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An Islamic cleric, who is also a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, has questioned the wisdom in admitting two former Guantanamo Bay inmates into the country.
According to Mustapha Hameed, President Barack Obama, in his bid to fulfill his election promise of ridding the Guantanamo Bay of the inmates, is doing all he can to resettle the former prisoners anywhere but the US.
Prisons, he explained, are emptied only through the transfer of inmates or outright granting of freedom to them.
“When you free prisoners where they head to is not your business,” Mustapha Hameed said as he quoted a Dagbani proverb to buttress his point “when you throw away a toad, it is not your business to find out in which position it lands on the ground.”
“Why Ghana if the US Congress has turned down moves to resettle them in that country. They are Yemenites and should have been returned to that country.”
Continuing, he said that if Yemen is said to be unsafe for the former inmates, Saudi Arabia, which is on a bombing spree of the place, should host them and not another country.
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In a related development, the former inmates whose presence in Ghana has generated so much debate spoke to a radio station.
One of the two former inmates told a radio station that “we are happy to be in Ghana. It is a country we like so much. We particularly like Asamoah Gyan and during the World Cup many of us in the prisons supported Ghana. At the end of the tournament we told the guards ‘we have won.”
They denied belonging to Al Qaeeda and therefore pose a threat to the security of the country.
The former inmates expressed gratitude to President John Mahama and Ghanaians for offering to host them in Ghana.
By A.R. Gomda
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