The fate of the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay remains one of the unresolved questions as the world is approaching the twenty year anniversary of the attacks of 11 September 2001.  A total of 780 detainees were held in Guantanamo Prison and 40 detainees are still being kept at the prison.

18 former Guantanamo detainees from Yemen have been kept in custody in various undisclosed locations in the UAE for 5 years according to their families. Katherine Taylor deputy director of Reprieve told Al Jazeera “there has been a moratorium on repatriation since early on in Obama’s administration.”

According to Taylor the men never faced charges and were never tried.

The men have been informed that they would be relocated to Yemen. It is expected that such relocation will be imminent.

Rehabilitation

Detainees were told that they would be held in the UAE for 6 to 12 months in a rehabilitation facility after which they would be allowed to reunite with their families in the UAE. 

According to Katherine Taylor “The men’s resettlement in the UAE was supposed to offer a certain amount of support and a residential rehabilitation phase.”

But the assurances the detainees were given were not carried out. There is no indication that any rehabilitation has taken place. 

Human Rights Experts

United Nations-appointed human rights experts including the Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer and Special Rapporteur on the prevention and protection of human Fionnuala Ní Aoláin rights have described the current detention of the men as “continuous arbitrary detention” and consider repatriation to Yemen as a “forced return’” which would violate international law.

In a press release issued in October 2020, the experts stated: “This repatriation process is happening without any form of judicial guarantees, or individual examination and assessment of risks, which blatantly violates the absolute prohibition of non-refoulment under international human rights and humanitarian law.” 

“We express further alarm that after years of detention without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay, the transferred detainees are facing further lengthy periods of detention without charge or trial in the UAE, with very limited contact with their families and no legal representation, while being subjected to ill-treatment,” the experts said.

Reprieve states that one of the prisons in which prisoners were kept is Al Razeem. Reprieve has learnt of physical abuse and torture of the prisoners. 

As in the case of the overwhelming amount of former Guantanamo detainees, the Yemeni men have never appeared in court. According to Elina Steinerte, professor at the University of Bristol and member of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the fact that the detainees have never appeared in court renders their detention arbitrary.

 

Safety not guaranteed

The family of one of the detainees have said: “We fear they will be gunned down or rounded up as soon as they set foot in Yemen.”

The men’s safety cannot be guaranteed if they are retuned to Yemen. Family members have expressed concerns about further arbitrary detention and assassination if they are repatriated. These concerns 3 are partly a result of the general instability in Yemen, but also relate to the men’s status as former Guantánamo detainees and the effective control the UAE exerts in certain parts of Yemen.

The ongoing imprisonment of the men further violates undertakings made by the US when they were first sent to the UAE between 2015 and 2017. 

Four Afghan nationals were repatriated to Afghanistan in December 2019 and January 2020. According to the information Reprieve has received from the men these were forcible repatriations that the men did not voluntarily consent to.