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Yemen to Hold Six Returned Detainees Indefinitely
The arrangement, however, has done little to blunt calls from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the White House to freeze the repatriation of any of the roughly 90 Yemeni nationals still being held at the U.S. detention facility in Cuba, due to fears they could resort to terrorism. "All transfers of Yemeni detainees should stop," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) He said he will ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates for an explanation of how the U.S. tracks Guantanamo detainees after they are released and for an accounting of what happened to the six Yemenis recently released to Yemen. Obama administration officials said this weekend that the U.S. reached an agreement with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to ensure that the six Guantanamo Bay detainees released last month will remain in the Sana'a government's custody for the "foreseeable future." "We wouldn't transfer these detainees unless we were comfortable with the security arrangements," said a U.S. official.
"Some of these individuals are going to be transferred back to Yemen at the right time and the right pace and in the right way," the White House's counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, said on CNN's "State of the Union." "We continue to work with the Yemeni government, and we do this in a very common-sense fashion because we want to make sure that we are able to close Guantanamo," he added.
Political debate over Mr. Obama's plans for shutting Guantanamo has gained new momentum following the Christmas Day attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on its approach to Detroit. The Nigerian man arrested in the incident, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has told U.S. law-enforcement authorities that he was trained and armed by Islamic militants based in Yemen. Al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has publicly claimed responsibility for the plot and pledged to launch more strikes against U.S. interests. U.S. counterterrorism officials say some of Al Qaeda in Yemen's top operatives are former Guantanamo Bay detainees who were released in recent years. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's deputy commander, Said al-Shihri, was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007 to take part in a government-run rehabilitation program, according to these officials. The group's chief cleric, Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, also was repatriated by the Bush administration to Saudi Arabia before crossing the border into Yemen. One of those released, Ayman Batarfi, is a Yemeni doctor who told Pentagon interrogators that he had twice met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and endured the U.S. military assault on the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001, according to Pentagon documents. Mr. Batarfi also said he had assisted a Malaysian microbiologist, Yazid Sufaat, in seeking to purchase equipment for a medical facility in Kandahar, Afghanistan. U.S. officials have subsequently accused Mr. Sufaat of seeking to produce anthrax and other biological weapons on behalf of al Qaeda. Mr. Sufaat was arrested in Malaysia, but never charged there. Mr. Batarfi and the five other Yemenis released last month all denied ties to al Qaeda or the Taliban and pledged not to pick up arms against the U.S., according to Pentagon documents. But a growing number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers are saying that the national-security risks posed by repatriating more Yemenis has grown too great given the high rate of recidivism among Guantanamo Bay detainees. "When you look at the bios and the case histories of the men returned last month, you'll see they're very dangerous people," said Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), who received a classified briefing on these detainees' files. Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who heads a House Homeland Security intelligence subcommittee, said many of the remaining Yemenis should probably be detained at a new federal penitentiary the Obama administration is building outside Chicago.
Obama administration officials have said in recent days that the six Yemenis released last month had passed through an extensive interagency review process before being released. They also said the White House has received no information that any of the roughly 42 Guantanamo Bay detainees released by the Obama administration in the past year have returned to the fight. Posted by: Steve White 2010-01-04 |
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