A U.S. government review board has approved the transfer of five more Guantanamo Bay detainees, bringing the new total to eighteen.
The five men, three of whom are Yemeni while another is Kenyan and the fifth is Somali, were approved for transfer on Tuesday, the New York Times reported Tuesday, which marked the 20-year anniversary of the establishment of the prison in Cuba.
The five detainees are: Moath al Alwi, Zuhail al Sharabi, Zakaria al Baidany, whom the government refers to as Omar Mohammed Ali al Rammah, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, and Guled Hassan Duran. None of them have been charged with a crime.
Duran and Baidany’s attorneys have said they were tortured at a CIA “black sites,” and it was documented in a Senate Intelligence Committee report released in 2014. Duran, the government alleges, was a “key member” of East Africa’s branch of al Qaeda, which was “in the final stages of operational planning for terrorist operations in East Africa” before his 2003 capture, according to the Washington Post.
Similarly, the U.S government described Baidany as having “held a key role in al Qaeda linked plans to conduct explosives operations in Georgia and Chechnya,” documents published by WikiLeaks reveal, while the review board said they considered Bajabu’s “low level of training and lack of leadership role” in their decision to approve his transfer.
Al Sharabi is accused of being a part of al Qaeda and of serving as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
There are 39 remaining detainees at Guantanamo, with 18 of them have been cleared for transfer by the Periodic Review Board. The administration has transferred one detainee since taking office, Abdul Latin Nasir, and he returned to Morocco, while President Joe Biden campaigned on and has taken steps to close the detention facility.
The review board consists of one senior career official from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State, along with the Joint Chiefs Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Former President George W. Bush opened the detention center at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, and at its peak, the facility housed nearly 800 detainees, according to NBC News.
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President Barack Obama promised to shut down the facility during his campaign, though his efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. During his administration, however, the number of detainees shrunk from 245 to 41.
