GTMO 2: US Ambassador lying or not on top of issues – Sam George

The Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram Constituency, Sam Nartey George, has threatened to throw the classified details of the deal on the two former Guantanamo Bay detainees in the open if the US Ambassador does not peddle the truth.

According to him, the recent comments by Robert Porter Jackson that the American government was not aware of the granting of refugee statuses to the two Yemeni nationals are quite unfortunate.

Mr Nartey George, a former presidential staffer, said the American government was kept in the know about the deal every step of the way through one intelligence officer Tim Miller, who worked at the US Embassy in Accra at the time.

Therefore, he thinks the ambassador was supposed to be kept up to speed on the deal by Mr Miller.

“It is either the US ambassador is not on top of issues or he is lying,” Sam George stated on 3FM‘s Midday News on Wednesday.

Ambassador Jackson had told journalists in Tamale over the weekend that he was surprised at the granting of refugee statuses to Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby as relayed by the Foreign Affairs Minister in Parliament.

But Sam George said the issue was at the heart of the US government and Mr Miller reported on each development directly to the ambassador.

“[Therefore the ambassador] cannot claim that he did not know else he is saying he does not know what goes on within his embassy and therefore the home office must begin to recall him”.

He said the US envoy should rather be thankful to the previous government since the former G-Bay detainees were brought to Ghana with virtually nothing on them.

“They had no passport, basically they were rendered stateless at the time they entered Ghana.

“For us to be able to give them any sort of identification, for them to have a driving license or for them to access the National Health Insurance Scheme, they needed to have some form of identification.”

He said the government was therefore faced with two options, one of which was to apply to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for them to be granted a refugee status – which fell through.

So, government, Sam George continued, opted for an application for a refugee status for the two with the Ghana Refugee Board.

Schedule Officer

He said the US Ambassador cannot deny all these facts.

“Every time we changed their place of residence, the US government was briefed.”

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MP said upon the arrival of the two Yemenis in Ghana in January, 2016, the US Embassy even immediately assigned a Schedule Officer to track their movement.

They were monitored together with Ghana’s National Security Council, which also assigned a Schedule Officer, Sam George said.

The legislator, therefore, wants the US ambassador to come again on his supposed lack of knowledge on the refugee status.