MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The number of people being held at the U.S. military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been cut nearly in half.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
That's after the Biden administration transferred 11 detainees to Oman yesterday. It's part of Joe Biden's final push to try and close the detention facility before leaving office.
MARTIN: NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer has been covering Guantanamo for years, and she's with us now to tell us more about it. Good morning, Sacha.
SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Who are these 11 people?
PFEIFFER: All are from Yemen, all were captured after the 9/11 attacks and all are former al-Qaida, according to the Pentagon. All had also been held for more than two decades without charge or trial. Now eventually, they were approved for transfer after national security officials said they weren't dangerous enough to keep holding. And they had been approved for transfer for at least two years, sometimes much longer - one since 2010.
But they had stayed behind bars due to diplomatic and political challenges, like resistance to releasing them and the really difficult, slow process of finding countries to take them. The problem is they could not go back to their home country of Yemen because it's unstable, so the U.S. had to negotiate with another country to take them. Finally, Oman agreed to do that.
Some of them will be monitored for security reasons and also face travel restrictions. And for Guantanamo, the end result is just 15 prisoners are held there now.
MARTIN: You know, so Democrats have been trying to close this facility for years, and the Biden administration had four years to do this. Tell us about this last-minute flurry of transfers weeks before leaving office. How did this all come together?
PFEIFFER: And it really has been a flurry. You know, in recent weeks, four other Guantanamo prisoners were released. We know of at least one more transfer in the works. This is partly Biden racing to fulfill his goal of closing Guantanamo. A less charitable view is that it would have taken more political courage to do this when he was not a lame duck, but now that he's on his way out, it's easier to do hard and controversial things.
I do want to note that yesterday's 11-prisoner transfer almost happened in October 2023, but it was called off after the October 7 Hamas attack. So, finally, in these final weeks, that plan got resurrected. It's also motivated by Trump returning. Trump has said he wants to keep Guantanamo open. So the assumption is that once Trump is back in the White House, there may be no more Guantanamo transfers under him.
And Michel, at some level, it's also Biden acknowledging that Guantanamo has been a failed legal system. As you know, there's still been no 9/11 trial more than two decades after the September 11, 2001, attacks. There's worldwide criticism of Guantanamo as a human rights embarrassment because of the unlawful detention happening there. It's also really expensive - $15 million per year per prisoner. That is way more than a federal supermax. This is Biden saying it's time to shut the place down.
MARTIN: So what's been the reaction to this?
PFEIFFER: Republicans claim this is like releasing terrorists. Democrats say this should have happened a long time ago. It's a moral stain on America, they say. This is complicated by the new fresh upheaval in the Middle East because there's some concern these men could end up back on a battlefield somewhere. But remember, national security officials has made the decision these men no longer pose a significant threat.
I got a more hybrid or nuanced view from Scott Roehm of the Center for Victims of Torture. He's glad the men were released, but, he says, it could and should have happened sooner. And he says because it didn't happen sooner, time's now running out on transferring others before Trump comes into office.
SCOTT ROEHM: Releasing this many men in just a few weeks makes clear what could have been done over the rest of the last four years had the administration acted then with the same urgency and commitment that it's acting now.
MARTIN: Sacha, before we let you go, could you remind us of the history of the Guantanamo prison over the years?
PFEIFFER: The prison and the military court were set up to prosecute suspected foreign terrorists after the September 11 attacks. Over the years, a little under 800 people have passed through there. Most were never charged yet held for years. There are now 15 left, and the commonality among the 15 left is that if you're not out by January 20, you're expected probably not to get out.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer. Sacha, thank you.
PFEIFFER: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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