Article invites Gitmo detainees

By Scott Merzbach
Staff Writer

Published on October 23, 2009

After spending the last few years at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, two detainees who are expected to be cleared for release may be welcomed into Amherst.

The Select Board Monday endorsed, by a 2-1 margin, a petition warrant article called "the resolution to assist in the safe resettlement of cleared Guantanamo detainees" that would position Amherst as a community willing to receive the former prisoners.

The lead petitioner is Ruth Hooke, a longtime Town Meeting member, who said popular opinion, despite President Obama's pledge to close Gitmo, is now running against shutting down the base.

"One of the reasons for doing this is to change the popular view and make it clear these are not hostile people; they haven't done anything," Hooke said.

The article that would come before fall Town Meeting, which starts Nov. 2, would call on Congress to repeal the ban on allowing settlement of these detainees in the United States and then have two of the 76 detainees who have been cleared come to live in Amherst, or a nearby community, once the ban is lifted.

The Pioneer Valley No More Guantanamos group, which is endorsing the article, is specifically working on behalf of two men, Ahmed Belbacha, a native of Algeria, and Ravil Mingazov, a convert to Islam while in the Russian Army.

Both men, Hooke said, have been wrongly detained, and never committed hostile attacks against the U.S. military or government. Information Town Meeting members will receive shows that Belbacha was vacationing in Pakistan when he was sold to U.S. forces for a bounty, while Mingazov was arrested after he settled in a house for Muslim refugees in Pakistan.

Federal law doesn't permit the relocation of detainees in the U.S. However, if the law changed and they were permitted to come to the region, service agencies would assist in settling them. This would include helping them to finding housing, work and places to worship, and to improve their language skills.

"There is no financial obligation for the town," Hooke said.

Since 2002, the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has housed a detention center that has been used to hold people considered enemy combatants whom U.S. forces have captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nancy Talanian, who coordinates the local No More Guantanamos that formed in the spring, said the resolution coming before Amherst is part of a larger education effort that is a great challenge after the Bush administration spent nearly eight years demonizing the detainees and the public not having a full understanding of who is being held.

"We decided to tell their stories to change peoples' views from being unidentified terrorists to being human beings," Talanian said. "If other communities follow Amherst's lead, I think more people will begin to look beyond the labels."

Those detainees who are not cleared would be placed in maximum security prisons within the United States, Hooke said.

Several other cities, including Raleigh and Durham, N.C., Tallahassee, Fla., and ones in Colorado and Virginia, are supporting similar resolutions, Hooke said.

Talanian added that each community is working on behalf of one or two of the men held at Guantanamo.

Amherst has the opportunity to set an example for other communities, Hooke said, and also help realize President Obama's goals of having the base closed in 2010.

Talanian said even if the resolution passes, there are no assurances the ban will be lifted on resettlement of the detainees. "It would be a strong message to the rest of the country," Talanian said.

There are also no guarantees the two men would want to move to western Massachusetts. "We want to make preparations in case they do," Talanian said.

Though it may not appear to be a subject for local action, Hooke said it does fit with Amherst's value system. "I also think it's a justice and hospitality issue," Hooke said.

Board approval

The Select Board, with two members absent, narrowly voted in favor of the resolution.

Board member Gerry Weiss said he fully endorses it.

"What I see is at the heart of this request is that people are suffering and we have a chance to alleviate that suffering," Weiss said.

Board member Diana Stein also voted in favor of the petition. While she acknowledged she was once predisposed to concerns that such men might pose a threat, she now realizes this was fear based on misinformation.

Chairwoman Stephanie O'Keeffe, who dissented, said she appreciated Hooke bringing the resolution to Town Meeting, but noted that it is completely outside of what she believes is the area of expertise for her or Town Meeting.

Weiss said the premise that Amherst shouldn't take a position made him uncomfortable. While he said he understood there may be requisite jokes about Amherst using its Town Meeting to make foreign policy statements, he said he felt ethically obligated to take a position on the Guantanamo base, something his tax dollars and elected officials have tacitly endorsed.

Town Meeting member Jim Smith said he is troubled by the petition article because he sees people elected to Town Meeting to deal with budgets and zoning amendments, not foreign policy matters.

"I'm old fashioned when it comes to Town Meeting," Smith said. "I don't think that kind of article is appropriate for Town Meeting

He added that there are potential problems, and wondered how Amherst could solve issues that the federal government continues to wrestle with.

"It's a hare-brained article," Smith said. "Where are we supposed to put two people who are innocent of whatever. What are we supposed to do with them?"

Talanian makes the case that the United States would be safer with the closing of the Guantanamo base and resettlement of its cleared detainees because Al Qaida has used both Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib prison as recruiting tools.

Such a warrant article is not unusual in Amherst as the town regularly engages in foreign policy discussions at Town Meeting, a concept that prompted author Tracy Kidder to characterize Amherst as a town with its own foreign policy.

Smith, who has studied the legislative body's history, said Town Meeting as far back as the early 19th century engaged in foreign policy issues, noting that it voted to side with the merchant class of Boston during the War of 1812.

"It joined with them in saying, "Forget this war,'" Smith said.

But most of the foreign policy issues started coming before Town Meeting in the 1960s.

One resolution that drew considerable attention to Amherst occurred two years ago, when Town Meeting urged the Bush administration to use diplomacy and not military action in its dealings with Iran.

The director of the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran later wrote a letter to Amherst thanking the town for its stance.

Other articles on foreign policy have called for an end to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2007, support for democracy in Nigeria and Tibet in 1999 and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2005.