WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has transferred two Libyan detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Senegal, Defense Department officials said on Monday, the latest step in President Obama’s accelerating effort to close the prison before he leaves office.
Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby and Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar were captured separately in Pakistan and had been held in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. The men were described in leaked U.S. military documents as members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Islamist faction that opposed Moammar Gaddafi’s authoritarian regime.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry thanked the Senegalese government for agreeing to take the men.
“The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and serving as a propaganda tool for violent extremists,” Kerry said in a statement.
In a private document that was circulated over the weekend and obtained by The Washington Post, Trump campaign senior adviser Barry Bennett revealed the mounting frustrations among the billionaire’s top aides as they closed what had been a tumultuous week.
Entitled “Digging through the Bull [expletive],” Bennett’s memo urged Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski - who was charged with battery last week for yanking a reporter - and others to ignore critics who have questioned whether Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has waned.
Bennett, a frequent presence on television, also lashed out at political opponents for having “scurried” onto the cable-news airwaves to offer at times scathing critiques of the Trump campaign, whether it was over its delegate-accumulation strategy or Trump’s ability to win a general election.
Bennett described what he saw as a flurry of negative commentary as something almost conspiratorial, saying “the media themselves couldn’t wait to label the week, ‘THE WORST WEEK EVER.’”
The Panama Papers, a massive report that claims to document shady business dealings by a who’s who of the global elite, landed in China on a national holiday, presenting the authorities with an interesting, probably vexing, question: How to scrub the web of the juicy-but-as-yet-unconfirmed charges against politically connected Chinese?
The findings – the result of a year-long collaboration between a German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 media outlets – sets out to expose “a cast of characters who use offshore companies to facilitate bribery, arms deals, tax evasion and drug trafficking.”
That includes, by ICIJ’s count, dirt on 140 political figures, including 12 current or former heads of state. It also names the family members of eight current or former members of China’s politburo, according to the Guardian’s tally.
Reporting on the 11.5 million tax documents – some of them leaked – is being published in batches. And a full account may be days or weeks away. The Washington Post has not seen all of their source material and cannot independently verify what the documents reveal.
Washington Post
