Mr. Obama has been blocked by Congress in his intention either to close the Guantanamo facility, or to transfer some or all of the prisoners to detention facilities on US soil for trial. This is the largest transfer from the detention center during President Obama’s administration. According to a State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, 12 of the men are from Yemen and three are Afghans. Most have been held without charge or trial for more than a decade, drawing worldwide condemnation.
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The Obama administration has approved the release of 15 detainees from the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United Arab Emirates, a move derided Monday night by a leading member of Congress as reckless.
The Pentagon says 61 detainees remain at Guantanamo, which was opened in January 2002 to hold foreign fighters suspected of links to the Taliban or the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. However, a Pentagon profile from previous year also said he provided little information and they had little “insight into his current mindset”.
According to Amnesty, one of the Afghans released to the UAE alleged that he was “tortured and subjected to other cruel treatment” while in USA military custody. The United States has military relationships with the UAE where American military troops are settled with the mission to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
It’s unclear what has happened to prisoners the UAE previously took in, though it’s widely believed they undergo some sort of government-monitored rehabilitation. Of those already taken in, there have been no complaints of maltreatment, said Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the British-based advocacy group Reprieve, which represented one of the Yemenis released. The language is not a problem because Arabic is the primary language of the country and they are not far from their homes.
“The detainees at Guantánamo Bay are hardened terrorists who will stop at nothing to attack the United States”, Sen. “We are a nation at war, and our commander in chief shouldn’t be handing back operatives to the other side”. The prison drains resources and encourages violent extremists.
Law prohibits the president from transferring the Guantanamo Bay detainees to American soil where there are only a handful of maximum-security prisons deemed appropriate to house them.
Republican Rep. Ed Royce, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Wall Street Journal that the “cajoling and arm-twisting to get countries to accept these terrorists” is at times “pushing detainees on countries that can’t handle them”. “I’ll continue to fight the closing of Guantanamo Bay and the release of risky war criminals and hardened terrorists who keep finding their way back to the battlefield”.
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According to the Pentagon, the 15 prisoners are Abd al-Muhsin Abd al-Rab Salih al-Busi, Abd al-Rahman Sulayman, Mohammed Nasir Yahi Khussrof Kazaz, Abdul Muhammad Ahmad Nassar al-Muhajari, Muhammad Ahmad Said al-Adahi, Abdel Qadir al-Mudafari, Mahmud Abd Al Aziz al-Mujahid, Saeed Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah Sarem Jarabh, Mohammed Kamin, Zahar Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun, Hamid al-Razak (aka Haji Hamidullah), Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed, Ayub Murshid Ali Salih, Obaidullah, and Bashir Nasir Ali al-Marwalah.
