• Posted on Monday, August 3, 2009
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Brownback: Kansas doesn't want Guantanamo detainees

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Led by Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, national, state and local leaders came together in Leavenworth Monday to once again oppose transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

"We don't want them here," Brownback said. "They should be treated with dignity and humanely, but it shouldn't it be here."

Brownback, who's running for governor in Kansas next year, said the transfer "will not change the world's opinion of us one iota."

He and others called the plan a "patently bad idea."

About 50 leaders gathered at the news conference Brownback called at the Riverfront Community Center in downtown Leavenworth. He organized the impromptu event after learning that anonymous U.S. officials said Sunday that the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth was one of two sites under consideration for a courtroom within a prison that would hold 229 suspected foreign fighters now at Guantanamo Bay.

A soon-to-be-closed state prison in Michigan is also a possible site.

Brownback said he knows nothing more about the plan than what he read in the newspaper.

Read more at KansasCity.com

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