Belgian team for Guantanamo

Belgium is to send a mission to the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba to check on the welfare of two Belgians captured in 2002 in Afghanistan.

Over 650 prisoners are being held at Guantanamo

But unlike Britain and Denmark, the Belgian government will not press US authorities to release its nationals held at the camp, the newspapers Le Soir and La Libre Belgique said.

  

Instead the Belgian team, which the reports said would comprise consular officials and federal police, will seek to ensure the pair is being well-treated when it visits Guantanamo Bay next week.

 

Visits

 

The two men – a Belgian of Moroccan origin and another with Turkish roots – were visited by Belgian officials three times in the course of 2002.

  

Five British citizens held at the camp are set to be freed, along with one Dane, the governments of the two European countries said on Thursday.

  

More than 650 prisoners are being held at the isolated US naval base after their capture in the US administration’s “war on terror” against Al-Qaida and Afghanistan‘s former Taliban government.

Source: AFP