Last night I had a call with my client Ahmed Rabbani, one of the 39 detainees still held in Guantanamo Bay. Like almost half of the men held at the infamous US military facility, Ahmed has been cleared for release some months ago, but he is still stuck there. As one of his fellow inmates once said, Guantanamo is much like the Hotel California described in the famous Eagles song, you can “check out any time you like, but you can never leave”.Still, I had hoped that Ahmed would be home in Pakistan before the end of the holiday season. There was nothing stopping it: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has put his personal seal of approval on his return. But this did not happen. So I had to call him to deliver some urgent, and unwelcome, news.I had to tell Ahmed that his mother-in-law is on her deathbed in a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. That the doctors believe she only has four or five days of life left. Four days, of course, is plenty of time for a jet plane to carry Ahmed from Guantanamo to Karachi – but only if the US military allows him to go. It is unlikely that they will act in time, and Ahmed is aware of this. So I actually gave Ahmed the sad news that he will likely never see his mother-in-law again.
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