- Obama Quietly Releases 10 Additional Gitmo Prisoners
In President Obama’s final week in office, he has quietly released ten more Guantanamo Bay prisoners in his ongoing effort to diminish the prison population. The Sultanate of Oman, Dubai announced that it accepted the group of 10 prisoners at “Obama’s request,” after taking in 10 other Gitmo prisoners one year ago, in January 2016.
The names of the 10 transferred prisoners were not released.
Saudi Arabia took four prisoners on January 5th and the United Arab Emirates took 15 prisoners in the largest single transfer during Obama’s administration on Aug. 15 of last year.
When President Obama took office in 2009, there were 242 prisoners in Gitmo.
Recently, U.S. authorities stated that 19 of the remaining 55 prisoners at the U.S. military base in Cuba were recently cleared for release and could be freed in the final days of Obama’s presidency.
A former Gitmo official recently warned that four of the 19 are extremely dangerous and described them as the “nuclear weapons of jihad.”
The U.S. Defense Department has yet to comment about the recent transfer.
Although President Obama had tried and pledged to close the prison during his campaign, Obama never succeeded in fulfilling his promise, due to Congressional opposition to holding any of the men in the United States. This opposition eventually became a ban on transferring them to U.S. soil for any reason, including any trials.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign that he not only wants to keep Guantanamo open but he wants to “load it up with some bad dudes.”