The

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

has held a total of 115 Yemeni citizens at Guantanamo Bay, forty-two of whom have since been transferred out of the facility. Only

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

and Saudi Arabia had a greater number of their citizens held in the

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, also known as GTMO ( ), GITMO ( ), or simply Guantanamo Bay, is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was established in 2002 by p ...

. By January 2008, the Yemenis in Guantanamo represented the largest group of detainees. Among the Yemeni detainees currently held (as of November 2015), 44 are recommended for transfer out of the facility, while twenty-three are being held indefinitely and are not recommended for transfer. Only Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul was convicted by military tribunal. Two of his convictions were vacated on appeal but a third, for conspiracy, was restored in 2016 en banc by a plurality of justices on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Two Yemeni detainees are awaiting trials by military commissions,

Ramzi bin al-Shibh Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah bin al-Shibh (; born May 1, 1972) is a Yemenis, Yemeni Terrorism, terrorist who served as al-Qaeda's communications officer. He has been detained by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp (NSGB) since 200 ...

and

Walid Bin Attash Walid Muhammad Salih bin Mubarak bin Attash (; born 1978) is a Yemeni prisoner held at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges and is suspected of playing a key role in the early stages of the 9/11 attacks. ...

. __TOC__

Events

A delegation of Yemeni officials visited Guantanamo shortly after it opened in January 2002. On March 12, 2008, Mark Falkoff of the

Center for Constitutional Rights The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR; formerly Law Center for Constitutional Rights) is an American progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City. It was founded in 1966 by lawyers William Kunstler, Arthur Kin ...

issued a call for the repatriation of the Yemeni detainees, reporting that 95 Yemenis remained in detention, and they now constituted more than a third of the total detainee population. Falkoff wrote that the delay in his release is due to a failure of the United States and Yemeni governments to reach an agreement on the security arrangements for the detainees, following their repatriation. By contrast, almost all the 133 Saudi detainees in Guantanamo had been sent home in 2006 and 2007.

Impact of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's alleged attempted suicide bombing

On December 25, 2009,

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (; also known as Umar Abdul Mutallab and Omar Farooq al-Nigeri; born 22 December 1986) popularly referred to as the "Underwear Bomber" or "Christmas Bomber", is a Nigerian terrorist who attempted to detonate plastic exp ...

(whose mother is from Yemen)Nigerian in aircraft attack linked to London mosque
independent.co.uk. Accessed 16 January 2024. allegedly tried to set off a

suicide bomb A suicide attack (also known by a wide variety of other names, #Terminology , see below) is a deliberate Strike (attack) , attack in which the perpetrators suicide , knowingly sacrifice their own lives as part of the attack. These attacks are ...

Northwest Airlines Flight 253 The attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 occurred on December 25, 2009, aboard an Airbus A330 as it prepared to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport following a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterd ...

. By December 27, 2009, responding to rumors that Abdulmutallab had confessed to being trained and equipped in Yemen, various American politicians, including

Joe Lieberman Joseph Isadore Lieberman (; February 24, 1942 – March 27, 2024) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. Originally a member of the Democratic Party (United States), Dem ...

Pete Hoekstra Cornelis Piet Hoekstra (; born October 30, 1953) is a Dutch-American politician who is serving as Ambassador to Canada. Hoekstra had served as the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands from January 10, 2018, to January 17, 2021. A member ...

Peter T. King Peter Thomas King (born April 5, 1944) is an American former politician and novelist who represented New York (state), New York in the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2021. A member of the Repub ...

and

Bennie Thompson Bennie Gordon Thompson (born January 28, 1948) is an American politician and educator serving as the U.S. representative for since 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, Thompson served as the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security fro ...

, called for

American President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forc ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

to halt plans to repatriate the Yemenis.

Repatriation negotiations

An article published in the '' Yemen Post'' on November 13, 2012, reported on secret terms in the US-Yemeni repatriation negotiations.

Repatriated detainees

Several returned Yemeni detainees were charged and stood trial, following their repatriation. Yemen established a special Criminal Court for Terrorism where their trials took place. On 7 June 2008, the Yemeni site '' Al Sahwa Net'' reported that negotiations were advanced for the repatriation of approximately seventy Yemeni detainees. That same day, ''Yemen Online'' reported that several Yemeni detainees had recently been allowed to their first phone calls to their families.

List of Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo

References

External links

Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi's (a.k.a. Fahd Ghazy) Guantanamo detainee assessment via Wikileaks

Yemenis cleared for release held in Guantanamo for years
May 2011 {{DEFAULTSORT:Yemeni Captives In Guantanamo * Lists of Guantanamo Bay detainees by nationality United States–Yemen relations