U.S. Transfers 12 Guantanamo Detainees, Six to Yemen
Bloomberg
December 23, 2009
William McQuillen
The U.S. transferred 12 detainees from Guantanamo Bay, sending half the prisoners home to Yemen and the others to Afghanistan and the Somaliland region.
Yemeni detainees Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami and Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf were sent home, according to a U.S. Justice Department statement.
Afghan detainees Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim and Mohammed Hashim were transferred to Afghanistan. Somali Mohammed Soliman Barre and Ismael Arale were sent to regional authorities in Somaliland, according to the statement. The transfers were completed this weekend, the agency said.
The Justice Department said it approved the transfers after evaluating potential threat, mitigation measures, and the success of litigation. More than 560 detainees have left Guantanamo Bay since 2002 for more than 35 countries.
The Guantanamo facility in Cuba opened in 2002 during the Bush administration. President Barack Obama has faced criticism from lawmakers for calling for the prison to be shut without providing them with a plan outlining how it would be done.
Obama ordered the facility closed by January 2010. A major obstacle was determining where to send about 100 Yemenis, the largest single group of prisoners by nationality.
The U.S. announced Sept. 26 that it transferred Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, a native of Yemen, back to his homeland. He had been ruled an enemy combatant by a military tribunal in 2004 and was ordered released in May by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington.
The U.S. as of late September had sought to send many other Yemenis to a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia, according to two Obama administration officials familiar with the matter who spoke at the time on condition of anonymity. The Saudis refuse to accept them, the officials said, and Yemen’s president wanted the detainees returned to their homeland. The U.S. had been reluctant to send them to Yemen because of security concerns there.