The two Guantánamo Bay detainees being given refuge in Ireland are Uzbek nationals. One, 31-year-old Oybek Jabbarov, has been the focus of several months’ campaigning by Irish human rights groups seeking to bring him to Ireland.
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, speaking after he met American Ambassador to Ireland Dan Rooney to confirm Ireland would take in the former inmates, said the Government had consistently called for the jail to be shut down.
“In making this decision, I am conscious of the intention of the United States to close the centre at Guantánamo Bay, in part by transferring detainees, no longer regarded as posing a threat to security but who cannot return to their own countries, to other countries willing to accept them,” he said.
Mr Ahern said the two men belong to a group of about 50 inmates who are “no longer regarded as posing a threat to security but who cannot return to their own countries”.
He declined to identify them, but other officials confirmed that both are from Uzbekistan and were seized in neighbouring Afghanistan in bitterly disputed circumstances. He said the men would receive permanent residency rights and would not be treated as refugees. They are expected to be transferred in the coming months.
Jabbarov’s case is widely cited as an example of how innocent people were branded terrorists by Afghan militiamen following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when US forces were offering lucrative cash bounties for the handover of alleged Taliban fighters.
Jabbarov says he, his wife and child were living as refugees near the Afghan-Uzbek border in October 2001 when heaccepted a lift in a car from soldiers of the National Alliance, a military faction long at war with the Taliban. He says the soldiers kidnapped him and delivered him to US troops to collect an easy bounty.
He was transferred to Guantánamo in 2002 and cleared for release in February 2007. He has been cleared for release from Guantánamo, but cannot return to Uzbekistan for fear of torture and persecution.
US President Barack Obama pledged to close Guantánamo Bay by January and his officials have been liaising with authorities around the world to persuade them to accept prisoners who cannot return home.