Biden's Final Effort to Close Guantanamo; Eleven Yemeni Prisoners Transferred to Oman

The United States has transferred eleven Yemenis who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo for over two decades to Oman. The U.S. Department of Defense announced this on Monday, January 7. These eleven Yemeni citizens had been held in the notorious U.S. extraterritorial prison located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without any specific charges for all these years. One of these eleven prisoners, Ali Haj Abdu al-Sharqawi, reportedly went on hunger strikes multiple times and was hospitalized in protest of his 21 years of detention in Guantanamo and two years of imprisonment and torture by the CIA. The transfer of these prisoners to Oman is the latest and most extensive effort by the Biden administration to empty this prison of detainees who have never been charged with a specific crime. Consequently, the number of remaining prisoners in this detention facility has decreased to fifteen. Oman has not yet officially confirmed the receipt of these prisoners. However, this Western ally has agreed to the transfer of more than twenty other Guantanamo prisoners in recent years. The United Nations has stated that the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo remains 'cruel.' Over 22 years ago, the administration of George W. Bush converted this extraterritorial naval base into a detention facility primarily for Muslim men captured around the world as part of the so-called 'War on Terror.' This policy was introduced following the September 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda and coincided with U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, pursued through both official and covert military operations in the subsequent years. The location of Guantanamo outside the official borders of the United States exempts this prison from many U.S. laws, including limits on detention without charge or a complete ban on torture, a matter that has been protested by civil rights activists and legal experts for years. Human rights groups and some members of the U.S. Congress have pressured various administrations for years to close Guantanamo or at least release detainees held without specific charges. At one point, nearly 800 individuals were held at this facility. With the transfer of eleven Yemeni citizens from Guantanamo, six individuals remain imprisoned there without any specific charges. Two prisoners have been convicted in court, and seven others are accused of involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks, the USS Cole bombing in 2000, and the Bali bombings in 2002, making up the last detainees at Guantanamo. The Biden administration and previous governments have argued that they are trying to identify suitable countries willing to accept detainees without charges. Many of these detainees were from Yemen, a country that has been embroiled in civil war for years, with large parts under the control of Iranian-aligned Houthi militants.