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| Ghana President |
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| Mahmmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef. |
Some
Ghananain pundits and lawyers have been looking at the possibility
of taking up the government for reasons behind the acceptance of two
terrorist detainees of Yemen descent .
The
United States on Wednesday transferred to Ghana two
Yemeni men who had been imprisoned atGuantánamo
Bay,
Cuba, for nearly 14 years, the Pentagon said. The transfer marked the
start of what is expected
to be a flurry of 17 departures in
early 2016.
The transfers
also represented the first time that lower-level detainees have been
resettled in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that the State Department
is widening the aperture of its diplomatic efforts to find homes for
those on the transfer list.
After the
resettlement, 105 detainees remain at Guantánamo, and 46 are
recommended for transfer.
“The
United States is grateful to the government of Ghana for its
humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts
to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility,” a Pentagon
spokesman, Cmdr. Gary Ross, said in a statement.
- Ghana’s Foreign
Ministry said the two Yemeni men would stay for two years, according
to The Associated Press. The ministry said that Ghana was also taking
in two people from Rwanda who had been tried by the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The two people were part of a group of
defendants who had been acquitted or had served their sentences.
The
military identified the two Yemeni men transferred to Ghana as Khalid
Mohammed Salih al-Dhuby and Mahmmoud
Omar Mohammed Bin Atef.
Both were born in Saudi Arabia but are considered citizens
of Yemen based
on their family and tribal ties, according to military dossiers
leaked by Pvt. Chelsea Manning.
The men’s
dossiers contend that each went to Afghanistan before the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and were captured by Afghan forces in late
2001 and turned over to the United States. Some of the claims in the
leaked dossiers have been contested by detainees or their lawyers or
undercut by other evidence.
In 2009, each man
was unanimously recommended for transfer by a six-agency task force,
if security conditions could be met in the receiving country. But
they remained stranded as wartime detainees because of persistent
chaos in their native Yemen. Neither was ever charged with a crime.
Mr. Bin Atef’s
dossier says he was a survivor of a well-known weeklong fight in late
November 2001 at the Qala-i-Jangi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, where
the Northern Alliance had taken hundreds of captured Taliban and
foreign fighters.
During an
uprising among the prisoners, a C.I.A. paramilitary operative was
killed, as were hundreds of the captured fighters, many of whom had
spent days hiding in tunnels that Northern Alliance forces flooded
with water. The dossier does not accuse Mr. Bin Atef of personal
involvement in the C.I.A. operative’s death.
Mr. Dhuby’s
dossier, written in late 2006, said he had been mostly compliant with
the guard force as a Guantánamo detainee. Mr. Bin Atef’s dossier,
written in late 2007, said he had participated in protests by the
prisoners and had threatened guards, including vowing to find out
their identities and “sneak into their homes and cut their throats
like sheep.”
George Clarke, a
lawyer for Mr. Bin Atef, said that his client had become “frustrated”
by his predicament in being imprisoned for years without trial and
had responded by acting out and saying “stupid things.” But he
said that the comments had been made a “long time ago.”
Mr. Clarke said
that in his interactions with Mr. Bin Atef since he started
representing him about six months ago, he had found him to be a
“friendly, nice guy” who was “positive and has a good
attitude.”
“He
is very appreciative and happy the Ghanians are taking him,” Mr.
Clarke said.
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