The New York Times has an interesting update on the Yemeni detainees at Gitmo today. It turns out that the Obama administration took a second look at Yemen and did not like what it saw. Thus, for the time being, it looks like the Yemeni detainees will not be returned to their native country, which is home to an increasingly strong al Qaeda network and a duplicitous government that frequently sides with the jihadists while trying to play every party (including America) off one another for its own gain. As Steve Hayes and I reported (see here and here), the Obama administration’s first inclination was to repatriate a “majority” of the Yemeni detainees to their home country. That does not appear to be happening any time soon. The Times reports:

If you want to know why Yemen is so problematic, all you have to do is read the bizarre news coverage coming out of the country yesterday. The Yemen Observer, which is controlled by President Saleh’s regime, published the complaints of current Gitmo detainee named Abdul al Salam al Hilal (his name is given as “Abdul Salem al-Heelah” in the piece). Al Hilal complained to his family that a deal for his and his fellow Yemenis’ freedom had stalled. Al Hilal’s family dutifully passed these comments onto the Observer: “If Yemeni Government and Obama come over to tell me about their promises, this will never change anything in my situation. They just talk,” al Hilal said. Why did the Yemen Observer run al Hilal’s comments? Who knows? But here is where it gets strange. Al Hilal was a member of Yemen’s Political Security Organization (PSO), an internal security arm that reports directly to President Saleh. At the same time, al Hilal was an al Qaeda operative. According to the government’s files, he used his position within the Yemeni government to curry favors for al Qaeda terrorists like getting them out of prison. He also facilitated their travel around the world. In the summer of 2000, al Hilal visited the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan. The center is a known hotbed for Islamic extremism. Italian authorities caught al Hilal on tape saying the following: