US transfers 11 Guantanamo detainees to Oman after more than two decades without charges

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced Monday that it transferred 11 Yemeni men to Oman this week after detaining them for more than two decades without charge at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The transfer marks the latest and most significant step the Biden administration has taken in its final weeks to rid Guantanamo of the remaining detainees who have never been charged with a crime.

This latest release brings the total number of men detained at Guantanamo to 15. That’s the lowest figure since 2002, when the George W. Bush administration turned Guantanamo into a detention center for mostly Muslim men detained around the world in what the United States called c is “the war on terrorism”. The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as military and covert operations elsewhere followed the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.

Among the men in the latest transfer was Shaqawi al Hajj, who had suffered hunger strikes and repeated hospitalizations at Guantanamo to protest his 21 years in prison, preceded by two years of detention and torture in the custody of the CIA, according to the US-based Center for Constitutional. Rights.

Human rights groups and some lawmakers have pushed successive U.S. administrations to close Guantanamo or, alternatively, release all detainees who have never been charged with a crime. Guantanamo held around 800 detainees at its peak.

The Biden administration and administrations before it have said they are working to find suitable countries willing to house these never-charged detainees. Most of those stuck at Guantanamo were from Yemen, a country divided by war and dominated by the Iran-allied Houthi militant group.

The Sultanate of Oman, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula, did not acknowledge having received the prisoners on Tuesday morning. However, the main Western ally has already taken in more than two dozen prisoners since the prison was created.

The transfer announced Monday leaves six never-indicted men still detained at Guantanamo, two detainees convicted and sentenced and seven others charged in the 2001 attacks, the 2000 USS Cole bombing and the 2000 bombings of 2002 in Bali.

• Jon Gambrell contributed from Dubai.