The Pentagon plans to transfer about a dozen more detainees from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba to at least two countries that have agreed to take them, a U.S. official said Wednesday.
The first few of the transfers are expected in the next few days, and the rest will take place in the coming weeks, the official told Reuters.
Among the detainees will be Tariq Ba Odah, a Yemeni man who has been on a long-term hunger strike and has lost about half of his body weight.
Currently, the prison population at Guantanamo stands at 91. Most have been held without charge or trial for more than a decade.
The transfers are the latest push by the Obama administration to make good on the president’s campaign promise to close the facility.
President Obama presented Congress with a plan last month for closing the prison, which was swiftly blocked by Republicans.
Mr. Obama’s plan calls for the detainees who have been deemed unfit for release to be transferred to maximum-security prisons in the U.S., but U.S. law bars such transfers to the mainland. However, Mr. Obama has not ruled out using executive action to see his plan through.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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