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Rights groups demand release of detainees to mark 9th anniversary of US Guantanamo Bay prison

By: Sylvia Hui, The Associated Press

Posted: 01/11/2011 6:16 AM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 01/11/2011 8:32 AM

LONDON - Human rights groups demanded the release of the last British inmate at Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday, donning orange jumpsuits to demonstrate against the U.S. prison's ninth anniversary.

Cageprisoners, a London-based organization, says the 173 men still languishing at the detention camp almost two years after President Barack Obama pledged to close it have been held too long without trial.

"Once upon a time, each one of these men had a life, a family, dreams and hopes," said Moazzam Begg, director of Cageprisoners and a former Guantanamo detainee. Begg was imprisoned without charge for over three years and released in 2005.

"Fighting for their release is as important now as it was when the first pictures of the Guantanamo prisoners sent shock waves around the world," he said.

Obama vowed upon taking office in January 2009 to close the prison within a year. That deadline came and went, without him ever setting a new one.

About 20 protesters, some dressed in orange prison-style jumpsuits and with black bags over their heads, demonstrated in London's Trafalgar Square. A coalition of human rights groups including Cageprisoners plan to hand a letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to the U.S. Embassy demanding the release of British resident Shaker Aamer, who has been detained at Guantanamo since 2002.

Supporters of the Saudi-born Aamer allege that he was beaten and abused while in U.S. custody.

"We continue to make our best effort to secure his release," Britain's Foreign Office said Tuesday, adding that its diplomats had repeatedly raised the demand to Clinton.

The issue of how to deal with the remaining detainees at Guantanamo remains unresolved.

While Obama had expressed support for U.S. civilian trials of Guantanamo detainees, there are deep misgivings in Congress about such transfers.

Last week, Obama signed a sweeping defence bill that among other things bans the use of Defence Department money to transfer terror suspects from the U.S. Navy's prison at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the U.S. for trial in civilian courts. That effectively prevents any such transfer from happening during the 2011 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

The legislation also blocks Guantanamo detainees from being transferred to foreign countries except under very narrow circumstances, a provision Obama said he also opposed.

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