a “bounty” the Americans were paying for terror suspects, the Pakistanis gave him up to U.S. forces, who eventually transferred him to Guantanamo.
What terrible bad luck when you’re only trying to get a bit of R and R – with a view of Tora Bora.
The U.S. released Kiyemba in 2006 without ever having charged him with anything. To many on the left, that’s proof of his total innocence. Yet Britain refused to take him back because of security concerns, and it’s believed he is now kicking his heels back