US repatriates Tunisian detainee held without charge at Guantanamo Bay since the day it opened
By Helen Regan, CNN
(CNN) — The US has repatriated a detainee from its military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to Tunisia, the Pentagon announced Monday, the fourth detainee to be transferred this month.
Ridah Bin Saleh al-Yazidi, 59, was determined to be eligible for transfer after a “rigorous interagency review process,” the US Department of Defense said in a statement, more than 22 years after he was first brought to the facility.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin notified Congress about his intent to repatriate Yazidi to Tunisia in January 2024. He was never charged with a crime.
Rights groups say Yazidi, a Tunisian national, had been incarcerated at Guantanamo since the day it opened on January 11, 2002.
According to a 2007 US military assessment, Yazidi was accused of being a member of the militant group al Qaeda.
However, human rights groups have long been critical of those assessments arguing they have often proven unreliable.
Yazidi had been cleared for transfer since 2007, by both the George W Bush and Obama administrations, according to Human Rights First. But a deal for his release was never made, and Yazidi remained in the prison for more than a decade after that decision.
President Joe Biden made it an early goal of his administration to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, also known as GTMO, but the US made only marginal progress in moving the prisoners held there over the last four years. The facility held about 40 detainees at the start of the Biden administration.
Originally opened in 2002, the facility was meant to be a place where suspects in the war on terror could be interrogated. But prisoners have been indefinitely detained, and as the US war on terror dragged on, the detention facility became an international symbol of US rights abuses in the post-9/11 era.
As of Monday, 26 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said. According to the Pentagon’s release, 14 of those are eligible to be transferred out.
Earlier this month, the US transferred Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, who was detained since 2007 but never charged, to Kenya.
Additionally, two detainees were repatriated to Malaysia. Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep pled guilty to war crimes for an affiliate of al Qaeda that carried out attacks on Bali in 2002 and a 2003 attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, the US Department of Defense said in a statement.
President Barack Obama also promised to shut down Guantanamo when he campaigned for office, setting up the office of military commissions and the Periodic Review Board system during his tenure, but he failed to close the prison during his eight years in office.
During President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office, he signed an executive order in January 2018 to keep the facility open, reversing Obama’s policy. Trump also raised the prospect of additional prisoners being held at the facility as part of his decision.
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