The Biden administration on Monday announced the transfer of 11 Yemeni detainees being held at a U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to Oman, which has agreed to help re-settle them, amid steps to reduce the population at the controversial military facility.
All of the men were captured in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and were held for more than two decades without being charged or put on trial, the New York Times reported.
“The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” the Defense Department said in a statement.
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The 11 detainees were identified as: Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman, Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, Khalid Ahmed Qassim, Suhayl Abdul Anam al Sharabi, Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah, Tawfiq Nasir Awad Al-Bihani, Omar Mohammed Ali al-Rammah, Sanad Ali Yislam Al Kazimi, Hassan Muhammad Ali Bib Attash, Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj, and Abd Al-Salam Al-Hilah.
The transfer was carried out as part of an early-morning secret operation on Monday, days before Guantanamo’s most notorious prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was scheduled to plead guilty to plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in exchange for a life sentence rather than face a death-penalty trial, the Times reported.
The move had been in the works for about three years after an initial plan to conduct the transfer in October 2023 faced opposition from congressional lawmakers.
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Authorities didn’t say why the detainees were delivered to Oman, one of the United States’ most stable allies in the Middle East, or what it gave the host country.
The men in the latest transfer included Shaqawi al Hajj, who had undergone repeated hunger strikes and hospitalizations at Guantanamo to protest his 21 years in prison.
With the release, the total number of men detained at Guantanamo is just 15, the fewest since 2002, the year it was turned into a detention site to house men from around the world arrested in connection with the “War on Terror.”
The transfer leaves six never-charged men still being held at Guantanamo, two convicted and sentenced inmates, and seven others charged with the 2001 attacks, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and 2002 bombings in Bali.
Most of those at Guantanamo are from Yemen, a country ravaged by war and now dominated by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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