Six Guantanamo detainees to be transferred this month

At least six inmates being held at Guantanamo Bay prison will be sent to other countries this month, the U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday, according to the Reuters international news service. The scheduled releases, assuming they proceed as planned, are in addition to the 11 Guantanamo inmates already sent overseas under the new administration of Barack Obama. Obama pledged to close the prison, on the U.S. naval base on the island of Cuba, by early next year during the 2008 election campaign. The prison, set up by the previous administration of George W. Bush to hold terror suspects captured overseas, has been controversial because of alleged mistreatment of detainees and because many prisoners have been held for years without charges. One of the suspects, an Afghani who was as young as 14 when detained on suspicion of throwing a hand grenade that injured two U.S. soldiers and a translator in 2002, could be returned to Afghanistan by Friday, Reuters said. A federal judge in Washington ordered his release last month unless he was formally charged, and U.S. prosecutors have discussed charging him in civilian court. All of the six inmates who release is being contemplated were either ordered released by federal judges or were cleared by the administration's detainee review process, Reuters said. Two detainees will be sent to Portugal and two to Ireland, the news service said, citing a report in the Miami Herald newspaper. The Washington Post newspaper also reported that 10 European countries have agreed to take detainees, including England and France, Reuters said. There still are more than 220 suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, Reuters said.

OAS suspends Honduras

Maybe the decision by the Organization of American States to suspend Honduras after its military overthrew elected leftist president Manuel Zelaya will bring enough pressure to force the junta to step aside, but it's hard to see at this point how that will be accomplished. The OAS voted 33-0 on Saturday to bar Honduras from participation in the organization, shortly after its secretary-general, Jose Miguel Insulza, returned from Washington, D.C., following an unsuccessful effort to broker a deal to return Zelaya to office, according to the Miami Herald newspaper. The resolution passed by the OAS called the military coup an "unconstitutional altertation of the democratic order" and bars Honduras from receiving loans or other aid while still requiring the nation to adhere to the diplomatic union's human rights rules. A spokeswoman for the new military government in Tagucigalpa, the Honduran capital, dismissed Insulza's effort as insincere and said her country had withdrawn from the OAS before the meeting. "We saw that our good faith was taken advantage of and we were not listened to," Honduras Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Lorena de Casco said, according to the Herald. "Honduras has been viewed as a small, poor country. It's said and unfortunate, but the freedom of Honduras is not for sale." Military leaders apparently were alarmed by Zelaya's advocacy of a referendum polling Honduran voters to see if they would accept extending his term of office as a power grab, on a par with efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to convince voters to lift constitutional limits on his time in office. Zelaya had frequently clashed with Honduras' attorney general, Supreme Court and military leaders, the Herald said. But Zelaya immediately won the support of most countries, including the United States. The deposed leader vowed to return to Honduras on Sunday, even though the ruling junta cautioned that he would be arrested if he did.