The U.S. government has begun preparations for the transfer of thousands of foreigners to a detention center in Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of them are said to be from friendly European countries, such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Germany.
According to sources, the preparations include medical screening of nine thousand people to determine if they are healthy enough to be sent to Guantanamo. That’s according to The Washington Post and POLITICO based on government documents and officials involved who wish to remain anonymous.
The reports do not make clear how many Dutch people are involved. People from Ireland, Belgium, Poland, Ukraine and Turkey are also said to be on the list. These people are said to be residing illegally in the United States. According to sources, the Donald Trump administration has no plans to notify the homelands of the transfers to the U.S. military base in Cuba.
Trump has long had plans to transfer people who are illegally in the U.S. to the detention center in Guantanamo Bay. In January, he signed a decree to set up the facility to hold some 30,000 people. To date, no more than about five hundred individuals have been detained, writes POLITICO.
The detention center in Guantanamo Bay is famous and infamous. It was set up shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001 for captured “enemy combatants” in the so-called ‘War on Terror’. The United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among others, state that human rights violations and torture practices have occurred for years in the detention center.