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Pentagon Repatriates Guantánamo Detainee Held Without Charge for Over Two Decades
The move came as the Biden administration faced pressure to clear the notorious military prison of all uncharged detainees before Donald Trump takes office.
Dec 31, 2024
The Biden administration announced late Monday that it transferred a Tunisian man who was never charged with a crime out of the notorious Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba, a move that came more than a decade after the detainee was approved for release.
The man, 59-year-old Ridah bin Saleh al-Yazidi, had been held at Guantánamo since the day former U.S. President George W. Bush opened the prison camp in 2002. The Pentagon said in a statement Monday that al-Yazidi has been repatriated to the government of Tunisia.
With al-Yazidi's transfer, there are now 26 detainees remaining at Guantánamo, the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime and have been approved for release from the prison, which United Nations experts have said is "defined by the systematic use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." More detainees have died at Guantánamo than have been convicted of a crime, according to the human rights group Reprieve.
The Biden administration said in 2021 that it intended to shutter the prison, and critics have accused the administration of "a lack of courage" as it has dragged its feet on the matter.
But human rights campaigners have welcomed recent progress. Al-Yazidi was the fourth Guantánamo detainee in two weeks to be transferred from the prison by the Biden administration, which has faced growing pressure to clear the camp of the remaining uncharged men before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes power next month.
"Fifteen men remain who have never been charged with any crimes and have long been cleared by U.S. security agencies to leave Guantánamo, some for more than a decade," Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security With Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement earlier this month after the Biden administration announced the transfer of three never-charged men out of the prison camp.
"President Biden must transfer these men before he leaves office, or he will continue to bear responsibility for the abhorrent practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial by the U.S. government," said Eviatar. "It has been 23 years; President Biden can, and must, put an end to this now."
The transfer was announced on the same day that a Pentagon appeals panel "upheld a military judge's finding that the plea deals in the September 11 case are valid, clearing the way at least for now for a guilty plea hearing next week with the accused mastermind of the attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," The New York Timesreported Monday. Mohammed is among the Guantánamo detainees who have been charged with a crime by a military commission.
"Col. Matthew N. McCall, the judge in the case, had ruled that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III acted too late and beyond the scope of his authority when he rescinded the three deals on August 2, two days after a senior Pentagon appointee had signed them," the Times reported. "Under the pretrial agreements, or PTAs, Mr. Mohammed and two co-defendants agreed to plead guilty to war crimes charges in exchange for life prison sentences rather than face a death-penalty trial."
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Lift the Cuban Trade Embargo Now
We need to break our addiction to this big government policy that displaces people and blocks the rest of us from engaging with our neighbors.
Dec 20, 2024
Ten years ago, the U.S. and Cuba announced the start of normalization between our two countries. Americans and Cubans alike could see a bit of light through a crack in the wall of U.S. restrictions that, for six decades, have blocked normal interaction between close neighbors.
The brief opening was largely ceremonial—then-President Donald Trump rolled much of it back in his first term. And only Congress can truly end the world’s longest running embargo.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, embraces the same old Cold War playbook on the issue: punish Cuba, stoke chaos and civil unrest, and hope the government collapses. As far back as JFK, U.S. officials have been trapped in this irrational family feud that empowers hardliners in both governments while holding citizens here and there hostage to a bureaucratic status quo.
Ending the embargo would also open doors for Cuban reformers, dissidents, human rights activists, and religious leaders alike by removing the Cuban government’s excuse for its failures.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Two years of limited opening had a positive impact and was supported by a majority of Cuban Americans. Buoyed by Cuban government reforms and cash from families in the U.S., the island’s private sector boomed. Internet access increased, and social media exploded with honest voices. American tourists flocked to the country.
Then Trump emphatically rolled this progress back—he even added Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” despite a complete lack of evidence.
Today, after a brief glimmer of hope, Cubans are suffering. Hardliners have stopped the economic reform process. Confusion plagues new leaders transitioning from the Castros’ dominance. The pandemic gutted tourism, while storms and flooding ravaged crops.
The results have been predictable: An exodus from Cuba has surpassed all migration since the imposition of the embargo in 1962. At least half a million have migrated since the end of Trump’s first term—and more are on the way. The island has lost around 10% of its population in recent years, a staggering total.
We need to break our addiction to this big government policy that displaces people and blocks the rest of us from engaging with our neighbors. Ending the embargo would also open doors for Cuban reformers, dissidents, human rights activists, and religious leaders alike by removing the Cuban government’s excuse for its failures.
A bipartisan majority in Congress could potentially back a full lifting of the embargo. Gulf Coast states who took the big hit in the 60s when they lost a top trading partner in Cuba could be especially delighted to renew those relations.
”In a scenario of unrestricted trade, the aggregate of food and medical exports alone could amount to $1.6 billion with 20,000 associated U.S. jobs,” former International Trade Commission Chair Paula Stern, PhD found in a 2000 study presented to Congress. Those numbers could be much higher today.
There would be other benefits as well.
Companies like Roswell Park in Buffalo, who had to jump through hoops to bring a groundbreaking Cuban-developed lung cancer vaccine to people in the United States, and other health care companies would finally be able to economically partner with world-class Cuban scientists on new medical advances.
For Trump, the next steps should be obvious: Avoid bloodshed. Ease the pain. Light the way to a new era in U.S.-Cuba relations.
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8 Reasons Why Marco Rubio Would Be a Disastrous Secretary of State
In most hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
Nov 18, 2024
Of all U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for his foreign policy team, Marco Rubio is the least controversial to the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington, and the most certain to provide continuity with all that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, from Cuba to the Middle East to China.
The only area where there might be some hope for ending a war is Ukraine, where Rubio has come close to Trump’s position, praising Ukraine for standing up to Russia, but recognizing that the U.S. is funding a deadly “stalemate war” that needs to be “brought to a conclusion.”
But in all the other hot spots around the world, Rubio is likely to make conflicts even hotter, or start new ones.
1. His Obsession With Regime Change in Cuba Will Sink any Chance of Better Relations With the Island
Like other Cuban-American politicians, Marco Rubio has built his career on vilifying the Cuban Revolution and trying to economically strangle and starve into submission the people of his parents’ homeland.
It is ironic, therefore, that his parents left Cuba before the revolution, during the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, whose executioners, secret police, and death squads killed an estimated 20,000 people, according to the CIA, leading to a wildly popular revolution in 1959.
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
When former President Barack Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, Rubio swore to do “everything possible” to obstruct and reverse that policy. In May 2024, Rubio reiterated his zero tolerance for any kind of social or economic contacts between the U.S. and Cuba, claiming that any easing of the U.S. blockade will only “strengthen the oppressive regime and undermine the opposition... Until there is freedom in Cuba, the United States must maintain a firm stance.”
In 2024 Rubio also introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. “State Sponsor of Terrorism List,” imposing sanctions that cut Cuba off from the U.S.-dominated Western banking system.
These measures to destroy the Cuban economy have led to a massive wave of migration in the past two years. But when the U.S. Coast Guard tried to coordinate with their Cuban counterparts, Rubio introduced legislation to prohibit such interaction. While Trump has vowed to stem immigration, his secretary of state wants to crush Cuba’s economy, forcing people to abandon the island and set sail for the United States.
2. Applying His Anti-Cuba Template to the Rest of Latin America Will Make Enemies of More of Our Neighbors
Rubio’s disdain for his ancestral home in Cuba has served him so well as an American politician that he has extended it to the rest of Latin America. He has sided with extreme right-wing politicians like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Javier Milei in Argentina, and rails against progressive ones, from Brazil’s Ignacio Lula da Silva to Mexico’s popular former President Lopez Obrador, whom he called “an apologist for tyranny” for supporting other leftist governments.
In Venezuela, he has promoted brutal sanctions and regime change plots to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro. In 2019 he was one of the architects of Trump’s failed policy of recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as president. He has also advocated for sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua.
In March 2023, Rubio urged President Joe Biden to impose sanctions on Bolivia for prosecuting leaders of a 2019 U.S.-backed coup that led to massacres that killed at least 21 people.
Rubio also condemned the government of Honduras for withdrawing from an extradition treaty with the United States this past August, in response to decades of U.S. interference that had turned Honduras into a narco-state riven by poverty, gang violence, and mass emigration, until the election of democratic socialist President Xiomara Castro in 2022.
Rubio’s major concern about Latin America now seems to be the influence of China, which has become the leading trade partner of most Latin American countries. Unlike the U.S., China focuses on economic benefits and not internal politics, while American politicians like Marco Rubio still see Latin America as the U.S. “backyard.”
While Rubio’s virulent anti-leftist stands have served him well in climbing to senior positions in the U.S. government, and now into Trump’s inner circle, his disdain for Latin American sovereignty bodes ill for U.S. relations with the region.
3. He Believes the U.S. and Israel Can Do No Wrong, and That God Has Given Palestine to Israel
Despite the massive death toll in Gaza and global condemnation of Israel’s genocide, Rubio still perpetuates the myth that “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses” and that innocent people die in Gaza because Hamas has deliberated placed them in the way and used them as human shields. The problem, he says, is “an enemy that doesn’t value human life.”
When asked by CODEPINK in November 2024 if he would support a cease-fire, Rubio replied, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”
There are few times in this past year that the Biden administration has tried to restrain Israel, but when Biden begged Israel not to send troops into the southern city of Rafah, Rubio said that was like telling the Allied forces in World War II not to attack Berlin to get Hitler.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order.
In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August 2024, Rubio criticized the Biden administration’s decision to sanction Israeli settlers linked to anti-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank.
“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that the Palestinians, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or FTOs [Foreign Terrorist Organisations] such as Hamas, have rejected such overtures,” Rubio wrote. “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he added.
No country besides Israel subscribes to the idea that its borders should be based on 2,000-year-old religious scriptures, and that it has a God-given right to displace or exterminate people who have lived there since then to reconquer its ancient homeland. The United States will find itself extraordinarily isolated from the rest of the world if Rubio tries to assert that as a matter of U.S. policy.
4. His Deep-Seated Enmity Toward Iran Will Fuel Israel’s War on Its Neighbors, and May Lead to a U.S. War With Iran
Rubio is obsessed with Iran. He claims that the central cause of violence and suffering in the Middle East is not Israeli policy but “Iran’s ambition to be a regional hegemonic power.” He says that Iran’s goal in the Middle East is to “seek to drive America out of the region and then destroy Israel.”
He has been a proponent of maximum pressure on Iran, including a call for more and more sanctions. He believes the U.S. should not reenter the Iran nuclear deal, saying: “We must not trade away U.S. and Israeli security for vague commitments from a terrorist-sponsoring regime that has killed Americans and threatens to annihilate Israel.”
Rubio calls Lebanon’s Hezbollah a “full-blown agent of Iran right on Israel’s border” and that wiping out Hezbollah’s leadership, along with entire neighborhoods full of civilians, is a “service to humanity.” He alleges that Iran has control over Iraq, Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, and is a threat to Jordan. He claims that “Iran has put a noose around Israel,” and says that the goal of U.S. policy should be regime change in Iran, which would set the stage for war.
While there will hopefully be leaders in the Pentagon who will caution Donald Trump about the perils of a war with Iran, Rubio will not be a voice of reason.
5. He Is Beholden to Big Money, From the Weapons Industry to the Israel Lobby
Open Secrets reports that Rubio has received over a million dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups during his career. The Pro-Israel America PAC was his single largest campaign contributor over the last five years. When he last ran for reelection in 2022, he was the third largest recipient of funding by pro-Israel groups in the Senate, taking in $367,000 from them for that campaign.
Rubio was also the fourth largest recipient of funding from the “defense” industry in the Senate for the 2022 cycle, receiving $196,000. Altogether, the weapons industry has invested $663,000 in his congressional career.
Rubio is clearly beholden to the U.S. arms industry, and even more so to the Israel lobby, which has been one of his largest sources of campaign funding. This has placed him in the vanguard of Congress’s blind, unconditional support for Israel and subservience to Israeli narratives and propaganda, making it unlikely that he will ever challenge the ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people or their expulsion from their homeland.
6. He’s so Antagonistic Toward China That China Has Sanctioned Him—Twice!
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2022, Rubio said: “The gravest threat facing America today, the challenge that will define this century and every generation represented here, is not climate change, the pandemic, or the left's version of social justice. The threat that will define this century is China."
It will be hard for our nation’s “top diplomat” to ease tensions with a country he has so maligned. He antagonized China by co-sponsoring the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which allows the U.S. to bar Chinese imports over alleged Uyghur rights abuses, abuses that China denies and independent researchers question. In fact, Rubio has gone so far as to accuse China of a “grotesque campaign of genocide” against the Uyghurs.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded.
On Taiwan, he has not only introduced legislation to increase military aid to the island, but actually supports Taiwanese independence—a dangerous deviation from the U.S. government's long-standing One China approach.
The Chinese responded to Rubio by sanctioning him, not once but twice—once regarding the Uyghurs and once for his support of Hong Kong protests. Unless China lifts the sanctions, he would be the first U.S. secretary of state to be banned from even visiting China.
Analysts expect China to try to sidestep Rubio and engage directly with Trump and other senior officials. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told Reuters, “If that doesn't work, then I think we're going to get into a much more regular escalation of a bad relationship.”
7. Rubio Knows Sanctions Are a Trap, But He Doesn’t Know How to Escape
Rubio is a leading advocate of unilateral economic sanctions, which are illegal under international law, and which the United Nations and other countries refer to as “unilateral economic coercive measures.”
The United States has used these measures so widely and wildly that they now impact a third of the world’s population. U.S. officials, from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Rubio himself, have warned that using the U.S. financial system and the dollar’s reserve currency status as weapons against other countries is driving the rest of the world to conduct trade in other currencies and develop alternative financial systems.
In March 2023, Rubio complained on Fox News, “We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”
And yet Rubio has continued to be a leading sponsor of sanctions bills in the Senate, including new sanctions on Iran in January 2024 and a bill in July to sanction foreign banks that participate in alternative financial systems.
So, while other countries develop new financial and trading systems to escape abusive, illegal U.S. sanctions, the nominee for secretary of state remains caught in the same sanctions trap that he complained about on Fox.
8. He Wants to Crack Down on U.S. Free Speech
Rubio wants to curtail the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In May, he described campus protests against Israel as a “complete breakdown of law and order.”
Rubio claimed to be speaking up for other students at American universities. “[They] paid a lot of money to go to these schools, [but are being disrupted by] a few thousand antisemitic zombies who have been brainwashed by two decades of indoctrination in the belief that the world is divided between victimizers and victims, and that the victimizers in this particular case, the ones that are oppressing people, are Jews in Israel,” said Rubio.
The Florida senator has said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who engage in pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April, he called for punishing supporters of the Israel boycott movement as part of efforts to counter antisemitism, falsely equating any attempt to respond to Israel’s international crimes with antisemitism.
And what about those crimes, which the students are protesting? After visiting Israel in May, Rubio wrote an article for National Review, in which he never mentioned the thousands of civilians Israel has killed, and instead blamed Iran, Biden, and “morally corrupt international institutions” for the crisis.
Marco Rubio expects Americans to believe that it is not genocide itself, but protests against genocide, that are a complete breakdown of law and order. He couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.
Students are not Rubio’s only target. In August 2023, he alleged that certain “far-left and antisemitic entities” may have violated the Foreign Assistance Registration Act by their ties to China. He called for a Justice Department investigation into 18 groups, starting with CODEPINK. These unfounded claims of China connections are only meant to intimidate legitimate groups that are exercising their free speech rights.
Conclusion
On each of these issues, Rubio has shown no sign of understanding the difference between domestic politics and diplomacy. Whether he’s talking about Cuba, Palestine, Iran, or China, or even about CODEPINK, all his supposedly tough positions are based on cynically mischaracterizing the actions and motivations of his enemies and then attacking the “straw man” he has falsely set up.
Unscrupulous politicians often get away with that, and Rubio has made it his signature tactic because it works so well for him in American politics. But that will not work if and when he sits down to negotiate with other world leaders as U.S. secretary of state.
His underlying attitude to foreign relations is, like Trump’s, that the United States must get its way or else, and that other countries who won’t submit must be coerced, threatened, couped, bombed, or invaded. This makes Rubio just as ill-equipped as Antony Blinken to conduct diplomacy, improve U.S. relations with other countries, or resolve disputes and conflicts peacefully, as the U.N. Charter requires.
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