Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri - The Guantánamo Docket

Younous Chekkouri has a Guantanamo Docket 13 pages long (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/guantanamo/detainees/197-yunis-abdurrahman-shokuri), and he is not a victim. Like all other detainees who were at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he is at least an unlawful combatant and could have been killed on the battlefield and is therefore lucky to be alive. ICRC physicians I worked with at Gitmo in 2002 and later in Iraq in 2004-2005, told me "No one does [detention operations] better than the US." Gitmo is the finest such facility on earth. Chekkouri was trained how to behave if captured, and has followed the al Qaeda playbook to the "T." Lie about your treatment, lawyer up ASAP, disrupt detention operations by any means necessary. According to the Docket, Chekkouri was disruptive, uncooperative and far from a model detainee. He was an al Qaeda leader, a close associate of Usamma bin Laden and should not have been released. In fact, the Geneva Conventions and Law of Land Warfare state that even lawful combatant POW's may be held "until the end of hostilities." If Gitmo were illegal it would be closed. Instead, it is currently being used to house those awaiting trial for war crimes, and several others who are deemed too dangerous to be released. Gitmo is a small but essential part of winning the Global War on Terror. It is being renovated in anticipation of receiving additional detainees, thank God. Sincerely, MAJ (RET) Montgomery J. Granger, former ranking US Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, Joint Task Force 160, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from FEB-JUN 2002, and author: Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior."