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Less than two weeks to go in his lame-duck presidency before Trump takes office, and President Biden is pursuing the controversial move of emptying out Gitmo further. On Monday the Pentagon confirmed it released 11 Yemeni detainees with suspected ties to al Qaeda from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, after which they are set to begin new lives in Oman, as we detailed earlier. This has shrunk the population of the facility to 15 men…
None of the detainees have ever been charged with a crime, despite having been in the high-secure military facility for a couple decades or more. The Biden administration has long sought to move forward Obama’s stated goal of seeking to permanently shutdown the notorious facility where torture has been alleged and documented.
On Tuesday another major potential released has been revealed: the White House is now negotiating with the Taliban which could end in the release of a high-profile prisoner long alleged to have been a close Osama bin Laden associate. Muhammad Rahim al Afghani has long been deemed “the Last Afghan in Guantanamo”.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Democratic administration “has been discussing a deal with the Taliban since at least July, told the group on Nov. 14 that the U.S. would release Muhammad Rahim al Afghani, who the U.S. government alleges was a senior al Qaeda aide, if the Afghan rulers released George Glezmann, Ryan Corbett and Mahmoud Habibi, American citizens seized in Afghanistan in 2022.”
