Fifteen prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center were sent to the United Arab Emirates in the single largest release of detainees during the Obama administration, the Pentagon announced Monday.
The transfer of 12 Yemeni nationals and three Afghans to the UAE comes amid a renewed push to whittle down the number of detainees held at the U.S. prison in Cuba that President Barack Obama wants to close.
The Pentagon says 61 detainees now remain at Guantanamo, which was opened in January 2002 to hold foreign fighters suspected of links to the Taliban or the al-Qaida terrorist organization. During the Bush administration, 532 prisoners were released from Guantanamo, often in large groups to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
The latest batch of released prisoners had mostly been held without charge for some 14 years at Guantanamo. They were cleared for release by the Periodic Review Board, comprised of representatives from six U.S. government agencies.
The UAE successfully resettled five detainees transferred there last year, according to the Pentagon.
Lee Wolosky, the State Department’s special envoy for Guantanamo’s closure, said the U.S. was grateful to the United Arab Emirates for accepting the latest group of 15 men and helping pave the way for the detention center’s closure.
“The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists,” Wolosky said.
Obama has been seeking to close the detention center amid opposition from Congress, which has prohibited transferring detainees to the U.S. for any reason. The administration has been working with other countries to resettle detainees who have been cleared for transfer.
Naureen Shah, Amnesty International USA’s director of national security and human rights, said the transfers announced Monday are a “powerful sign that President Obama is serious about closing Guantanamo before he leaves office.”
According to Amnesty, one of the Afghans released to the UAE alleged that he was “tortured and subjected to other cruel treatment” while in U.S. military custody. The man, identified only as Obaidullah, was captured by U.S. special forces in July 2002 and allegedly admitted to acquiring and planting anti-tank mines to target U.S. and other coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan.
In clearing him for transfer, the review board said he hasn’t expressed any anti-U.S. sentiment or intent to re-engage in militant activities. However, a Pentagon detainee profile also said he provided little information and they had little “insight into his current mindset.”
One of the Yemeni men sent to the UAE was identified as Zahir Umar Hamis bin Hamdun, who traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 and later apparently acted as a weapons and explosives trainer.
A Pentagon profile from September 2015 said he expressed dislike of the U.S., which they identified as “an emotion that probably is motivated more by frustration over his continuing detention than by a commitment to global jihad.”
That prison camp is a disgrace to this country.
Hard as it is to believe, there’s a huge banner at Guantanamo displaying the slogan, “HONOR-BOUND TO DEFEND FREEDOM.” This is at a prison camp where people are held for the “crime” of resisting a foreign invasion — if they are even charged at all rather than held indefinitely!
I can guarantee that no one involved with the operation of Guantanamo knows the first thing about honor or freedom. When I first saw that banner in a photo, I was immediately reminded of the signs on the Nazi prison camps that proclaimed, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI.”
One of the goals of the POT us here is to give Gitmo back to Cuba in violation of law. I’d bet money on it.
Of what military value are the prisoners after all these years?
Any knowledge of military value is of no use weeks after capture.
The people in the US government terrorize these people just because they can.
In response to Congressional demands that the Pentagon provide a comprehensive audit of their finances for the first time, a Department of Defense Inspector General’s report was published last week. It revealed that the Pentagon could not provide documentation pertaining to $6.5 trillion in transactions.
On top of that, the report showed that the Pentagon “did not document or support why the Defense Departmental Reporting System . . . removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million records during Q3 FY 2015. As a result, the data used to prepare the FY 2015 AGF third quarter and year-end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail.”
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/pentagon-cant-account-for-over-6-5-trillion_082016
The Longest War in American History
The Persian Gulf War on Iraq Began in 1991 under GHW Bush
And was never terminated.
That act makes the current War against Iraq, 27 years old, without victory.
Paul Bremmer was the first civilian-criminal in Iraq to order plane-loads of unrecorded cash into Iraq, directly from the U.S. Treasury: That to this day has never been recorded while Rumsfeld was announcing that there was $2.3 Trillion that had disappeared, on the day before 911.
http://rense.com/general96/longestwar.htm
Even The Pentagon Is Terrified Of Pokémon Go
A Defense Department memo reportedly warns that Pokémon running amok inside the Pentagon could pose a threat to America’s national security
http://www.vocativ.com/350272/even-the-pentagon-is-terrified-of-pokemon-go/
I’m so glad our tax dollars are hard at work.
I suspect there’s gonna be a surplus of forced recycled feeding tubes now at the army surplus store.
Right next to the DIY waterboarding kit.
“…held without charge for some 14 years at Guantanamo..”
Held without charge for the sole purpose of adding credence to the “war on terror”, that has done nothing but create “terrorists” as needed to keep the fraudulent, and profitable “war” going.
Can you PLEASE show me one person in our “government” that doesn’t deserve to be hanged? I’m a merciful, and kind-hearted guy, but these crooks are so completely depraved they prevent those sentiments from existing.
I believe that ol’ Barry claimed that he wanted to close Gitmo when he ran in 2008, but it is still open. Holding people for 14 years without trial is a disgrace to this country. And that is not even mentioning that you do not try “enemy combatants” (aka soldiers) for military acts during war unless they are a crime (such as raping and killing civilians). Planting IEDs to take out an enemy tank is not a crime; it is war. Most Gitmo detainees are probably not even war criminals by legal definition, let alone terrorists.
Next, why do we have a base in Cuba? Because of the 1898 Spanish-American war, our first unnecessary War of Empire.
I liked the earlier comment by “Just Me” talking about how the (illegal, unconstitutional, and unnecessary) war on Iraq is over 20 years old!
And of course, questioning the Iraq war brought on by the post 9/11 “war on terror” brings up False Flag 9/11 and the Israelis. But most modern Americans do not know or care about these things of import; they are busy watching TV and wondering if voting Trump as the lesser of the two evils will save America. (Voting for the lesser of two evils is still evil, and will not save this country. I recently wrote an essay about this on my blog. America is past the point of an election saving our Republic.)