Washington is mulling over plans to construct a facility in Yemen for the rehabilitation of Guantanamo prisoners.
The US has announced that it is mulling over the construction of a facility in Yemen for the rehabilitation of the Yemeni prisoners who will return home from the notorious US-run Guantanamo prison in Cuba.
On Sunday, the US ambassador to Yemen, Gerald Feierstein, said that Washington last week held a meeting with representatives from Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the Italian capital, Rome, to negotiate over the construction of the facility.
Speaking at a press conference in the Yemeni capital, Sanaâ„¢a, Feierstein said US President Barack Obama announced his intentions to end a ban on re-extraditing Guantanamoâ„¢s Yemeni prisoners who have been cleared for release.
Å“The talks with the Yemeni government are going well expedite resolving this issue and reviewing some files of the detainees to allow them to return to Yemen,” he said.
Of the 166 prisoners at the Guantanamo prison, 86 have been cleared for release but no concrete steps have yet been taken to transfer them to their home countries.
Earlier this year, US officials admitted that an overwhelming majority of Guantanamo prisoners will never be charged and that less than 1 in 8 inmates might ever see the inside of a courtroom.
In 2010, President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force said that only 36 of the 166 prisoners would eventually be prosecuted as they lacked any evidence to charge the rest of the detainees.
However, Army Brigadier General Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals, has called the number Å“ambitious” saying at most 20 prisoners could face war crimes tribunals.
Closing the detention camp was a central theme of Obamaâ„¢s presidential campaign in 2008 as he acknowledged that the prison was a symbol of the US governmentâ„¢s violation of human rights.
Five years on, the 166 men still remain in the infamous jail and according to a Guantanamo prisoner, Abdelhadi Faraj, who was cleared for release in 2010, the situation at the complex has even worsened under Obama, compared to the time of his predecessor George W. Bush.
In protest against harsh conditions and indefinite detention without charge or trial, a hunger strike began in early February at Guantanamo and still continues after more than six months.
Images from the detention center published in June showed how hunger-striking prisoners are force-fed, being strapped to a metal restraint chair and fed through the nose with plastic tubing.
The force-feeding is supposedly intended to prevent prisoners from starving to death but human rights groups condemn the practice, saying it amounts to torture.
ISH/ARA
Republished from: Press TV