The Biden administration has released 11 additional detainees from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, sending the men, all natives of Yemen, to neighboring Oman, the Pentagon said Monday.
The move ends their more than two decades of imprisonment without charges and leaves the detainee population at 15. Over the years, the notorious prison in southeast Cuba has held roughly 780 men, all of them swept up amid the frantic global “war on terror” that followed 9/11.
Monday’s announcement is part of President Joe Biden’s fervent effort during his final weeks in office to reduce the number of those held Guantánamo. The secretive facility, which for much of the world came to symbolize a subversion of justice by the United States, continues to divide Washington – where Democrats and Republicans disagree on the question of whether the prison should be permanently shuttered.
President-elect Donald Trump mused in the past about imprisoning more people there. His pick for defense secretary, former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, worked at Guantánamo while serving in the Army in 2004 when it held hundreds of prisoners. Hegseth has said that one of Guantánamo’s major flaws is that detainees had too many rights and protections.
Last month, the Biden administration repatriated four men, including two Malaysians who pleaded guilty to involvement in a Southeast Asian terrorist plot and will now serve out their prison sentences in Malaysia, plus a Tunisian and a Kenyan who were never charged.
The administration also is seeking to repatriate – to an Iraqi prison – a severely disabled Iraqi detainee who pleaded guilty to terrorist involvement, the New York Times reported. Attorneys for the man, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, have sued the U.S. government to block his transfer, arguing he will not be safe or receive adequate medical care in Iraq.
The flurry of activity around the oft-forgotten prison comes days before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is expected to enter his guilty plea to the U.S. military commission in Guantánamo – part of a deal Mohammed reached with military prosecutors to avoid the death penalty. The Biden administration has intervened in the case, and those of two other defendants who reached similar agreements, hoping to prevent the plea deals from moving forward.
While the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were never charged, or found to have any connection to the 9/11 attacks, the transfer of those cleared for repatriation has proven inherently complicated, often requiring months – if not longer – of negotiations between U.S. officials and would-be recipient countries, the terms of which are never made public.
Congress has barred the government from transferring Guantánamo detainees to the U.S. mainland and blocked repatriation to certain countries, including Yemen – from which a large proportion of detainees have hailed. Yemen remains destabilized by years of conflict, and transferring detainees there could present a security risk, officials say.
In a statement disclosing the men’s transfer to Oman, the Pentagon characterized their release as a “resettlement.” A previous group of Guantánamo detainees transferred to Oman were given housing, access to social welfare benefits – including health care, jobs and cars – and assistance starting, or reuniting with, families.
The United States says it requires recipient countries to guarantee that certain security measures will be followed. The Pentagon on Monday said that following a “thorough, interagency review by career professionals,” the 11 Yemenis were determined eligible “consistent with the national security interests of the United States.”
Among those transferred was Khalid Qasim, who attracted attention years ago after his artwork from the prison was displayed in New York. Tom Wilner, one of Qasim’s attorneys, said he was “overjoyed that Khalid is a free man” but condemned what he called the “appalling injustice” he endured.
“The torture he was subjected to over his two decades of detention without trial shames the United States of America,” Wilner said in a statement.
Repatriation efforts have been complicated at times by strenuous political opposition in Washington, and a dearth of foreign governments willing – or able – to take in suspected terrorists, many of whom have spent most of their adult lives at Guantánamo and often suffer from severe mental and physical ailments.
Oman has been one of Washington’s most reliable partners in the resettlement from Guantánamo, having previously taken in several dozen other former detainees. However, the sultanate angered human rights activists last year when it expelled an earlier group of 28 Yemeni former detainees, along with their families, and sent them back to war-ravaged Yemen. Observers suggested at the time that the move might be linked to the administration’s effort to secure a new transfer agreement.
Biden administration officials defended Oman’s actions, noting that the kingdom had never committed to hosting former Guantánamo detainees “indefinitely.”
“In some ways,” one U.S. official told The Washington Post last year, “you could say they’re making room.”
(c) 2025, The Washington Post · Abigail Hauslohner, Missy Ryan