Washington, June 03: The United States has refused to send Yemeni “enemy combatants” held at Guantanamo Bay back to their home country over fears they could join the local al-Qaeda movement, press reports said on Tuesday.
Although U.S. President Barack Obama promised in January to close the controversial prison it was still unclear what would happen to the 240 detainees currently being held in Cuba.
Ninety-six of the 240 prisoners come from Yemen, the poorest and most unstable country in the Gulf, but according to France’s Le Figaro newspaper, the U.S. administration has refused to send them back home for fears they would rally jihadists and multiply terrorist attacks.Attempts to contact the White House for confirmation were unanswered.
” Yemen has become a refuge for jihadists ”
David Petraeus
“Yemen has become a refuge for jihadists” warned general David Petraeus, the highest ranking American military official in the Middle East.
At the start of 2009. Yemen’s local al-Qaeda group fused with its Saudi Arabian branch, raising fears a “new Afghanistan” would emerge in its southern frontier following suicide attacks that killed four South Korean tourists.
Two of the top most wanted Saudis were arrested in March, near Taez in the South of Sanaa but there are concerns that hundreds of wanted men tracked by Riyadh have sought refuge beyond the 1,300 kilometer (about 800 miles) frontier between the neighboring countries.
Le Figaro reported that in early April a cave was discovered stocked with weapons, ropes and cameras and said members of al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden’s family not only used Yemen as a “base for al-Qaeda operations” but also contributed to “terrorist training and the facilitation of their movements.”
An ideal location
” Those who don’t find jobs will eventually succumb to al-Qaeda all over again ”
Le Figaro reports
Political Advisor of Yemen’s President Ali Abdallah, Abdel Karim Eriani, was quoted by the paper as saying: “The threat is serious” and “al-Qaeda has enough money to recruit whoever it wants and Bin Laden never hesitates to say that Yemen was an ideal location for his organization.”
The threat of Islamists has been temporarily neutralized by a rehabilitation program for terrorists, in which over 400 al-Qaeda supporters who were arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, have participated in.
“This program allowed authorities to seal an implicit deal with jihadists on the condition they did not commit any attacks in Yemen,” political analysist Murad Zafer told the paper.
But Eriani said that despite the agreement “some of the jihadists went to fight in Iraq against the U.S. forces” and so therefore “the U.S. no longer trusts Yemen to receive and reinstate Guantanamo prisoners because it is as if we tricked them.”
But the younger generation of jihadists have rejected all kinds of deals with the authorities and are deeply influenced by the war in Iraq and consider anyone who works with the authorities as “traitors.”
U.S.-based organization, Human Rights Association, said in its latest report that most detainees who have been sent back to Yemen are tortured in prison but none of them have “fallen back” in to terrorism.
But the paper reported that nobody wants to hire such people and “those who don’t find jobs will eventually succumb to al-Qaeda all over again.”
–Agencies