Ten Yemeni inmates held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent to Oman as US President Barack Obama seeks to keep his promise of closing the facility before he leaves office.
The transfer of the Yemeni inmates, all held for more than a decade without charge or trial, marked the largest group of prisoners shipped out of the notorious detention centre, also known as Gitmo.
“We completed the transfer of 10 Yemenis – roughly 10 percent, that is, of the total remaining Gitmo population – to the government of Oman,” Carter told an audience at the US military’s Southern Command in Doral, Florida, which oversees the military detention facility.
This puts the total population of the detainees at the facility below 100 for the first time since it opened in 2002. The inmate figure now stands at 93.
As many as 775 suspects are said to have been brought to the facility ever since its establishment.
The latest transfer is part of a wave of releases that the Obama administration announced would take place early this year as it prepares to give Congress a plan for closing the facility.
Carter said that the inmates were transferred after “deliberate and careful review.” He added that Washington seeks to similarly transfer the remaining prisoners abroad or find a secure location in the US to hold the rest.
Congress has explicitly banned the transfer of Guantanamo detainees from Cuba to US soil.
Guantanamo was established by former president George W. Bush’s administration in 2002 as a prison for alleged foreign terrorism suspects following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
Obama had promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison in his 2008 election campaign, citing its damage to America’s reputation abroad. However, he has so far failed to deliver on that pledge due to stiff opposition from Congress.
On Monday, human rights groups in Washington held a protest to highlight the torture of inmates at Guantanamo, and call on President Barack Obama to shut down the facility.
A Senate report in December 2014 revealed that the CIA has used a wide array of sexual abuse and other forms of torture as part of their interrogation methods against Guantanamo prisoners. – Press TV.
