Gitmo Detainees: US Senators Don't Have Their Facts Right... - Presidential Staffer

Presidential Staffer Kojo Adu Asare has rubbished the request by four Republican US Senators for the US to cut foreign aid to Ghana should the two Gitmo detainees escape or return to terrorism.

The Republican Senators, according to Fox News, in a letter on Wednesday to Senate Appropriations Committee called for sanctions against Ghana in order to compel the nation to strictly monitor the Gitmo detainees and ensure that they do not escape from the grips of the national security.

They insisted on the Committee to "include in the fiscal year 2017 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs appropriations bill, language that would reduce assistance to Ghana by $10 million per detainee in the event either of these detainees escapes from confinement or re-engages in terrorism while in Ghana’s custody. Such language would incentivize Ghanaian authorities to allocate appropriate resources to closely and securely monitor the activities of these terrorist detainees.”

Addressing the issue on Kokrokoo on Peace FM, Adu Asare, who is a former NDC Member of Parliament for Adenta explained to host Kwami Sefa Kayi that the Gitmo detainees are not prisoners and so expected the four Senators to be abreast of such fact.

He added that their call is an indication that they are naive of the agreement process between Ghana and the US regarding the detainees' transfer to the country.

He rubbished what sounds as threat by the four Senators, advising Ghanaians not to be afraid of the Senators' request.

To him, the facts expressed by the Senators are weak and baseless.

We don’t have to live by these four Senator’s hypothesis. It’s too weak for us to live by such hypothesis. Again, they’ve described our prisons’ conditions as porous. Are these guys (Gitmo detainees) prisoners in the first place? So that presupposes that these so-called four Senators don’t even know the status of these two ex-detainees. They don’t seem to have their facts right about these people,” he added.