10 inmates released from Guantanamo, leaving 93

MIAMI — Ten prisoners from Yemen who were held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been released and sent to the Middle Eastern nation of Oman for resettlement, officials said Thursday, portraying it as a significant milestone in the long-stalled effort to shutter the detention centre.

The release, among the largest on a single day under U.S. President Barack Obama, puts the prison population below 100 for the first time since shortly after it opened in January 2002 to hold men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban. There are now 93 still held.

Lee Wolosky, the State Department’s special envoy for Guantanamo Closure, said the U.S. expects to transfer the remaining prisoners who are cleared to leave, about a third of the total, by summer.

Guantanamo held nearly 680 prisoners at its peak in 2003 and about 245 when Obama took office, pledging to close it as a symbol of overreach in the war against terrorism and a needless propaganda symbol for enemies of the United States.

Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced the release of the Yemenis at a change-ofcommand ceremony in Miami at U.S. Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo. He said the administration would submit a plan to the U.S. Congress, where many want to keep the prison open, to move those who can’t be freed to a facility within the United States.

“Not everyone in Gitmo can be safely transferred to another country, so we need an alternative,” Carter said, using a common abbreviated name for the base on the southeastern edge of Cuba.

The 10 men who left Guantanamo late Tuesday were among several dozen from Yemen who could not be sent back to their homeland, which is embroiled in a civil war. All were deemed low-level enemy combatants and cleared for transfer since at least 2010.

The prisoners included one who was 17 when captured and another who the government conceded had only briefly served as a Taliban medic. None were ever charged.

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, an advocate for keeping the detention centre open, criticized the decision to transfer the men to Oman, which borders their homeland along the Arabian Sea. “Any Obama administration decision to transfer a large number of Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo to Oman would represent a thinly veiled attempt to undercut the will of Congress and would further endanger the American people,” he said.