Guantanamo inmates
June 11, 2009
The interior ministry said on Thursday that it was unable to accept the US request based on the data provided.
"We're examining two new cases," ministry spokesman Stefan Paris said in Berlin. "The information provided by the United States is not sufficient for now for us to give the green light for taking in the two men."
The interior ministry would need to check whether the prisoners represented a security risk, he said. Also, Berlin needed to know why the men could not be taken in by the US and what ties they had to Germany.
Paris would not disclose the nationality of the two men. Security sources said one was Syrian, the other Tunisian.
Resistance at home and abroad
In April, the US made an initial request, presenting the German government with a list of nine Chinese Uighur detainees for Berlin to "consider."
Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had also replied in that case that the information provided was insufficient to warrant a positive reply.
US President Barack Obama has pledged to close the facility at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by early next year. Many of the inmates have already been cleared for release.
But US officials are having difficulty finding countries that will take them in, and meeting resistance at home to housing them on US soil.
The tiny Pacific nation Palau on agreed Wednesday to take in up to 17 Uighur Guantanamo detainees. Four further Uighur men who had been held at the prison camp were sent to Bermuda on Thursday.
Sharp political debate
German politicians have disagreed on the issue. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrat candidate to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in September's federal election, has spoken in favor of accepting inmates. But Interior Minister Schaeuble has voiced skepticism.
On a visit to Germany last week, Obama said after talks with Merkel that he had neither asked for nor received any hard commitments from Berlin on taking Guantanamo detainees. He said Merkel had been "very open" to discussions on the issue.
Opposition politicians have been very critical of the government's stance.
Claudia Roth, co-leader of the Green Party, said Schaeuble was using "stalling tactics."
"He's acting on the maxim: we don't know anything, we have to check things first, we have to deliberate so long until someone else takes this decision of our hands," Roth said in reference to the Uighur case.
Michael Leutert, the human rights spokesman for the Left party's parliamentary group, said accepting the inmates was "a simple humanitarian act."
"It is not plausible that two people proven innocent pose an uncalculated security risk for Germany," Leutert said. He said the German government needed to promptly "consider favorably" the US request.
sac/AFP/Reuters/dpa
Editor: Chuck Penfold