The Biden administration has transferred eleven Yemeni prisoners with suspected al-Qaeda ties at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to Oman in the Middle East, the Department of Defense announced Monday, as part of an effort to reduce the controversial military facility’s prisoner population.
As part of its diplomatic efforts with the U.S., Oman agreed to help resettle the eleven detainees. With 15 detainees left, Guantanamo Bay’s inmate population was shrunk by nearly half. There were 40 detainees at the start of the Democratic administration, which revived an Obama-era effort to close the prison.
“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,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
All eleven men were captured in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. They remained in prison for more than two decades without ever facing charges or trial for their crimes.
Of the 15 remaining, nine have been charged with war crimes.
The Pentagon executed the transfer operation early Monday, days before Guantanamo’s most notorious prisoner, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was set to plead guilty to plotting the 9/11 terror attacks in exchange for a life sentence rather than face the death penalty following a trial, the New York Times reported.
The plea deals given to Mohammed and two co-conspirators, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, were strongly criticized by Republican lawmakers, 9/11 families, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
In September 2023, Austin notified Congress of the Pentagon’s intent to send the eleven Yemeni detainees to Oman for the purpose of repatriation.
In the works for about three years, the transfer was set to occur in October 2023 until Congress opposed the move in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel that month.
Two of the men, Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi and Suhayl Abdul Anam al Sharabi, were alleged bodyguards for al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden. The former still exhibits “an extremist mindset,” according to a 2016 declassified intelligence file. Meanwhile, a 2020 declassified file said the latter “may have been associated with an aborted 9/11-style hijacking in Southwest Asia led by . . . Mohammed.”
The nine other men who were released are Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman, Khalid Ahmed Qassim, 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.
The total number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is the lowest it has been since the detention camp’s opening in 2002. For 23 years, the American military prison in Cuba has held about 780 terrorists.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has made last-minute decisions regarding the status of prisoners before transferring power to President-elect Donald Trump later this month.
Days before Christmas, President Joe Biden reduced the death sentences of 37 federal inmates to life sentences without the possibility of parole. The president announced the commutation before Trump could have lifted the moratorium on federal executions, which Biden views as inhumane.
“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement last month. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Of the 37 death row prisoners whose sentences were commuted, two have rejected Biden’s offer of mercy by refusing to sign the paperwork accepting his clemency.
Shannon Agofsky, 53, and Len Davis, 60, each filed emergency motions in federal court on December 30 to halt their reduced sentences, NBC News first reported on Monday. They believe acceptance of Biden’s death-row reprieve will put them at a legal disadvantage as both seek to prove their innocence.
Agofsky and Davis never requested a commutation from the president, their respective court filings state. The men are both inmates at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.
Agofsky murdered a bank president and dumped his body in a lake in 1989 before he was convicted of killing another inmate in prison in 2001.
Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, enlisted the help of a drug dealer to murder a 32-year-old woman who filed a police brutality complaint against him in 1994. Less than a day after she filed the complaint, Kim Groves was shot dead.
While Biden granted clemency to three dozen convicted murderers in a sweeping motion, he did exclude three notorious inmates from the list. Those who remain on federal death row are Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof, and Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers.