WASHINGTON — A Somali man held in Guantánamo Bay as a valuable detainee was cleared for transfer with security guarantees, according to a document obtained Monday, making him the first detainee to be taken there from a black CIA site to are recommended for publication.
Guled Hassan Duran, 47, was notified of the decision Monday morning, the eve of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the detention facility at the US naval base in Cuba. He became the 14th or 15th of 39 detainees still in Guantanamo with approval for transfer once American diplomats find countries to accept them with security guarantees that satisfy Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III.
mr. Duran was captured in Djibouti in 2004, spent approximately 900 days in CIA custody, and has been held without charge in secret detention centers in Guantanamo Bay since September 2006. to Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen.
John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the matter or on any approvals the Inter-agency Periodic Review Board had made but not announced.
“The government remains committed to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”
It is unlikely that Mr. Duran is going anywhere anytime soon. The Biden administration has transferred only one detainee from prison, a Moroccan man whose repatriation negotiations began during the Obama administration, was put on hold during the Trump administration and completed in July. Once an agreement is reached for any of the released detainees, the Secretary of Defense must sign it and give Congress 30 days notice.
Mr Kirby also declined to discuss the case of Moath al-Alwi, a Yemeni man in his mid-40s whose sister posted on Facebook that he had also been informed that he had been approved for transfer. “We ask Allah to release them all,” she said.
Mr. Alwi has become one of Guantanamo’s best recognized prison artists. In 2018, sailing ship replicas he made from found objects in the cell blocks were the focus of “Ode to the Sea,” an art exhibit at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Shortly afterwards, the Department of Defense declared art made by Guantánamo detainees the property of the US government and banned prisoners from giving documents to their lawyers or anyone else. Prison staff also stopped displaying his art during visits to news media.
His attorney, Beth D. Jacob, declined to comment.
Duran’s lawyer Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights said he was notified of the approval after his client was informed of the board’s decision Monday morning. The document, dated Nov. 10, promised “great efforts will be made to identify a suitable transfer site” located “outside the United States, subject to appropriate safeguards for safety and humane treatment.”
mr. Duran lived as a teenage refugee in Sweden, has relatives in Canada and has “good options” for potential resettlement countries, Mr. Kadidal. He described him as “smart and resourceful and has the experience of living in different countries.”
The other high-value detainee who could be the first to leave is Majid Khan, a US-educated Pakistani man who pleaded guilty to war crimes charges and was sentenced to 26 years in prison as of 2012. But last year, Mr. Khan and his lawyers reached a secret deal with a senior Pentagon official to end his sentence as early as next month and by February 2025 at the latest.
In that scenario, US diplomats would also have to negotiate his resettlement or repatriation.
The news of the approvals for more transfers came at a time of mounting Covid-19 cases at the base, which on Monday forced the naval hospital there to cut services.
On Monday, hospital spokeswoman Dawn C. Grimes reported it had 88 “confirmed, active” cases and 455 people in quarantine or isolation — including some who had come to base unvaccinated and required a 14-day quarantine. .
Two of the residents who tested positive for the virus were minors.
None of them required hospitalization, but they all had symptoms, Ms Grimes said, including headache, fever, shortness of breath and cough. “Currently, no cases are categorized as serious,” she said.
The base has an 85 percent vaccination rate and limited testing options for the virus. Ms Grimes said the base’s tests do not identify variants, but the staff concluded “through observation and analysis” that the cases are of the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.
The hospital was clearly feeling the pinch of the sudden rise, from 17 cases between December 1 and January 4 to 88 at once on Monday.
The hospital offers curbside testing and laboratory services, and in-clinic care is limited to urgent and acute cases.
“More hospital staff is needed to reduce efforts to reduce Covid-19,” the hospital said in a statement. It added that the hospital pharmacy, the only one on the base, switched to the pick-up service only and ended at noon.
The Pentagon’s Southern Command, which manages the prison, confirmed on Monday that it is still staffing 39 inmates with 1,500 personnel, both soldiers and Defense Department contractors.
It did not disclose how many of the 900 unvaccinated base residents attended the detention operation, or whether the detainees and mostly National Guard prison guards were in quarantine.