United
States on Wednesday transferred to Ghana two Yemeni men who had been
imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly 14 years, the Pentagon
said. The transfer marked the start of what is expected to be a flurry
of 17 departures in early 2016.
The
transfers also represented the first time that lower-level detainees
have been resettled in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that the State
Department is widening the aperture of its diplomatic efforts to find
homes for those on the transfer list.
After the resettlement, 105 detainees remain at Guantánamo, and 46 are recommended for transfer.
“The
United States is grateful to the government of Ghana for its
humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to
close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility,” a Pentagon spokesman,
Cmdr. Gary Ross, said in a statement.
The
military identified the two Yemeni men transferred to Ghana as Khalid
Mohammed Salih al-Dhuby and Mahmmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef. Both were
born in Saudi Arabia but are considered citizens of Yemen based on their
family and tribal ties, according to military dossiers leaked by Pvt.
Chelsea Manning.
The
men’s dossiers contend that each went to Afghanistan before the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and were captured by Afghan forces
in late 2001 and turned over to the United States. Some of the claims in
the leaked dossiers have been contested by detainees or their lawyers
or undercut by other evidence.
In
2009, each man was unanimously recommended for transfer by a six-agency
task force, if security conditions could be met in the receiving
country. But they remained stranded as wartime detainees because of
persistent chaos in their native Yemen. Neither was ever charged with a
crime.
Mr.
Bin Atef’s dossier says he was a survivor of a well-known weeklong
fight in late November 2001 at the Qala-i-Jangi fortress near
Mazar-i-Sharif, where the Northern Alliance had taken hundreds of
captured Taliban and foreign fighters.
During
an uprising among the prisoners, a C.I.A. paramilitary operative was
killed, as were hundreds of the captured fighters, many of whom had
spent days hiding in tunnels that Northern Alliance forces flooded with
water. The dossier does not accuse Mr. Bin Atef of personal involvement
in the C.I.A. operative’s death.
Mr.
Dhuby’s dossier, written in late 2006, said he had been mostly
compliant with the guard force as a Guantánamo detainee. Mr. Bin Atef’s
dossier, written in late 2007, said he had participated in protests by
the prisoners and had threatened guards, including vowing to find out
their identities and “sneak into their homes and cut their throats like
sheep.”
George
Clarke, a lawyer for Mr. Bin Atef, said that his client had become
“frustrated” by his predicament in being imprisoned for years without
trial and had responded by acting out and saying “stupid things.” But he
said that the comments had been made a “long time ago.”
Mr.
Clarke said that in his interactions with Mr. Bin Atef since he started
representing him about six months ago, he had found him to be a
“friendly, nice guy” who was “positive and has a good attitude.”
“He is very appreciative and happy the Ghanians are taking him,” Mr. Clarke said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment