Families urge Yemeni government to repatriate Guantanamo detainees

May 26, 2009, 17:24 GMT

Sana'a, Yemen - Dozens of relatives of Yemeni detainees held at Guantanamo Bay protested outside the Cabinet's headquarters during its weekly meeting in Sanaa Tuesday urging the government to step up efforts to repatriate around 100 Yemeni prisoners.

Protesters held up banners appealing to their government to work for the release of the Yemeni detainees who are now the largest single group among the 241 prisoners remaining at Guantanamo.

They were also protesting against US plans to send Yemeni detainees from the controversial US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation.

Daughters and sons of some detainees carried their fathers' posters with labels on them reading 'Bring back my father,' and 'Stop the suffering.'

Some protesters dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods to resemble Guantanamo detainees. They were escorted by two volunteers in army camouflage resembling US soldiers.

Yemeni and US authorities are stalled on the fate of the Yemenis locked in Guantanamo without charge.

In January, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said his country had rejected a US proposal to send 94 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Saudi Arabia, where they could be sent through a rehabilitation programme.

He said his government would build a rehabilitation centre, where the returnees would be re-educated to shun extremism and fanaticism.

Hundreds of prisoners have been released from the Guantanamo prison since it was set up in 2002, but only 14 of them were from Yemen.

Of these, six were later released by Yemeni authorities while the rest were put on trial in Yemen for falsifying identification documents. None was charged with terrorism-related activities.

Among those released prisoners was Salim Hamdan, the former driver of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was sent home from Guantanamo in November at the end of his jail term handed down by a military commission over supporting terrorism.

Hamdan, 40, was detained for six weeks in an intelligence prison in Sana'a before he was released.