U.S. must show Guantanamo detainees aren’t risky, EU says

BRUSSELS, Belgium — European Union leaders said Monday they are willing to take prisoners being released from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay — but only after detailed screening to ensure they don’t import a terrorist.

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation bloc discussed the fate of up to 60 Guantanamo inmates who, if freed, cannot be returned to their homelands because they would face abuse, imprisonment or death. The prisoners come from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose nation played a lead role in Monday’s discussions on Guantanamo, said the European Commission will draft a formal plan in coming weeks defining a common course for EU members to pursue with the new U.S. administration of President Barack Obama.

In his first week in office, Obama ordered Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba to be closed within a year.

Kouchner said the European plan was likely to include a formal EU request for legal and security experts to visit the prison and interview potential immigrants about where they wanted to resettle and why.

But Kouchner said Europe still had far too many unanswered questions to commit to accepting any particular prisoners. He said the U.S. and EU had yet to nail down whether prisoners would be legally treated as refugees or asylum-seekers, whether they would face security restrictions in their new homes — and whether some prisoners were too dangerous to come to Europe at all.

The U.S. says that, of the more than 240 prisoners in Guantanamo, about 100 are considered too dangerous to be released from U.S. custody; about 80 could face criminal charges in U.S. courts but could be freed if acquitted; and about 60 have been cleared for release — but cannot be sent home because their own countries would likely harm them.

Of those 60, only 19 — chiefly ethnic Uighurs from China — have been reclassified as civilians, while the rest remain “enemy combatants.”