The American armed forces on Monday transferred 11 of the 26 detainees from the infamous Guantánamo Bay prison to Oman where “they can start their lives again.” That reports The New York Times. All the men are Yemeni nationals and none of them had been formally charged in the two decades they had been imprisoned.
The prisoner transfer took place in secret on Monday morning local time, just days before Guantanamo Bay’s most notorious detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is due to plead guilty to helping plan the September 11, 2001, attacks that left more than 3,000 dead. In exchange for his guilty plea, he will receive a life sentence instead of the death penalty.
Reducing the prisoner population of Guantánamo Bay is one of Joe Biden’s last acts as American president. Barack Obama, president from 2009 to 2017, tried but failed to close the detention center located on the Cuban coast. When Biden took office as president in 2021, the prison still had forty residents, now it has fifteen. Nine of them have been charged or found guilty of war crimes.
Three years in preparation
The release of the eleven men was prepared for three years. They were supposed to be released as early as October 2023, but Congress objected at the last minute – while the plane was waiting and their personal belongings were packed.
The detainees could not be sent to Yemen because of the civil war in that country. Oman is an ally of the United States and in the Islamic country the released suspects are offered a reintegration program.
Under Obama, thirty prisoners were sent to Oman, of whom 27 were transferred to Yemen and two to Afghanistan. One of the men died in Oman.
Guantánamo Bay opened in January 2002 and received its first twenty prisoners, all from Afghanistan. A year later, 660 men remained in prison, where many were held without trial and several men were tortured with the waterboard-method. The military prison focused on suspects in the ‘War on Terror’ declared by President George W. Bush. However, many prisoners turned out to have nothing to do with terrorism.