[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 2 (Thursday, January 24, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S92-S93]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            GUANTANAMO, CUBA

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, tomorrow a small bipartisan 
delegation, of which I will be part, will go to Guantanamo, Cuba to see 
for ourselves directly the questioning process in trying to elicit 
information from the detainees, the unlawful combatants, the prisoners, 
whatever you want to call them.
  I think in a lot of the commentary that has come out about this--and 
this is one of the reasons I want to go; I want to see for myself how 
these detainees are being kept and how the process goes about trying to 
elicit information from them--it seems what we call them and the 
question of humane treatment is certainly a legitimate question, but I 
can't imagine, although I will see for myself tomorrow, that the United 
States is not giving anything but humane treatment. That is the 
character, that is the nature of our people. And certainly with as much 
attention on Guantanamo, it is certainly going to be the case of humane 
treatment.
  What I want to find out is, are we getting information? We are in a 
war against terrorists. Many of these detainees are suspected to be 
some of the most ruthless and lethal of the terrorists. Therefore, we 
need to get as much information from them as we can in order to help 
prevent the kind of tragedies that this Nation went through on 
September 11.
  As we survey the situation--and I have been to Guantanamo Naval Base 
years ago--I am quite interested to see how we are going about the 
process of eliciting this information from them.
  Interestingly, there are a few other detainees in Guantanamo, not 
many in number, but very important to us in this country. There are 
eight Haitians detained for immigration reasons. There are 27 Cubans 
detained because of the policies of administrations, both past and 
present, that in enforcing the immigration laws do not allow anyone 
from a foreign land just to come to the United States; thus, 
intercepted on the high seas, be they Haitians or Cubans, certainly 
small in number but important in each of their cases.

  In most of the cases of the Cuban detainees, 25 of the 27 have 
already been interviewed and determined that they are eligible to go to 
a third country. They do not want to return to Cuba. They are not 
eligible to come to the United States--the process of finding a third 
country that will receive them. I want to see firsthand for myself and 
talk to some of these people to see that each one of them, both the 
Haitian group and the Cuban group, have that personal attention. I will 
have a followup with our staff to see that that process is carried on 
in an orderly and prompt fashion.
  This trip tomorrow is a direct result of having just been with a 
delegation of a total of nine of us into central Asia, including 
Afghanistan. What we saw there--and I gave a report to the Senate 
yesterday and I will not repeat it; it was an optimistic report 
reflecting the enthusiasm and the determination expressed in the faces 
of our young people, our young men and women in uniform serving our 
country in that part of the world and serving very successfully.
  As a followup to that, at the end of that trip, it started occurring 
to a number of us, bipartisan, that we wanted to make this trip to 
Guantanamo.

[[Page S93]]

 That is what we will do. Then I will report to the Senate next week 
upon our return.

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