Kuwaiti 12’s Families Elated by Decision

The families of the so-called Kuwaiti 12 had almost given up hope before Monday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their loved ones’ legal appeals.

For the families, it was a day of rejoicing.

“This is great news. God bless America!” Khalid Al Odah shouted during a telephone interview from Kuwait. After two years without criminal charges being brought against the 12 young Kuwaiti men, locked up among the 660 suspected terrorists and war criminals at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the court had decided to hear the prisoners’ plea that they be given a chance to prove their innocence.

Al Odah said he could not wait to tell his wife the news about their son, Fawzi.

“I had lost faith in the courts over there,” said Mansoor Kamel, the brother of another detainee. “We have waited so long.”

Monther Rabiah was near tears. Struggling to express himself in English, trying to explain how much he missed his older brother, he blurted out, “This is superior news!”

Much has happened in the nearly two years since the dozen young Kuwaiti men were incarcerated.

Fathers of two of the prisoners have died waiting for their sons to come home. The father of another prisoner has suffered several strokes, and today he slips in and out of a coma. Children born to three of the detainees are already talking.

Together, families of the Kuwaiti prisoners have spent about $2 million trying to win the prisoners’ release, only to see lower courts refuse to hear their cases. Most of the 12 young men have said they were doing charity work in Pakistan when they were captured during the war in Afghanistan.

At first, letters from the 12 detainees kept their families’ spirits up. “One day I will be back home, God willing,” wrote Omar Rajab.

But as time has passed, the letters have been less hopeful.

Abdullah Kamel wrote his will. Faiz Al-Kandari angrily signed one of his letters, “Your son in the prisons of the American Nazi.”

“We are suffering from a tyranny that nobody can know except God,” Adil Al Zamil wrote. He begged for justice. “There is nothing and no problem between the Americans and me,” he wrote. “... What is my guilt, I don’t know.”

Sometime next year, he may find out.

The court will rule then on whether the Bush administration can continue to hold the men without affording them due process of law in the U.S. courts.

The administration has said it has the right, even the responsibility, to hold “enemy combatants” captured during the war as long as necessary, until the war is over or until the administration is sure that they are not a threat to the American public.

But the Kuwaitis, through their defense attorneys, argue that it is unconstitutional to indefinitely confine anyone without trial.

“The issue, really,” said attorney Thomas B. Wilner of Washington, who represents the petitioning prisoners, “is whether the United States can set up prison camps for foreigners outside the court’s scrutiny.” Not only have the men been locked out of the courts, but they also have been kept from their families.

Al Odah, a colonel in the Kuwaiti air force during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, organized the group of families after the 12 were taken prisoner in fall 2001, during the U.S. war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Pooling their money, they hired Wilner and his law partners. They lobbied the Kuwaiti government to pressure Washington and tried, unsuccessfully, to visit their sons and brothers in Cuba.

Money has run low.

“We have exceeded our limits,” lamented Al Odah. “This is taking a very long time. It’s very expensive. We are trying very hard to finance this campaign. We do manage sometimes. But sometimes we fail.”

Mansoor Kamel said his brother had written about their grandfather, now in his late 80s and in frail health. “He’s afraid he won’t see him again,” said Mansoor. “But I write him not to worry. I keep telling him we are trying to do something new to get him back.”

Mansoor’s brother has four children, one a daughter he has never set eyes upon. The entire Kamel family now lives under one roof, trying to save money to help Abdullah.

“We are willing to sell everything just to get him back,” Mansoor said. “We think about my brother more than anything else. We all live in one house with our parents and we are very, very close now. So losing a member of our family like this is too much. It’s like a part of the house is missing.”

Monther Rabiah and his detainee brother, Fouad, have a father who has suffered several strokes, and just this week fell once again into a coma. “He cannot really cope with it,” said Monther.

Fouad, once a supervisor with a Kuwaiti airline, has a wife and four children. Because he is receiving no wages, the rest of the family is making his mortgage and car payments.

What is most frustrating, the families said, is that at the start they understood the need to question detainees, especially after the attacks of Sept. 11. But to keep them all this time hurts everyone, they say.

“It is like a lion that is injured,” said Monther Rabiah. “But how long must you keep the lion while he is injured? After all this time, his wounds must be healed. Let him go.

“Because if you don’t, his family will be wounded too.”