6 detained in Guantanamo sent to Oman
WASHINGTON — The United States has transferred six lower-level detainees from the prison at Guantanamo 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 since January and reduced the inmate population there to 116.
The six men are all Yemenis and had been held since early 2002 in indefinite detention without trial under the laws of war.
In January 2010, a sixagency 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. Cut in half since 2009
The break in the sixmonth lull of transfers does not appear to signal the start of any flurry of releases. According to officials familiar with Guantanamo policy, no further transfers are imminent, and the weekend releases were not the result of a new decision but rather 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.
Still, the six transfers represent a milestone for the administration: When President Barack Obama took office in 2009 — and vowed to close the prison within a year, a policy goal that he has failed to achieve — there were 242 detainees at the prison. After this transfer, fewer than half of that number remain.
Obama’s plan to close the detention facility involves bringing the remaining detainees into the United States for trial or continued wartime detention in a different prison. 51 awaiting transfer
On Saturday, Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin, who is chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, was among several Republicans who criticized the transfers and the relative secrecy with which they were carried out.
“Despite the high terror threat to our country, the president continues to open the jail cells at Guantanamo Bay, giving potential terrorists the ability to return to the fight,” McCaul said in a statement.
The latest transfers come as Congress is debating the annual defense authorization bill, which continues the ban on bringing detainees onto domestic territory, as well as a series of restrictions that lawmakers have imposed on transfers.
The House has passed a version of the bill that would tighten limits in a way that could in effect stop any more releases, including blocking the departure of the 51 men waiting on the transfer list.
The Senate is considering a bill that would instead call for an up-or-down vote in both chambers of Congress on whether to approve an administration plan for moving the remaining detainees to a prison on U.S. soil.