The Pentagon on Thursday is expected to announce the transfer of another ten Guantanamo Bay detainees, lowering the number of individuals held at the detention facility to less than 100 for the first time in its 14-year history.
Ten men, all Yemeni nationals, will be transferred to countries in the Middle East, Department of Defense officials told CBS News, in turn leaving only 93 detainees at the military prison as President Obama pushes for its shutdown during his final year in office.
Four Gitmo detainees have already been released in 2016, and the transfer of another 10 this week will cut the prison’s population by nearly one-tenth. The White House said previously it had planned to transfer as many as 17 inmates out of the prison in the coming weeks, and Mr. Obama said during the State of the Union address on Tuesday that keeping the facility open is expensive, unnecessary and “only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies.”
“This will be an enormous milestone in the effort to close Guantanamo Bay,” Raha Wala, the senior counsel for defense and intelligence for Human Rights First, an independent advocacy group, said in a statement applauding the upcoming transfers. “We know that Guantanamo can be closed and it should be closed. The only question now is whether President Obama has the will to follow through or if instead he will allow it to be a failure that stains his legacy.”
The military prison at Guantanamo Bay was opened in January 2002 under George W. Bush four months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and has hosted upwards of 800 of suspected extremists in the years since, though many have never been charged in U.S. courts.
The identities of the ten individuals slated for release this week was not made immediately clear, but an official source familiar with the detainees being transferred described them to Fox News as “hardcore,” adding, “if not, they would have been transferred earlier.”
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Only 93 detainees will be left at Gitmo following the next bulk transfer, down from 242 who called the facility home when Mr.Obama inherited it from his predecessor seven years ago this month. Thirty-four of the remaining 93 detainees have already been cleared for transfer by the Obama administration, Human Rights First said, and another 45 are eligible for review.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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