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Pentagon Repatriates Guantánamo Detainee Held Without Charge for Over Two Decades
The move came as the Biden administration faced pressure to clear the notorious military prison of all uncharged detainees before Donald Trump takes office.
Dec 31, 2024
The Biden administration announced late Monday that it transferred a Tunisian man who was never charged with a crime out of the notorious Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba, a move that came more than a decade after the detainee was approved for release.
The man, 59-year-old Ridah bin Saleh al-Yazidi, had been held at Guantánamo since the day former U.S. President George W. Bush opened the prison camp in 2002. The Pentagon said in a statement Monday that al-Yazidi has been repatriated to the government of Tunisia.
With al-Yazidi's transfer, there are now 26 detainees remaining at Guantánamo, the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime and have been approved for release from the prison, which United Nations experts have said is "defined by the systematic use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." More detainees have died at Guantánamo than have been convicted of a crime, according to the human rights group Reprieve.
The Biden administration said in 2021 that it intended to shutter the prison, and critics have accused the administration of "a lack of courage" as it has dragged its feet on the matter.
But human rights campaigners have welcomed recent progress. Al-Yazidi was the fourth Guantánamo detainee in two weeks to be transferred from the prison by the Biden administration, which has faced growing pressure to clear the camp of the remaining uncharged men before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes power next month.
"Fifteen men remain who have never been charged with any crimes and have long been cleared by U.S. security agencies to leave Guantánamo, some for more than a decade," Daphne Eviatar, director of the Security With Human Rights program at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement earlier this month after the Biden administration announced the transfer of three never-charged men out of the prison camp.
"President Biden must transfer these men before he leaves office, or he will continue to bear responsibility for the abhorrent practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial by the U.S. government," said Eviatar. "It has been 23 years; President Biden can, and must, put an end to this now."
The transfer was announced on the same day that a Pentagon appeals panel "upheld a military judge's finding that the plea deals in the September 11 case are valid, clearing the way at least for now for a guilty plea hearing next week with the accused mastermind of the attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," The New York Times reported Monday. Mohammed is among the Guantánamo detainees who have been charged with a crime by a military commission.
"Col. Matthew N. McCall, the judge in the case, had ruled that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III acted too late and beyond the scope of his authority when he rescinded the three deals on August 2, two days after a senior Pentagon appointee had signed them," the Times reported. "Under the pretrial agreements, or PTAs, Mr. Mohammed and two co-defendants agreed to plead guilty to war crimes charges in exchange for life prison sentences rather than face a death-penalty trial."
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Top US Nitrogen Gas Producers Ban Use in Executions
"Drug manufacturers don't want their medicines diverted and misused in torturous executions and the makers of nitrogen gas share the same objection: They do not want their products to be used to kill," said one campaigner.
Mar 11, 2024
Three of the leading U.S. manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas said this week that they will not allow their products to be used in executions, a move that came after Louisiana approved the controversial capital punishment method recently used to kill an Alabama prisoner who appeared to be in agony before he died.
Airgas—owned by the French company Air Liquide—along with Air Products, and Matheson Gas told The Guardian that they are banning the use of their nitrogen gas products in the previously untested execution method used to cause death by hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen to vital tissues.
Veterinarians consider nitrogen gas unethical for euthanizing animals and United Nations human rights experts have asserted that the execution technique may violate international anti-torture law.
"Airgas has not, and will not, supply nitrogen or other inert gases to induce hypoxia for the purpose of human execution," the company said.
Matheson Gas told The Guardian that use of its products in executions is "not consistent with our company values," while Air Products told the U.K.-based newspaper that it has established "prohibited end uses for our products, which includes the use of any of our industrial gas products for the intentional killing of any person (including nitrogen hypoxia)."
Four states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma—have approved nitrogen gas for use in executions. Last week, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed legislation passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature expanding execution methods to include the electric chair and nitrogen hypoxia. This, despite the agonizing execution in January of 58-year-old Kenneth Smith, who was killed by the state of Alabama by nitrogen hypoxia on January 25 after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-ditch appeal.
Rev. Jeff Hood, a spiritual adviser to U.S. death row inmates, witnessed Smith's killing, which he described as "horrific and cruel." Hood and other witnesses said Smith convulsed violently for several minutes while he was strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe nitrogen gas through a mask. Even prison guards were taken by surprise as the gurney shook and Smith struggled for his life.
Alabama officials had claimed that nitrogen hypoxia is "perhaps the most humane method of execution ever devised."
States have sought alternative means of killing condemned prisoners—including nitrogen gas and firing squads—ever since the European Union banned the sale and export of lethal injection drugs in 2011.
Maya Foa, co-executive director of the anti-death penalty group Reprieve, told The Guardian that "drug manufacturers don't want their medicines diverted and misused in torturous executions and the makers of nitrogen gas share the same objection: They do not want their products to be used to kill."
"States which claim that the lethal injection or gas inhalation are 'humane' methods of execution are merely seeking to mask what it means for a state to forcibly put someone to death," Foa added. "The makers of these products see through the lie and naturally want nothing to do with it."
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Despite Promises of MBS, Saudi Arabia Executed 172 People Last Year
"Behind the mega-investments in sport and the facade of reform, the kingdom remains one of the world's top executioners," said the director of one human rights group.
Jan 02, 2024
Since King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took control of Saudia Arabia nine years ago, executions have surged—a trend that continued last year, a pair of human rights organizations said Tuesday.
The crown prince, or MBS—Saudi Arabia's prime minister and de facto leader—has pledged to curb capital punishment in recent years. However, Reprieve and the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) announced that the kingdom executed at least 172 people in 2023.
The state-controlled Saudi Press Agency put the number at 170, including four on New Year's Eve.
Reprieve and ESOHR previously highlighted that from 2010-14, Saudi Arabia had an average of 70.8 executions per year. After MBS and his father rose to power in 2015 through 2022, it jumped to 129.5—a nearly 83% increase. That was when the tally for 2022 was 147, but the Saudi Human Rights Commission later confirmed it was 196, a modern record.
"It is terrifying to think that this is business as usual in Mohammed bin Salman's Saudi Arabia," Reprieve director Maya Foa said Tuesday. "Behind the mega-investments in sport and the facade of reform, the kingdom remains one of the world's top executioners."
"Owning the wrong books, posting a critical tweet, speaking to a journalist, or disagreeing with the crown prince can earn you a death sentence," she continued. "And while world leaders stare at their shoes and agree to believe the regime's lies, the killing continues relentlessly."
Amnesty International revealed last May that Saudi Arabia ranked third in the world for executions, based on 2022 data. China was in the top spot, followed by Iran, and the group was unable to establish figures for Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, and Vietnam.
Reprieve and ESOHR noted that Saudia Arabia's "true number of executions cannot be ascertained with confidence" and "there is also no way of knowing how many hundreds or even thousands of people are on death row as the kingdom's capital justice system is almost entirely opaque."
ESOHR legal director Taha al-Hajji stressed that "the crown prince has blamed 'bad laws' and rogue judges for Saudi Arabia's continued execution crisis, but nothing gets done in the kingdom without his approval."
"His endless empty promises of reform are contradicted by the facts: It has been yet another year of bloodshed in Saudi Arabia," al-Hajji added. "Protesters and child defendants remain at imminent risk of execution with a stroke of the ruler's pen."
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