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The United States has held a total of 115 Yemeni citizens at Guantanamo Bay, forty-two of whom have since been transferred out of the facility. Only Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia had a greater number of their citizens held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. By January 2008, the Yemenis in Guantanamo represented the largest group of detainees.

Among the Yemeni detainees currently held (as of November 2015), 44 are recommended for transfer out of the facility, while twenty-three are being held indefinitely and are not recommended for transfer. Only Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul was convicted by military tribunal. Two of his convictions were vacated on appeal but a third, for conspiracy, was restored in 2016 en banc by a plurality of justices on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Two Yemeni detainees are awaiting trials by military commissions, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Walid Bin Attash.

Events

A delegation of Yemeni officials visited Guantanamo shortly after it opened in January 2002.

On March 12, 2008, Mark Falkoff of the Center for Constitutional Rights issued a call for the repatriation of the Yemeni detainees, reporting that 95 Yemenis remained in detention, and they now constituted more than a third of the total detainee population. Falkoff wrote that the delay in his release is due to a failure of the United States and Yemeni governments to reach an agreement on the security arrangements for the detainees, following their repatriation. By contrast, almost all the 133 Saudi detainees in Guantanamo had been sent home in 2006 and 2007.

Impact of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's alleged attempted suicide bombing

On December 25, 2009, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (whose mother is from Yemen) allegedly tried to set off a suicide bomb on Northwest Airlines Flight 253. By December 27, 2009, responding to rumors that Abdulmutallab had confessed to being trained and equipped in Yemen, various American politicians, including Joe Lieberman, Pete Hoekstra, Peter T. King and Bennie Thompson, called for American President Barack Obama to halt plans to repatriate the Yemenis.

Repatriation negotiations

An article published in the Yemen Post on November 13, 2012, reported on secret terms in the US-Yemeni repatriation negotiations.

Repatriated detainees

Several returned Yemeni detainees were charged and stood trial, following their repatriation. Yemen established a special Criminal Court for Terrorism where their trials took place.

On 7 June 2008, the Yemeni site Al Sahwa Net reported that negotiations were advanced for the repatriation of approximately seventy Yemeni detainees. That same day, Yemen Online reported that several Yemeni detainees had recently been allowed to their first phone calls to their families.

List of Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo

See also

• Timeline of the release and transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees
• Al-Asadi v. Bush

References

1. ^ "Citizens of Yemen". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-11-05.
2. Michael Melia (January 11, 2008). "Yemenis now biggest group at Guantanamo". San Jose Mercury. Retrieved 2008-01-25.
3. Marimow, Ann (October 20, 2016). "Appeals court upholds conspiracy conviction of Guantanamo Bay detainee". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 24, 2016.(registration required)
4. "Yemen to Inspect Condition of 21 Yemeni Detainees at Guantanamo". Yemen Times. 3 February 2002. Archived from the original on August 25, 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
5. Mark Falkoff (March 12, 2008). "Guantánamo Attorneys Say Detainees Will Not Be Tortured If Returned to Yemen". Center for Constitutional Rights. Retrieved 2008-05-11.
6. Nigerian in aircraft attack linked to London mosque, independent.co.uk. Accessed 16 January 2024.
7. "Following Path of Least Resistance, Terrorists Turn Yemen Into Poor Man's Afghanistan". Fox News. 2009-12-27. Archived from the original on 2009-12-30. 'They should stay there. They should not go back to Yemen,' Hoekstra said. 'If they go back to Yemen, we will very soon find them back on the battlefield going after Americans and other western interests.'
8. Sudeep Reddy (2009-12-27). "Lawmakers Focus on Yemen in Wake of Attempted Bombing". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2010-01-16. The 23-year-old suspect in the botched attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab of Nigeria, allegedly told U.S. officials that he received his explosive device in Yemen and learned to use it there.
9. "Lieberman: The United States Must Pre-Emptively Act In Yemen". The Huffington Post. 2009-12-27. Archived from the original on 2010-01-03. In his appearance on 'Fox News Sunday', Lieberman also argued that the botched attack should compel the Obama administration to abandon efforts to transfer suspected-terrorists out of the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, saying that the complex is now well above international standards.
10. "Gitmo transfer to Yemen in doubt". United Press International. 2009-12-27. Archived from the original on 2012-10-21. 'I'd, at a minimum, say that whatever we were about to do we'd at least have to scrub (those plans) again from top to bottom,' said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.
11. Josh Gerstein (2009-12-27). "Bomb plot complicates Gitmo plan". Politico. Archived from the original on 2009-12-31. 'Yesterday just highlights the fact that sending this many people back—or any people back—to Yemen right now is a really bad idea,' said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. 'It's just dumb….If you made a list of what the three dumbest countries would be to send people back to, Yemen would be on all the lists.'
12. "Yemen refuses extraditing Guantanamo detainees to third state". Yemen Post. 2012-11-13. Archived from the original on 2012-11-14. "Saleh demanded $200 million in return for receiving the Yemeni detainees, but the US offered him only $20 million. The two sides could not reach an agreement to release the detainees by then," the US officials told Hadi.
13. "Yemen to try fighters coming from Iraq, ex-Guantanamo prisoners". Kuwait News Agency. January 26, 2006. Retrieved 2008-05-09.
14. Mohammed Al-Qadhi (June 21, 2004). "Advocates quit again: Court bans publishing hearings of 15 al-Qaeda suspects' tribunal, military trial proceedings claimed". Yemen Times. Archived from the original on August 24, 2005. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
15. "Gitmo stalemate for Yemeni detainees: Home country refuses to lock them up; detention center enters 7th year". NBC News. January 11, 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-05.
16. Kathy Gannon (July 4, 2007). "Yemen Employs New Terror Approach". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-05-05. There are more men from Yemen held at Guantanamo Bay than from any other country.
17. Andrew Mc Gregor (May 10, 2007). "Yemen and the U.S.: Different Approaches to the War on Terrorism". Vol. 5, no. 9. Global Terrorism Analysis. Archived from the original on 2008-02-14. Retrieved 2008-05-09.
18. "U.S. intends to hand over 70 Yemeni Guantanamo detainees". www.alsahwanet.net. June 7, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-07.
19. "Yemen plans rehabilitation program for Guantanamo returnees". yemenonline.info. June 7, 2008. Archived from the original on March 8, 2011. Retrieved 2008-06-01.
20. ^ Charlie Savage (2016-01-14). "Guantánamo Population Drops to 93 after 10 Prisoners Go to Oman". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-01-14. Oman, which shares a border with Yemen, also took in 10 lower-level detainees in 2015. Its acceptance of 20 men over the past 13 months has significantly aided the Obama administration's goal of repatriating or resettling all the men who have been recommended for transfer, most of whom have been languishing with that status since at least 2009 when a six-agency task force unanimously approved letting them go.
21. ^ Carol Rosenberg (2017-01-16). "Victims of mistaken identity among the 10 sent from Guantánamo to Oman". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2017-01-18. A Pentagon statement did not explain why the Department of Defense chose to wait to identify the 10 men for more than a day after the Sultanate of Oman announced it had taken them in as "temporary" residents "in consideration to their humanitarian situation."
22. ^ "US sends nine Yemeni Guantanamo inmates to Saudi Arabia". Al Jazeera. 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2016-04-17. The United States has transferred nine Yemeni men to Saudi Arabia from the US military prison at Guantanamo, including an inmate who had been on a hunger strike since 2007, US officials said.
23. ^ Steve Almasy, Tom Kludt (2016-04-16). "Nine Guantanamo detainees transferred to Saudi Arabia". CNN. Retrieved 2016-04-17. It also comes ahead of Obama's planned trip to Saudi Arabia next week.
24. ^ "US transfers nine Yemeni inmates from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia as closure programme accelerated". The Daily Telegraph. 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2016-04-17. Saturday's release marks the largest transfer since 10 Yemenis were sent to Oman in January. It is the first time Saudi Arabia has taken any former Guantanamo inmates.
25. ^ Camila Domonoske (2016-08-16). "15 Guantanamo Bay Detainees Transferred To United Arab Emirates". National Public Radio. Two of the Afghan prisoners — Mohammed Kamin and Obaidallah, who only has one name — had been briefly charged in a military commission, The Miami Herald reports. The war crimes prosecutor dropped those charges.
26. ^ Benjamin Wittes (2016-08-16). "A Big Guantanamo Transfer: Progress Towards the Site's Obsolescence". Lawfare.
27. ^ "Five Guantanamo Yemeni inmates sent to Oman and Estonia". BBC News. 2015-01-14. Archived from the original on 2015-01-15. The five men - in their 30s and 40s - were cleared for release since at least 2009, but US officials ruled out their return to Yemen, where the government is battling al-Qaeda rebels.
28. ^ Margot Williams. "Guantanamo timeline 2015". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2015-01-15.
29. ^ "IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Release No: NR-235-15, June 13, 2015, Detainee Transfer Announced". United States Department of Defense. 2015-06-13. Archived from the original on 2015-06-13. The United States is grateful to the Government of Oman for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of Oman to ensure these transfers took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures.
30. Carol Rosenberg (2016-06-22). "Another Yemeni 'forever prisoner' at Guantánamo is cleared for release". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2016-06-03. Retrieved 2016-06-23.
31. "Montenegro receives another person within humanitarian programme of re-socialisation of prisoners from Guantanamo". Government of Montenegro. 2016-06-22. Archived from the original on 2016-06-23.
32. ^ Charlie Savage (2017-01-05). "4 Yemeni Detainees at Guantánamo Are Transferred to Saudi Arabia". New York Times. Washington DC. Retrieved 2017-01-05. The Pentagon announced on Thursday that it had transferred four Yemeni detainees from the wartime prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia, beginning an expected flurry of transfers in the waning days of the Obama administration.
33. ^ Carol Rosenberg (2015-11-16). "U.S. sends 5 Guantánamo detainees to the United Arab Emirates". Miami Herald. With Congress pushing stricter restrictions on prisoner transfers, the Pentagon this weekend released five Yemenis from the prison camps at Guantánamo to resettle in the United Arab Emirates, one of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. None of the captives had ever been charged with a crime.
34. Carol Rosenberg (2016-07-10). "Guantánamo downsizes again — Yemeni goes to Italy for resettlement". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2016-07-11. Retrieved 2016-07-10. U.S. troops delivered a long-cleared Yemeni detainee to Italy over the weekend, the Pentagon disclosed Sunday, in a downsizing of the detention to 78 or fewer captives.
35. "Yemeni Guantánamo Bay inmate transferred to Italy, US says". The Guardian. 2016-07-10. Archived from the original on 2016-07-10. Retrieved 2016-07-11. The United States said on Sunday it had transferred a Yemeni inmate from the Guantánamo Bay prison to Italy, bringing the number of detainees at the US naval base in Cuba to 78.
36. While other sites state he was sent to Saudi Arabia, the New York Times reports his host country is unknown.
37. Margot Williams (2008-11-03). "Guantanamo Docket: Tarek Ali Abdullah Ahmed Baada". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-04-17. He was transferred to an undetermined country on April 16, 2016.
38. Margot Williams (18 May 2021). "Guantanamo timeline 2016". The New York Times.
39. Charlie Savage (2016-12-04). "Guantánamo Detainee Is Sent to Cape Verde in First Transfer Since Trump Victory". New York Times. Retrieved 2016-12-04. Mr. Balzuhair is the second detainee that Cape Verde has resettled. In 2010, it took in a low-level detainee from Syria.

External links

Media related to Yemeni captives at Guantanamo Bay at Wikimedia Commons

• Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi's (a.k.a. Fahd Ghazy) Guantanamo detainee assessment via Wikileaks
• Yemenis cleared for release held in Guantanamo for years May 2011

1. Countries of Citizenship of Guantanamo detainees from the New York Times

• Yemeni extrajudicial prisoners of the United States
• Lists of Guantanamo Bay detainees by nationality
• United States–Yemen relations
• Yemeni people imprisoned abroad