Dubai: Five men held for more than 13 years at the US base at Guantanamo Bay have been transferred to the UAE, the Pentagon said on Sunday.
The five Yemeni men will be kept under observation in the UAE after US authorities determined they no longer posed a threat, the Defence Department said in a statement. Their release brings the Guantanamo prison population to 107.
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The released men, who arrived in the UAE on Saturday 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. All were arrested fleeing the US invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The five men are described as low-level fighters in American military assessments. Al Razihi, however, was suspected of being a possible bodyguard to Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden.
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.
With inputs from Associated Press
