Nine Yemeni detainees were released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on Saturday as the latest part of the President Barack Obama’s plan to close the facility before the end of his term.
The detainees were transferred to a rehabilitation facility designed to reintegrate radicalized militants back into in to society as part of a program sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government.
The plan released by the White House indicates that detainees deemed to be low risk by the administration would be transferred back to their country of origin, while other detainees would be transferred to detention centers either in the United States or abroad.
The administration’s plan has been met with resistance by members of Congress, who see the inmates, some of whom have been held without trial or charges for more than a decade, as threats to national security.
Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ed Royce introduced legislation in February aimed at declassifying information about released detainees to the public, as well as to allies who would be receiving custody of these detainees.
The Terrorist Release Transparency Act, H.R. 4850, would publicly disclose the name, country of origin and country of destination of an individual being transferred, as well as the previous number of detainees released to that country and the number of detainees who committed known terrorist acts after being released.