Victims of mistaken identity among the 10 sent from Guantanamo to Oman
MIAMI — The Arabian Sea nation of Oman has taken in eight Yemenis and two Afghans from Guantanamo, the Pentagon said Tuesday, including several men cleared for release for years who were mistakenly profiled as captives of consequence.
But U.S. officials anticipated there would be more releases in coming days — over the objection of President-elect Donald Trump — that could reduce the detention center population to 41 captives. That would leave a prison of 10 men charged with war crimes, 26 indefinite detainees known as “forever prisoners” and five men who were cleared for release but had no countries that could provide security guarantees that satisfied Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
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.”
But those named included two men who had been cleared for release as far back as 2009, plus eight men approved for release by an inter-agency parole-style Periodic Review Board between May 2014 and late last year.
All had been held in U.S. military custody for at least 14 years.
Just one of the men was charged with a crime at Guantanamo — Afghan Abdul Zahir, 44 — who was ultimately ordered released after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded he had been confused with another Afghan who shared the same nickname.
In what his military defense attorney Air Force Col. Sterling Thomas called an exceptional outrage, suspicious chemicals seized at the time of Zahir’s capture as a suspected bomb maker turned out to be salt, sugar and petroleum jelly. The Afghan’s photo on his 2008 prison profile — provided to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks by former soldier Chelsea Manning — shows him sticking out his tongue at his captors.
Another, Yemeni Mustafa al-Shamiri, 38, was likewise mistaken for another man with a similar name for most of his years at Guantanamo — a suspected al-Qaida courier or trainer — until U.S. intelligence concluded he was a runof-the-mill jihadist.
A third, Ghaleb al Bihani, 37, gained some prominence as a sickly Yemeni who learned to practice yoga in his cell as an escape from the daily grind of prison life.
“We are relieved that his ordeal is finally over,” said his attorney, Pardiss Kebriaei. “After having lost a third of his life in Guantanamo, what he needs now is support for a real chance to rebuild. We are hopeful that he will have that opportunity in Oman.”
His also-cleared older brother, Tawfiq, who was captured in Iran and turned over to Afghan then U.S. troops, remained behind.
There was no immediate explanation of Oman’s reference to their stay being temporary. But U.S. diplomats have in the past negotiated transfers to security arrangements that withhold travel documents from freed captives for a specific time period, in some instances two years.
The Afghans — Zahir and Bostan Karim, 46 —are the only non-Yemenis taken in by Oman, which shares a border with Yemen and is said to have a special rehabilitation and reintegration program. Oman previously took in 20 captives from Guantanamo in three transfers in 2016 and 2015.
The other cleared Yemenis sent to Oman were Muhammed al-Ansi, 41, Muhammed Ahmad Said Haydar, 38, Salman Yahya Hassan Mohammed Rabei’i, 37, Musab Omar Ali al-Madhwani, 37, Walid Said Bin Said Zaid, 38, and Hayl al-Mithali, 40.