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Conference on Guantanamo Detainees to be Held in Sana’a
Nasser Arrabyee
Yemen Observer
August 14, 2006
An international conference on Guantanamo detainees is expected to be held in Sana’a later this year, official sources announced. “Amnesty International, in cooperation with a number of national and international organizations concerned with human rights, has been preparing for an international conference to be held in Sana’a on people being detained on charges of terrorist acts around the world,” the state-run website (www.26sep.net) quoted an identified official as saying.
“The conference is expected to be held at the end of this year, with the aim of discussing the humanitarian and legal status of those who were detained during the global war against terrorism such as the Guantanamo detainees and those languishing in secret detentions,” the official added. However, governmental and non-governmental sources refused to confirm or deny the news but they said such a conference is very important and should be held.
“I can not confirm or deny such news, because no one has informed us of it yet,” Mohammed al-Haydari, director general of the office of the Minister of Human Rights, said Thursday. Khaled al-Anesi, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Defending Rights and Liberties, (HOOD) said that holding such a conference is extremely important, but he also said that neither he nor anyone else at HOOD had been informed of the conference as yet.
“In fact, I was surprised when I read the news on 26sep.net; we have no information on this conference at all,” he told the Yemen Observer on Thursday. “But either way, I would say that such a conference would be very important if it were to be held,” said al-Anesi. HOOD, a local human rights organization, is actively concerned with the Guantanamo detainees. Yemen hosted the first international conference on Guantanamo detainees in the middle of 2005.
A number of national and international lawyers and human rights activists participated in that conference. More than one hundred Yemeni citizens have been languishing in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for more than four years.
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