Washington After detaining 11 Yemenis without prosecution at the U.S. naval facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than 20 years, the Pentagon announced on Monday that it has transferred them to Oman this week.
The transfer was the most recent and significant move made by the Biden administration in its last weeks to remove the last remaining detainees who had never been charged with a crime from Guantanamo.
With the most recent disclosure, there are now 15 men in all who are being held at Guantanamo. That is the fewest since the administration of President George W. Bush converted Guantanamo into a prison facility for the primarily Muslim detainees arrested worldwide in what the United States referred to as its “war on terror” in 2002. The September 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks were followed by U.S. military and clandestine operations in other countries, as well as invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, among the detainees in the most recent transfer was Shaqawi al Hajj, who had participated in many hunger strikes and hospital stays at Guantanamo to protest his 21-year prison sentence, which came after two years of CIA captivity and torture.
Legislators and rights organizations have urged U.S. governments to either abolish Guantanamo or, if that is not possible, free all detainees who have never been charged with a crime. At its height, Guantanamo housed roughly 800 captives.
Both the Biden administration and its predecessors stated that they were in the process of identifying appropriate nations that would be ready to accept those detainees who were never charged. Many of the people detained at Guantanamo were from Yemen, a war-torn nation where the Houthi terrorist organization, which has ties to Iran, controls the capital.
Early on Tuesday, the sultanate of Oman, which is located on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, refused to acknowledge receiving the inmates. Questions from The Associated Press were not answered by national officials. Since the prison’s establishment, the important Western ally has taken in about 30 inmates.
However, Oman has not provided an explanation for the release of those inmates.In February, two Afghans who had been detained by Oman returned to Afghanistan under Taliban rule. According to the British watchdog group CAGE International, one Yemeni died in Oman after being informed that he and 27 other people will be sent back to Yemen.
After being persuaded by the Omani government, which gave each of the men $70,000 in compensation, 26 of the men and their families felt they had little choice but to return to Yemen. The fate of the 28th prisoner was not immediately apparent.
Two convicted and sentenced convicts, seven others charged with the 2001 attacks, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and the 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, and six never-charged men remain at Guantanamo following the transfer announced Monday.
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