Centre to help detainees to rebuild lives

Sana'a: The Yemeni government has started to establish a special centre for receiving, re-qualifying and reintegrating its citizens in Guantanamo when they are released, official statement said on Thursday.

The officials said the centre, which will be funded by the American government, will include residences for the detainees and their families, rooms for lecturing and learning some vocations and skills that will help the men to restart new lives.

The educational programmes to be adopted by the centre will be based on moderation of Islam and rejection of extremism and terrorism, said the statement which was carried by the state-run media.

Yemen is waiting for the new US administration to release more than 100 Yemenis who have been languishing in Guantanamo for about seven years.

A total of 14 Yemeni men have already been released including Salem Hamdan, the former driver of Osama Bin Laden who was released from Guantanamo last November. He was released from Yemen's prisons on January 9. All the other 13 men were also released to their families.

On his first day in office, the new US President Obama ordered on Wednesday the closure of the detention camp which still holds 245 men within a year. And Obama also ordered the suspension of the military trials of five men accused of being involved in the September 11th attack, two of them Yemenis, for four months.