U.S. transfers 11 Guantanamo detainees to Oman after more than two decades without charge

In this June 17, 2019, file photo reviewed by U.S. military officials, an American flag is displayed on the control tower of the Camp VI detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

WASHINGTON -

The Pentagon said Monday it had transferred 11 Yemeni men to Oman this week after holding them for more than two decades without charge at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The transfer was the latest and biggest push by the Biden administration in its final weeks to clear Guantanamo of the last remaining detainees there who were never charged with a crime.

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The latest release brings the total number of men detained at Guantanamo to 15. That's the fewest since 2002, when President George W. Bush's administration turned Guantanamo into a detention site for the mostly Muslim men taken into custody around the world in what the U.S. called its "war on terror." The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and military and covert operations elsewhere followed the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks.

The men in the latest transfer included Shaqawi al Hajj, who had undergone repeated hunger strikes and hospitalizations at Guantanamo to protest his 21 years in prison, preceded by two years of detention and torture in CIA custody, according to the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Rights groups and some lawmakers have pushed successive U.S. administrations to close Guantanamo or, failing that, release all those detainees never charged with a crime. Guantanamo held about 800 detainees at its peak.

The Biden administration and administrations before it said they were working on lining up suitable countries willing to take those never-charged detainees. Many of those stuck at Guantanamo were from Yemen, a country split by war, with its capital held by the Iranian-allied Houthi militant group.

The sultanate of Oman, on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, did not acknowledge taking in the prisoners early Tuesday. Officials in the country did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. The key western ally has taken in some 30 prisoners in the past since the founding of the prison.

However, those prisoners have since been released in circumstances unexplained by Oman. Two Afghans once held by Oman returned to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in February. One Yemeni died in Oman after being told he and 27 others would be repatriated to Yemen, the British activist group CAGE International said.

"Faced with little choice, 26 of the men and their families returned to Yemen after being pressured by the Omani government, which offered each $70,000 as compensation," the group said. It wasn't immediately clear what happened to the 28th prisoner.

The transfer announced Monday leaves six never-charged men still being held at Guantanamo, two convicted and sentenced inmates, and seven others charged with the 2001 attacks, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.