There has been no shortage of articles written from the perspective of the Guantanamo detainees’ lawyers and advocates. The result, more often than not, is a wildly inaccurate picture. A CNN.com piece (“Ten years on, Kuwaiti inmates fear indefinite Guantanamo detention”) published by Jenifer Fenton earlier this month is typical of the genre.
Fenton’s article features the story of a Kuwaiti Gitmo detainee named Fayiz Mohammed Ahmed Al Kandari (who was given the internment serial number 552). A D.C. district judge denied al Kandari’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus, citing the substantial evidence against him, in 2010. According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment written in 2008, al Kandari was deemed a “high” risk to the U.S. and its allies. JTF-GTMO also recommended that al Kandari remain in detention. And al Kandari’s own lawyers told Fenton that it is “likely” the Obama administration has decided to detain him indefinitely. So the Obama administration, which approved for transfer 65 percent of the detainees remaining at Guantanamo as of January 2009, determined that al Kandari was too dangerous to return to Kuwait.
