Fermez Guantanamo / Sluit Guantanamo / Close Guantanamo

If you can, please make a donation to support our work into 2020. If you can become a monthly sustainer, that will be particularly appreciated. Tick the box marked, « Make this a monthly donation, » and insert the amount you wish to donate.

By Andy Worthington

779 prisoners have been held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Of those, 729 have been released or transferred, including one who was transferred to the U.S. to be tried, and nine have died, the most recent being Adnan Latif, in September 2012.

40 men are still held, and five of these men were recommended for release by high-level governmental review processes under President Obama, decisions that Donald Trump has chosen to ignore since taking office in January 2017. He has only released one man since taking office, Ahmed al-Darbi, who was returned to Saudi Arabia for ongoing imprisonment in May 2018, six weeks later than he was supposed to have been repatriated under the terms of a plea deal he agreed to four years earlier.

To join the campaign for the prison’s closure into 2020, see the photos here and also here of supporters with posters showing how long the prison has been open, and demanding that Donald Trump close it once and for all. Please print off a poster via the Gitmo Clock, take a photo with it, and send it to us. We also ran a photo campaign last year, for which the photos are here, and in the last year of the Obama presidency we ran the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, which received over 700 photos. See the photos of celebrities and members of the public from around the world (also see here and the third set here, the fourth set here and the fifth set here).

Please also note that the numbers before the men’s names are their ISN numbers (the “Internment Security Numbers” by which they are identified in Guantánamo).

Some background to the list

196 of the 779 prisoners were released under President Obama, and although no prisoners were released for 15 months from January 2011, two Uighur prisoners (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) were released in April 2012, another man, Ibrahim al-Qosi, who was given a two-year sentence after a plea deal in July 2010, was released in July 2012, and in September 2012, Omar Khadr, a former child prisoner, was transferred to Canada to serve the rest of the sentence he negotiated as part of plea deal in October 2010.

In August 2013, following a promise to resume releasing prisoners that President Obama made in May, after the majority of the remaining prisoners had embarked on a hunger strike to remind the world of their plight, two Algerians — cleared for release in January 2010 by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established when he took office in January 2009 — were released, and in December 2013 two more Algerians were repatriated — although these two men didn’t want to go home — and two Saudis were then released.

These releases were then followed by the repatriation of two Sudanese prisoners — Noor Uthman Muhammed, as the result of a plea deal in February 2011, and Ibrahim Idris, who had been cleared for release by the task force, but whose eventual release was ordered by a judge after the Justice Department failed to contest his habeas corpus petition, accepting that he was severely mentally ill.

At the end of 2013, three more men were given new homes in Slovakia — the last of the 22 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province) whose release into the U.S. had been ordered — but then overturned — by a judge in October 2008.

In March 2014, another Algerian — Ahmed Belbacha — was repatriated, and on May 31, 2014, five Taliban prisoners were released, in Qatar, and under supervision, in exchange for the release of the sole U.S. prisoner of war in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani Network since 2009.

In November 2014, Fawzi al-Odah, one of the last two Kuwaitis in Guantánamo, was freed, and, also in November 2014, six more prisoners were released — three Yemenis were given new homes in Georgia, a Yemeni and a Tunisian were resettled in Slovakia, and a Saudi was repatriated.

In December, six more men were released — four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian — who were accepted as refugees in Uruguay, and four Afghans were repatriated, and the very end of the year five more men — two Tunisians and three Yemenis — were given new homes in Kazakhstan.

In January 2015, another five men — all Yemenis — were resettled. Four of the men were sent to Oman, while the fifth was sent to Estonia, and in June 2015 another six Yemenis were resettled in Oman. In September 2015, a Moroccan was repatriated, and also a Saudi, who was a long-term hunger striker, and at the end of October a Mauritanian was repatriated, and Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, was released and returned to the U.K. On November 13, five Yemenis were released, and given new homes in the United Arab Emirates.

As 2016 began, two Yemenis were released, and given new homes in Ghana, Fayiz al-Kandari, the last Kuwaiti in the prison, was released, as was a Saudi, and ten Yemenis were given new homes in Oman. On the eve of the seventh anniversary of President Obama’s promise to close the prison within a year (on January 22), it was announced that two more men had been freed — an Egyptian in Bosnia, and a Yemeni in Montenegro. In April, after over two months with no releases, two Libyans were given new homes in Senegal, and nine Yemenis were then rehoused in Saudi Arabia. In June, another Yemeni was given a new home in Montenegro, and in July three more men were freed — one to Italy, and two to Serbia.

In August 2016, the largest single release under President Obama took place, when 15 men — 12 Yemenis and three Afghans — were released in the United Arab Emirates. Six of these men had been approved for release by Obama’s task force in 2010, and nine others had been approved for release by Periodic Review Boards. In October, another release took place — of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, torture victim and best-selling author, who had also been approved for release by a PRB, and in December another Yemeni approved for release by a PRB was freed in Cape Verde. As 2017 began, President Obama released four more Yemeni prisoners — to Saudi Arabia. Ten men were released to Oman on Jan. 16, 2017, and four more men were released on Jan. 19, 2017, Obama’s last day in office.

https://www.closeguantanamo.org/Prisoners