GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba _ It was a Saturday at the communal prison for cooperative captives, Donald Trump's inauguration is more than a month away. A Yemeni detainee inside a cellblock was waving a piece of artwork depicting a question mark at his guards through one-way glass. It had a padlock for a dot.
News crews from Europe to the United States captured it, stirring a debate at prisoner headquarters: require reporters to delete the imagery as unauthorized communication? Or let it go?
But by Sunday morning, rather than have these news images destroyed, the man with the ultimate censorship authority instead adopted it as a metaphor for this time of uncertainty at Guantanamo Bay.
"We have some detainees that have become very good artists while they've been here. I would venture to guess that detainee is using his art as a way to express himself," said Navy Rear Adm. Peter J. Clarke, a submariner and commander of detention operations.
"I don't know whether it's his hope, whether it's his concern, whether it's his frustration," he said, calling it perhaps an expression of "frustration in a very nonthreatening way that he does have a question of what's going to happen in the future."
Twenty-two of the last 59 captives are cleared to go by the Obama administration parole board, and the artist isn't one of them. His lawyer, Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, identified it as work of Yemeni detainee Khalid Qasim, a "forever prisoner," who described the painting to her by phone Nov. 29, saying when the prison art instructor "saw it, he was amazed."
The board has looked at his file four times and concluded he that can't go anywhere.
Moreover, it is not clear whether the State Department envoy responsible for making transfer deals can get them done for the 22 cleared captives �� approved by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and to Congress by Dec. 20 _ 30 days notice before a flight can leave Guantanamo base for a cleared captive's drop-off country.
President-elect Donald Trump has said he would increase the detainee population and has chosen retired Marine Gen. James Mattis to be secretary of defense. Mattis is on record as opposing prisoner releases while a war continues.
The Guantanamo warden, Army Col. Stephen Gabavics, said he's taking it one day at a time, and so are the detainees. He flatly rejected a CBS News report based on one lawyer who spoke to one detainee that there was panic on the cellblocks the night Trump was elected, prompting the captives to call for sedatives.
That didn't happen, said Gabavics, a career military police officer who arrived at Guantanamo six months ago.
The said, the prisoners had questions for their guards and medics, Gabavics said.
"Are we going to be staying here? Are more detainees coming in?" the Gabavics quoted them as asking. The troops had nothing to offer them. Politics a taboo topic between captive and captor, and no one really knows what the Trump transition will bring.
