6 Yemeni inmates sent from Gitmo to Oman

Transfer, first in 5 months, to cut prisoner population at facility

washington — A pause in prisoner transfers from Guantanamo Bay has ended with the arrival on Saturday in Oman of six Yemenis long held at the US prison for suspected terrorists.

It was the first movement of detainees out of Guantanamo in five months as Congress considers new restrictions on transfers.

The six men boarded a flight on Friday from the US facility in Cuba, and their transfer reduced Guantanamo’s population to 116. President Barack Obama has now transferred more than half the 242 detainees who were at Guantanamo when he was sworn into office in 2009 after campaigning to close it. But he is far from achieving that goal. With just a year and a half left in his second term, final transfer approvals are coming slowly from the Pentagon and lawmakers are threatening to make movement out even harder.

The transfers to Oman are the first to win final approval by Defence Secretary Ash Carter, who has been on the job four months.

The six include Emad Abdullah Hassan, who has been on hunger strikes since 2007 in protest of his confinement without charge since 2002.

In court filings protesting forcefeeding practices, Hassan said detainees have been force-fed up to a gallon at a time of nutrients and water. The US accuses him of being one of many bodyguards to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and of being part of a group planning to attack Nato and American troops after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

The five other detainees sent to Oman were identified by the Pentagon as:

— Idris Ahmad ‘Abd Al Qadir Idris and Jalal Salam Awad Awad, also both alleged bodyguards to bin Laden.

— Sharaf Ahmad Muhammad Mas’ud, whom the US said fought American soldiers at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, before his capture in Pakistan.

— Saa’d Nasser Moqbil Al Azani, a religious teacher whom the US believes had ties to bin Laden’s religious adviser; and — Muhammad

The entrance to Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay.—

Ali Salem Al Zarnuki, who allegedly arrived in Afghanistan as early as 1998 to fight and support the Taleban. “The US is grateful to the government of Oman for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing US efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,” the Defence Department said. The state-run Oman News Agency reported that the men arrived in the sultanate and would be living there “temporarily.” His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman approved the men being in the country to aid the US government while also taking into account the men’s “humanitarian circumstances,” the agency reported. — daesh retreats from key base

beirut — A Syrian rebel alliance has pushed Daesh group militants further away from one of its key supply routes from neighbouring Turkey, a monitoring group said on Saturday.

The rebels ousted Daesh from the village of Al Bal, which it captured on Tuesday, threatening the Bab Al Salama border crossing, just 10 kilometres away, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The village’s recapture late on Friday came after heavy fighting, which killed 14 rebels and 15 Daesh militants, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. — cairo — An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 23 men to 14 years in jail without parole over the killing of four Shias in 2013, judicial sources said.

Eight others were acquitted of the charges of killing, attempted murder and of setting fire to a house, the sources said.

The four Shias, who included a prominent cleric, were killed in June 2013 when a mob stormed a house in a village near Cairo.

The mob had been angered by the performance of a religious ceremony. —