Source: The Guardian
As Barack Obama prepares to visit Saudi Arabia, the Saudi royal family has taken custody of nine longtime Guantánamo Bay detainees, bringing Obama closer to his goal of shuttering the infamous detention facility.
US officials on Saturday described the nine detainees, all Yemenis, as possessing close family ties to Saudi Arabia. Some, one official said, are “practically Saudis”.
The transfer puts the residual Guantánamo detainee population at 80, the lowest it has been in its 14-year history.
The transfer also clears another statistical milestone for the administration. There are now more detainees approved to leave Guantánamo, 26, than there are so-called “forever detainees”, the term lawyers use to describe those whom the administration has insufficient evidence to charge but claims are too dangerous to release.
There are 22 “forever prisoners”, who are expected to remain confined even if Obama succeeds in his goal of closing the Guantánamo detention center.
They are joined by 32 men in some stage of the long-stalled military tribunals process, although 22 of those have been referred for prosecution and not yet charged.
Perhaps the most high-profile of the detainees released to Saudi Arabia is Tariq Ba Odah, a persistent hunger striker and critically ill man who was never charged with a crime.
US Justice Department officials, backed by the Pentagon, had launched an unusual secret legal bid to prevent Ba Odah, who was cleared for transfer in 2010, from challenging his continued detention in court.
Ba Odah’s weight had dwindled to under 75lb. His transfer prevents the administration from having to address the fallout from his long-expected death inside Guantánamo Bay.
Ba Odah’s attorney, Omar Farah of the Center for Constitutional Rights, accused the US of playing “Russian roulette” with Ba Odah’s life and called its treatment of Bah Odah “one of the most appalling chapters in Guantánamo’s sordid history”.
In a statement, Farah said the fact Ba Odah survived captivity “is not so much a cause for celebration as it is a reckoning that ought to remind the White House of the cost of elevating politics over the life and liberty of a human being”.
Although Obama will travel to Saudi Arabia next week, US officials said the timing of the transfer was a coincidence.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, was described as taking a “personal” interest in getting the Saudis to accept Guantánamo detainees during his five trips to the country as the top US diplomat. Kerry’s envoy for closing Guantánamo, Lee Wolosky, has pressed the Saudis on accepting Yemeni detainees from Guantánamo during at least two trips to Saudi Arabia, officials said.
Categories: America, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, The Muslim Times, USA