Yemen Times Staff and Agencies

Published:15-07-2010

SANA’A, July 13 – Of the 180 detainees in Guantanamo Bay Prison, 58 Yemenis have been cleared and are awaiting their turn to be sent home as was Mohammed Odaini, 26, who has just returned to Yemen.

Odaini has never been charged since his arrest in one of Al-Qaeda hide outs in Pakistan in 2002. He was 17 years old at the time and claimed that he was there because he was studying the Quran. He was acquitted in May this year and the District Court of Washington declared that he was unlawfully detained in Guantanamo.

Odaini’s lawyer, David Remes, hoped that the remaining 58 Yemenis who have also been cleared of charges would find their way home.

National US security explained that the delay in releasing Odaini was because of the lack of security in Yemen. America’s worries about Yemen's ability to fight Al-Qaeda heightened last year after several Yemeni detainees who had been released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba resurfaced as leaders of an Al-Qaeda offshoot. Those concerns deepened in the wake of the failed Christmas day attack.

Not all Yemeni detainees were as lucky as Odaini: a federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the detention of Mohammed Al-Adahi and stated that he “was, more likely than not, part of Al-Qaeda.”

The District Court judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Adahi was a terrorist, although he confessed to knowing and being related to terrorists in Afghanistan and even attending a training camp for a short period before being expelled because he was smoking. But he also said that he never agreed with Al-Qaeda’s ideologies and in fact had broken all ties with them even before the 9/11 attacks.

However, the US government’s statements in the federal appeals court, which included several other accusations, argued that such facts were enough to prove that he was a member of Al-Qaeda.

Until now, US courts have upheld the detention of 15 Guantanamo detainees while ordering the release of another 36 detainees, one of whom was Odaini.

According to US security, the delay in releasing detainees or transferring them from Guantanamo is caused by instability in the destination countries and political and legal issues. United States President Barack Obama has vowed to close down the Cuba-based prison, but so far the closure process has been happening very slowly.