WASHINGTON – The Biden administration was poised to transfer 11 detainees from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a Middle Eastern country in October 2023, but abruptly halted the move amid concerns about the political optics following the Hamas attack on Israel. according to four U.S. officials familiar with the planning.
More than seven months later, the government has not set a new date for the transfer, officials say, leaving detainees at Guantanamo without any clarity about when or if it will happen.
The raid has frustrated administration officials who said they believe election year politics are supplanting President Joe Biden’s policy of reducing the population at Guantanamo and eventually closing the facility. These officials said they are concerned about the likelihood of the transfer happening before the November presidential election, as the election draws closer. And they are concerned that the stalled process, which has left 11 men in detention for months with no clarity on when they could be transferred, could become a human rights problem.
The 11 detainees are citizens of Yemen or have ties to the country, officials said. They would be resettled in Oman, officials said.
Several U.S. officials said the deal for their transfer was still in discussions with Oman, including on specific timing and conditions, and could happen this year. They said politics were behind the delay and that the transfer was not imminent because some of the logistics had not yet been completed.
A senior government official suggested that at times since October, Oman also did not want the transfer to take place.
“This isn’t like collecting dust somewhere. We are actively looking at all those administrative steps to make this happen,” the official said, acknowledging that “there are frustrations.”
The White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats and Republicans have objected to removing prisoners from Guantanamo, and the issue has been a political flashpoint in multiple presidential administrations. In January, for example, top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees joined their Republican Party counterparts in calling on the Biden administration not to allow intelligence community money to support the Guantanamo transfer prisoners.
Biden, like President Barack Obama before him, has been working to close the facility. But detainee transfers almost came to a halt while Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor and 2024 opponent, was in the White House.
Biden administration officials working to close Guantanamo expressed concern that if these 11 detainees, who were supposed to be transferred in October, are not resettled this year and Trump is re-elected, they will remain at the detention center for at least another four years.
According to officials involved in the process, their transfer was imminent in October but was canceled at the last minute. The administration had already notified Congress that the transfer would take place, officials said. A step that the executive branch must take at least thirty days by law before transferring Guantanamo prisoners.
The transfer would have brought Guantánamo’s population under 20 for the first time since the country began detaining suspected terrorists in January 2002.
Biden administration officials spent months negotiating the terms of the prisoners’ transfer to Oman, including measures intended to ensure the men would not become a security threat and any compensation they would receive.
Multiple U.S. officials said the decision to halt the transfer was not related to any Oman concerns or last-minute disagreements between the U.S. and Oman. They said they believe this was the result of members of Congress, mostly Democrats close to the president, privately expressing concerns about the timing.
Most of the 11 detainees were cleared by the U.S. for release or transfer years ago after going through the lengthy process to achieve that status.
Because Yemen had been embroiled in civil war for almost a decade, transferring them there was not a viable option. While fighting between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia, had largely subsided by 2023, the country remains unstable and suffering from a widespread humanitarian crisis and terrorist attacks by an Al Qaeda affiliate.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October, Iran-backed Houthi rebels have attacked ships off Yemen’s Red Sea coast dozens of times. The US and coalition partners continue to conduct airstrikes to defend against Houthi attacks and eliminate their weapons in Yemen.
Growing unrest in the Middle East has made transferring prisoners from Guantanamo even more politically uncertain, officials said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
