The transfer was the latest and biggest push by the Biden administration in its final weeks to clear Guantanamo of the last remaining detainees.
Guantanamo held about 800 detainees at its peak.
Spencer: Biden making world more dangerousChad Groening, AFN.net A terrorism expert says he is not surprised the Biden administration has released 11 terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. In the remaining days of President Biden’s term, the Pentagon announced it transferred 11 Yemeni men to Oman this week after holding them for more than two decades. Only 15 terrorist suspects now remain at the facility, which held about 800 prisoners at its peak. 
Robert Spencer, of Jihad Watch, calls it a final attempt by Biden to clear Guantanamo of its last remaining detainees. That has been the Democrat president’s goal for a long time, he says. “I think that he's certainly trying to make the world more dangerous for his successor,” Spencer tells AFN. “He's trying to cause as much trouble as he can.” What the outgoing president is really doing, Spencer adds, is making the world more dangerous because "jihad terrorists" won't stop being terrorists. |
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-Qaida attacks.
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.
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.
