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Kuwaiti March Demands Guantanamo Closure
Associated Press
July 15, 2006
KUWAIT CITY (AP) - Some two hundred Kuwaitis marched in silent protest Saturday and released white pigeons and orange balloons to demand the closing of GuantanamoBay, the U.S. detention facility in Cuba where six of their countrymen are held as terror suspects.
"Shut Guantanamo now!" read the signs they carried ahead of joining another one hundred people at a rally addressed by parliament members, Islamist politicians and human rights activists.
"We call on the whole world to pressure the United States to close down Guantanamo and all other detention centers," said Faisal Hamad, a leader of the Ummah (The Nation) Party. He told the crowd the prison "uncovers the true dark face of the American administration."
Six Kuwaitis have been released from the U.S. naval base, and six remain there.
The six who were returned faced trial, and one was convicted of terror-related charges and sentenced to five years in prison. Five were acquitted of collecting money for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and fighting alongside Afghanistan's Taliban regime that hosted the terror group.
Families of the fundamentalist Muslim prisoners say they went to Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to do charity work -- not to fight.
Kuwait has been a major ally of Washington since a U.S.-led coalition liberated it from a seven-month Iraqi occupation in the 1991 Gulf War.
The United States holds about 450 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Most have not been charged with a crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that President George W. Bush overstepped his authority in holding foreign detainees in Guantanamo without charges and blocked his use of military tribunals.
The administration earlier this week conceded that the detainees must be given all the legal protections of the Geneva Conventions.
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