The Biden administration announced on Monday the transfer of 11 Yemeni detainees, including two former bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, from a US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Oman, which has agreed to help re-settle them, as part of efforts to reduce the population at the controversial military facility.
All of the men were apprehended in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and held for more than two decades without being charged or tried, according to the New York Times.
“The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” according to a statement from the Defense Department.
The White House referred Fox News Digital’s questions to the Department of Defense.
The 11 detainees were identified as: Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman, Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, Khalid Ahmed Qassim, Suhayl Abdul Anam al Sharabi, Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah, Tawfiq Nasir Awad Al-Bihani, Omar Mohammed Ali al-Rammah, Sanad Ali Yislam Al Kazimi, Hassan Muhammad Ali Bib Attash, Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj, and Abd Al-Salam Al-Hilah.
Ahmed al-Alwi, an alleged al Qaeda fighter who served on Osama bin Laden’s security detail in Afghanistan, was among the 11 men released, according to the New York Post.
According to a declassified document from 2016, al-Alwi made several statements indicating that he “maintains an extremist mindset.”
Anam al Sharabi, another alleged bin Laden bodyguard, has also been released. According to a declassified file from 2020, he was bin Laden’s bodyguard and received training in Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Additionally, he “may have been associated with an aborted 9/11-style hijacking in Southwest Asia led by al-Qa’ida external operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.”
The transfer took place as part of an early-morning secret operation on Monday, just days before Mohammed, Guantanamo’s most notorious prisoner, was scheduled to plead guilty to plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death penalty trial, according to the Times.
Republicans and 9/11 families have sharply criticized the deal made with Mohammed and co-conspirators Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.
The move had been in the works for about three years, after an initial plan to transfer in October 2023 was met with opposition from congressional lawmakers.
Authorities did not explain why the detainees were delivered to Oman, one of the United States’ most stable allies in the Middle East, or what they gave the host country.
Shaqawi al Hajj, who had been on hunger strike and hospitalized at Guantanamo Bay to protest his 21-year sentence, was among the men transferred.
With the release, the total number of men detained at Guantanamo is only 15, the lowest since 2002, when it was converted into a detention facility to house men from around the world arrested in connection with the “War on Terror.”
The transfer leaves six never-charged men at Guantanamo, two convicted and sentenced inmates, and seven others charged with the 2001 attacks, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and the 2002 Bali bombings.
Most of those at Guantanamo are from Yemen, a country ravaged by war and now dominated by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.