Two dozen former Guantanamo detainees expelled from Oman to Yemen, says report
Two dozen Yemeni men and former Guantanamo detainees have been expelled from Oman, according to a report by the news site, Forever Wars.
The men had been resettled to Oman after being transferred out of the Guantanamo Bay prison between 2015 and 2017, in a deal where Muscat had provided the former detainees with housing, healthcare, financial resources, and job training.
Now they have been sent back to Yemen, where rights experts are worried they could face persecution or danger, especially as the US has been ramping up its attacks on sites controlled by Yemen's Houthis.
Five sources told Forever Wars that 24 out of the 28 Yemeni men previously detained at Guantanamo have been returned to the country, while the remaining are expected to "face imminent deportation".
One former detainee told the news site an Omani official told him the US had given the green light for the move.
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Middle East Eye reached out to the Omani embassy in Washington but didn't receive a response by the time of publication.
"The Omani officials informed us that the US government had given them the green light to send us back to Yemen," one former Guantanamo detainee said. "When we asked for proof of this, they refused to provide any. It became clear that their primary goal was to deport us and have us say that we left willingly."
A State Department spokesperson told MEE that Oman provided the former detainees support and financial aid "for far longer than we originally asked".
"The United States has never had the expectation that former Guantanamo detainees would remain in receiving countries forever," the spokesperson said.
Currently, 11 Yemeni detainees remain held indefinitely at Guantanamo. In May, US media reported that those detainees had been scheduled to be transferred to Oman in October 2023, but the Israeli war on Gaza halted the process.
A military cargo plane was reportedly already on the runway at Guantanamo Bay, at the eastern end of Cuba, when the mission was called off, according to security officials, and the plane took off without the group.
The transfer would have brought the population at Guantanamo to below 20 for the first time since it began operating in January 2002.
Since 2002, 780 detainees have been held at the facility. About 750 detainees have been transferred through repatriation or resettlement, mostly in secret military operations.
Of the 30 that remain today, only eleven have been charged with war crimes in the military commissions system. Of those, ten are awaiting trial and only one has been convicted. In addition, three detainees, Guantanamo's so-called "forever prisoners", are being held in indefinite law-of-war detention and are neither facing tribunal charges nor being recommended for release.
Several former Guantanamo detainees of Yemeni origin have been subjected to harm after being returned to Yemen. After the United Arab Emirates returned nearly a dozen former detainees back to Yemen, one suddenly disappeared shortly after arriving in the country.
In 2017, a former Guantanamo detainee who was returned to Yemen was killed in a US air strike.
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