Lobbying 2015: Kuwait secures Guantanamo releases
Kuwait is spending $2 million a year to convince the US to release its citizens from Guantanamo Bay. Its success ratio so far has been 11 : 1.
Eleven down, one to go.
After a decade of lobbying and legal wrangling, Kuwait has recovered all but one of its 12 citizens who were captured in Afghanistan and sent to the US military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now the government-funded International Counsel Bureau, which represents the prisoners’ families, is focused on gaining the release of one last Kuwaiti, who has been imprisoned the past 13 years.
The bureau paid four US firms $2 million in 2014 to advocate before all three branches of government, lobbying records show. The bureau also has a contract with a public relations firm, but it doesn’t show any recent activity.
Their efforts helped secure the release of Fawzi al Odah under a new parole-like system last year; he was the first Kuwaiti released since 2009. That leaves only Fayez al Kandari, who was charged with “material support for terrorism” before the charges were dropped in 2012 amid repatriation talks with Kuwait but is still considered too dangerous to be released.
