‘COLLATERAL DAMAGE’

Biden Administration Moves First Prisoner Out of Guantánamo After Trump Delay

Abdul Latif Nasser was cleared to go in 2016, before Donald Trump reversed Obama-era policies on repatriating detainees when he was elected.

A Moroccan man who has rotted in Guantánamo Bay despite being primed for release five years ago has been repatriated. The move, reported by The New York Times, is the Biden administration’s first step toward reducing the population of the wartime prison. Donald Trump reversed Obama-era policies on repatriating detainees after he was elected in 2016, leaving several inmates who had never been charged with a crime in limbo. They included Abdul Latif Nasser, 56, who was handed back into Moroccan custody in the early hours of Monday after being held since May 2002. According to the Times, Morocco has agreed to keep Nasser under strict security measures as a condition of his release. His lawyer, Thomas Anthony Durkin, described the final years of his client’s detention as “collateral damage of the Trump administration’s and zealous Republican war-on-terror hawks’ raw politics.” An Biden administration official said Nasser’s release is the first step toward “responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility.”