Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-03-Speech-2-296"
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"en.20090203.20.2-296"2
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"Mr President, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, President-in-Office of the Council, in May 2006 I visited Guantánamo with Mr Mann and Mr Elles. We made it very clear that the establishment of Guantánamo represents a breach of international law and a violation of human rights.
The then newly elected German Chancellor, Mrs Merkel, also said this in the presence of President Bush on her first visit to Washington and she also demanded the release of Mr Kurnaz. I believe that President Obama’s decision is a good one and that it will help to restore the credibility of the United States of America and of the Western world as a whole. For this reason, we must make it clear that the question of credibility is of great political importance.
At the same time, we must establish that the prisoners there should not be regarded as peaceful human rights campaigners and that they must be judged on that basis. During the course of this debate, I have sometimes had a quite different impression. We must ensure that the United States of America takes primary responsibility in this case and that it explains why it cannot accept many of these prisoners. The home countries of these people must also explain why they do not want to accept them or the prisoners must prove that they cannot return to their home countries because they would be exposed to serious persecution.
When all this has taken place, we can begin to consider whether the European Union should accept some of the prisoners. However, this is only possible once we have investigated in every single case the extent of the risk posed by each person. This investigation must take place not only at a national level, because the open borders within the European Community mean that we must apply European standards to the evaluation of the security risk which these people may represent.
Someone today spoke about refugees. These are not refugees. They are prisoners and we have to prove that they are not dangerous, unless we want to take irresponsible risks. I think we should ensure that those people who have a link with our Member States should be accepted, such as Mr Kurnaz in Germany or the nine people, I believe, in Great Britain. In total, I think 60 people have already been taken in by the European Union and we should not forget this."@en1
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