10 Yemenis released from Guantanamo arrive in Oman

Ten Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arrived in Oman after the Omani Interior Ministry approved the US request to host them.

In a statement wired on the Omani news agency, the ministry said the 10 Yemenis will stay temporarily in the sultanate.

With that, the population at the US detention camp for terror suspects will fall below 100 for the first time.

President Barack Obama had vowed to close Guantanamo in his first address to Congress in 2009, but Congress has blocked him. In his final State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama said he would keep working to close the prison.

In November, five men who had been held for more than 13 years at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were released and sent to the United Arab Emirates, the Pentagon had said.

The five Yemeni men were accepted for resettlement in the Persian Gulf nation after US authorities determined they no longer posed a threat, the Defense Department said in a statement.

The released men who arrived in the UAE were identified as Ali Ahmad Muhammad al-Razihi, Khalid Abd-al-Jabbar Muhammad Uthman al-Qadasi, Adil Said al-Hajj Ubayd al-Busays, Sulayman Awad Bin Uqayl al-Nahdi, and Fahmi Salem Said al-Asani.

None of the men had been charged with a crime but had been detained as enemy combatants. They could not be sent to their homeland because the US considers Yemen too unstable to accept prisoners from Guantanamo. These were the first prisoners accepted by the UAE for resettlement.

Source: MENA