Six Yemeni GTMO Detainees Transferred to Oman

Wells Bennett
Monday, June 15, 2015, 9:53 AM

The Department of Defense's announcement, from this Saturday, is here; there's also this Saturday piece from the New York Times' Charlie Savage:

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The Department of Defense's announcement, from this Saturday, is here; there's also this Saturday piece from the New York Times' Charlie Savage:

WASHINGTON — The United States has transferred six lower-level detainees from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where each had been held for more than 13 years, the military announced early Saturday. The departures, to Oman, were the first from the prison in six months and reduced the inmate population there to 116 prisoners.

The six men are all Yemenis and have each been held since early 2002 in indefinite detention without trial under the laws of war. In January 2010, a six-agency task force unanimously recommended that they be transferred, if security conditions could be met in the receiving country. But because of the political upheaval and security chaos in Yemen, they remained stranded until now.

The break in the six-month lull in transfers does not appear to signal the start of any flurry of releases. According to officials familiar with Guantánamo policy, no further transfers are imminent, and the weekend releases were not a new decision but a leftover piece of a deal negotiated last year, when Oman agreed to accept 10 men. Four Yemeni detainees were resettled in Oman in January.


Wells C. Bennett was Managing Editor of Lawfare and a Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to Brookings, he was an Associate at Arnold & Porter LLP.

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