Ex-Guantanamo detainee Mansoor Adayfi has Yemeni passport restored
Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni citizen who spent 14 years in US captivity in Guantanamo Bay and was never charged with a crime, has had his Yemeni passport restored.
Adayfi took to Twitter to announce the news. He thanked his lawyer and said, “After six years of hard work my passport was issued and arrived safely.”
“In sha Allah (God willing), I will be able to travel. Wow! finally. Around the world.”
He was 18 when he was arrested in Afghanistan, a few months before he was set to begin university, and was held without charge until he was 32.
Once he was released from Guantanamo, he was barred from returning to Yemen where his family lives because it was a “security risk to return detainees to what it deemed unstable countries”, the US Congress decided.
Stay informed with MEE's newsletters
Sign up to get the latest alerts, insights and analysis, starting with Turkey Unpacked
Yemen refused to grant Adayfi a passport. He was sent to Serbia and was effectively stateless - until now.
Thirty prisoners are being held in the US-owned enclave in Cuba. Most have been held without formal charges. More than half of Guantanamo detainees are eligible for transfer.
Nearly 86 percent of the detainees at Guantanamo were captured after the US distributed flyers in Pakistan and Afghanistan offering huge bounties for "suspicious people".
From those detained, 55 percent were determined not to have committed any hostile acts against the US or its coalition allies and only eight percent were characterised as al-Qaeda fighters.
The latest detainee to be released was Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush in April. He was released to his home country of Algeria.
His transfer was the sixth release of a Guantanamo detainee by Biden in the past six months - a recent surge, given the lack of movement on transferring out prisoners during the first year of the president's term in office.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
