Nine Guantanamo Bay detainees transferred to Saudi Arabia

April 17, 2016
International Business Times

The US has released nine long term Guantanamo Bay detainees, including one hunger striker, and transferred them to Saudi Arabia. It is the latest step towards President Obama's aim of closing the infamous detention facility before he leaves office in January.

Among the men, all from Yemen, who were shipped to the Middle Eastern kingdom was Tariq Ali Abdullah Ba Odah, who has been approved for transfer since 2009 and has been on a hunger strike since 2007. As of July 2015, he weighed 74 pounds and was regularly force-fed.

His attorney, Omar Farah, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the US had played "Russian roulette" with his client's life after he was picked up in Pakistan and transferred to Guantanamo in 2002.

Calling it "one of the most appalling transfers in Guantanamo's history", he said in a statement that the fact that Ba had survived was "not so much a cause for celebration as it is a reckoning that ought to remind the White House of the cost of elevating politics over the life and liberty of a human being". ...

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Last modified 

April 18, 2016