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No Yemen Transfers "Right Now"
President Barack Obama does not plan to transfer additional detainees to Yemen "right now," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday — a stance that could complicate Obama’s efforts to close the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects.
Nationals from Yemen make up nearly half of the remaining 198 prisoners at Guantanamo. Gibbs acknowledged that the decision not to send any more of them home soon could mean that an added number of them will have to be transferred to a new prison for former Guantanamo detainees that the administration hopes to set up in Thomson, Ill. There was never a plan to transfer the Yemenis as a block back to Yemen, White House aides said.
"While we remain committed to closing the facility, the determination has been made that right now any additional transfers to Yemen is not a good idea," Gibbs said. "We would not move additional people into Yemen."
The suspension is for the foreseeable future, as long as the current situation remains, the aides said.
Obama has said the Christmas Day bombing plot was hatched in Yemen, an extremist haven on the Arabian Peninsula. The U.S. Embassy there closed Sunday and Monday because of a terrorist threat. The suspect in the attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has reportedly told the FBI that he crafted the plot with Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. In addition, the Al Qaeda branch there claimed responsibility for the attack.
A senior administration official said: "The president created the [Guantanamo] Task Force to conduct the thorough work that had not been done before: to review the relevant information about each detainee on an individual basis, including the threat they pose, to determine whether they should be prosecuted, detained or transferred. That review resulted in different recommendations for the Yemeni detainees."
The administration has sent mixed signals on the issue in recent days. During appearances on Sunday television talk shows, White House counterterrorism and homeland security adviser John Brennan brushed aside questions about a halt to repatriations to Yemen.
“We haven't, you know, stopped the process as far as dealing with them," Brennan said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Many of them are going to be prosecuted, some under the Article III courts, and some under — in military courts. Some of these individuals are going to be transferred back to Yemen at the right time and the right pace and in the right way."
"We are looking at it every day," Brennan said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "We're not going to make any decisions that are going to put people at risk. We will decide and determine when we should send additional people back."
Last month, the Obama administration sent six Guantanamo prisoners home to Yemen. However, that was prior to the attempted Christmas Day bombing.
While Republicans have long been critical of Obama for transferring prisoners to Yemen, the issue became more politically problematic for the White House last week when key Democrats like Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called for a stop to such repatriations. Thompson also said members of Congress were likely to have objections to bringing the detainees to the U.S.
A total of seven prisoners have been returned to Yemen since Obama took office last January. Under President George W. Bush, 13 men were sent from Guantanamo to Yemen.
Last week, administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity told news outlets, including POLITICO, that no more prisoners would be sent to Yemen in the coming months. One official told The New York Times that such a decision was actually made weeks ago, before the Christmas Day bombing attempt. It was not clear why Brennan seemed unwilling to repeat those statements during his TV interviews Sunday.
While Republicans and some security analysts have expressed skepticism about Yemen’s ability to keep returning Guantanamo prisoners out of trouble, Brennan has said that the U.S. worked closely with Yemen’s government to obtain such assurances for the men returned last year.
U.S. Embassy In Yemen Re-opens
The U.S. Embassy in Sana'a, Yemen, has re-opened, two days after it was shut out of concern for terrorism threats, Reuters reports:
The U.S. embassy in Yemen re-opened on Tuesday, an embassy official said, a day after Yemeni forces killed two al Qaeda militants they said were behind a threat that forced U.S. and European missions to close.
"We are reopened," a U.S. embassy official said. The embassy had closed on Sunday in response to what it said were threats from al Qaeda. Washington says the group is trying to use Yemen as a base for attacks far beyond the region. ....
A number of western embassies closed their doors this week due to security fears. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said fighting in Yemen was a threat to regional and global stability.
The British and French embassies resumed operations on Tuesday but remained closed to the public, diplomats at those missions said.
Yemeni forces killed at least two al Qaeda militants on Monday they said were behind the threat that forced the foreign embassies to close, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Yemen was "ready to confront and defeat anyone thinking of harming the country and its security."
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Sources: AP, Politico, MSNBC, Reuters, NY Times, Google Maps
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