The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to stop the transfer of suspected terrorists from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid reports that some former detainees had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“The U.S. government must not release terrorist detainees at the same time we have committed U.S. service members to fight [the Islamic State]. To continue to do so just as we have had to open a new front in the war on terror is unthinkable,” Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Hagel.
McKeon’s letter came as Fox News reported that as many as 20 or 30 former Guantanamo detainees have joined forces with the Islamic State and other extremist groups inside Syria. Other former detainees are aiding the group with financing and propaganda, Fox said.
At the Pentagon, Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey downplayed concerns about released detainees.
Hagel said closing the prison, as President Obama has promised to do, “is clearly in the interests of the United States” and he supports it now, as he did as a senator.
“We believe that the recidivism is a relatively small fraction of those detainees which have been placed into conditions where the risk of recidivism is mitigated,” Dempsey added. “But even one would not make someone wearing the uniform very content.”
