Guantanamo detainee numbers drop to 36

Three dozen to go. At the height of the Guantanamo story there were 780 prisoners in the detention camp in Cuba. With the transfer of one detainee on Thursday to Qatar, the total has dropped to 36. At this rate, under the Biden administration, we should be down to about a dozen by the end of Biden's first term of office. But Guantanamo which was first set up in January 2002 will still be there. One detainee who should by now be released and enjoying a new life outside Gitmo remains in detention in a catch-22 situation. Majid Khan, a 42-year-old Pakistani, is one of the few detainees to have cooperated with the US authorities. He decided to plead guilty to being an al-Qaeda courier and in return for a lighter sentence agreed to tell all to the FBI and CIA. When he first appeared in the military tribunal court in Guantanamo he wore a very smart pinstriped dark blue suit. He was very dfferent from other detainees who always turned up in their loose, baggy white cotton pantaloons and shirts. He completed his reduced in March. But he hasn't been able to leave Gitmo because as he cooperated with the US it's too risky for him to be repatriated to Pakistan or any third country who agrees to accept him, and there are presumably tricky legal reasons why he can't be allowed to set up home in America. So he's stuck. It's just one of the many conundrums created by a detention camp that should have been closed years ago.