Yemen will soon receive seven detainees to be released from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp by the US Army, Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr Al-Qerbi said in remarks published here on Thursday. âThe US authorities have decided to free seven Yemenis from the Guantanamo base and hand them over to Yemen,â the minister told the Defense Ministryâs newspaper â26 Septemberâ.The minister said that âYemen has received an official noteâ from Washington confirming the intention to transfer the men to their country. An ad hoc Yemeni commission was set up by the government to follow up arrangements for the handover, said Al-Qerbi. The seven Yemenis are among 25 men cleared by a US military Administrative Review Board, which considered them no longer posing a threat to the United States or its allies. Al-Qerbi did not say whether the men would face prosecution in Yemen or be freed.
Around 500 detainees are held at the US naval base detention facility, most of them were captured during the 2001 US-led military attack on Afghanistan that toppled the Taleban hard-line regime. Yemeni authorities are still checking the nationality of 110 Guantanamo captives who are thought possibly to be Yemenis.