Moazzam Begg was detained at Guantanamo Bay from 2003-2005.
LONDON — A British former Guantanamo Bay detainee said former president Barack Obama’s inability to close the offshore detention center has allowed President Trump to endorse „war crimes.“
Moazzam Begg spoke after Trump said in his State of The Union speech Tuesday that he had signed an executive order to keep the facility open, reversing a directive signed by Obama to shutter it.
Begg, from the central English city of Birmingham, was detained in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad in 2002 before being taken to Guantanamo Bay in early 2003, after the U. S. accused him of having links with al-Qaeda.
He was released from the Cuban facility without charges in January 2005, after the British government said he would not pose a security threat, according to the Pentagon. He maintains that he was falsely imprisoned.
“It was Obama’s failure to follow through on his promise of closing down Guantanamo and to prosecute those involved in their abuse that allowed Trump to use the language of endorsing war crimes,“ Begg told USA TODAY, referring to a January 2017 interview with ABC News in which Trump said that he believes “waterboarding works.”
Trump’s comments prompted Nils Melzer, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, to appeal to Trump “not to reconsider the acceptability of waterboarding and other methods of torture used as interrogation techniques.”
„The truth is that imprisonment without trial, torture and degrading treatment will remain crimes of the very worst kind no matter which U. S. president justifies them,“ Begg said.
“Many Americans care little for the negative effects Guantanamo, or Trump, has on the reputation of the USA,“ he added.
When Begg was released, there were more than 500 detainees at Guantanamo. Now, there are 41 after transferals out of the military prison by the Obama administration stopped in January last year.
Trump said in his speech Tuesday: “Terrorists are not merely criminals. They are unlawful enemy combatants. And when captured overseas, they should be treated like the terrorists they are.”
“I am also asking the Congress to ensure that, in the fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda, we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists — wherever we chase them down,” he added.
Begg, who has campaigned for closing Guantanamo Bay since his release, works as an outreach director at Cage, a controversial London-based group that advocates for the rights of terror suspects.
Cage was in close contact from 2009-2012 with Mohammed Emwazi, who later became the Islamic State executioner known as „Jihadi John.“ Cage was widely criticized after its research director, Asim Qureshi, said Emwazi, from west London, had been a “beautiful young man,“ and after the organization suggested that harassment by British intelligence could have contributed to his radicalization.
