Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) want the president to block transfers to other countries that "have a significant al-Qaeda presence." At a minimum, the senators wrote in a Jan. 7 letter, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Algeria and Sudan, "all of which are on the Administration's list of countries subject to heightened airport security," should be off limits.
Mr. Obama should reject this appeal. The ability of a host country to monitor a released detainee must be considered, but release decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis. The McCain-Graham approach all but ignores the administration's moral and legal responsibility to release those who should never have been detained in the first place, regardless of country of origin. It also sweeps too broadly. Yemen and Somalia continue to serve as breeding grounds for extremism, in part because of government instability, and should for now be crossed off the list of countries eligible to receive detainees. Saudi Arabia and Algeria present different circumstances. Both have been better able to keep an eye on their returned nationals. The prohibition against repatriating detainees to a country with a "significant" al-Qaeda presence could counterproductively be used to rule out transfers to such countries as Germany and Great Britain, both of which continue to struggle with extremist elements.
A blanket prohibition also increases the risk that a federal judge will order released into the United States those detainees barred from reentering their homeland. A D.C. federal judge has done just that with Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who posed no threat to the United States or its allies but who could not be returned to China for fear that they would be persecuted...more..
Somalia and Yemen 'swapping militants'
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