Yemen denies Guantanamo inmates heading to Saudi

SAN’A, Yemen — Yemen on Sunday denied reports that it has agreed to a U.S. proposal to transfer almost 100 Yemeni inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison to terrorist rehabilitation centers in Saudi Arabia.

The statement comes days after U.S. officials said they were close to a deal with the two countries. The Yemenis make up the largest national group among the remaining Guantanamo detainees, and determining their fate is key to President Barack Obama’s plan to close the prison.

Yemen’s Foreign Ministry said the country was still discussing with the U.S. the possibility of transferring the detainees back home. It issued a statement saying the country “denies media reports about the transfer of Yemeni detainees from the prison at Guantanamo to rehabilitation centers in Saudi Arabia.”

A Saudi official declined comment Sunday, saying the issue concerns Yemen only.

The U.S. has been hesitant to send the detainees home because of Yemen’s history of either releasing extremists or allowing them to escape from prison. U.S. officials have made a strong push for Yemen to endorse the Saudi plan because the kingdom has one of the most successful militant rehabilitation programs.

Negotiations over the fate of the Yemeni inmates have been under way for months, stalled over a Saudi demand that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh publicly endorse the proposal, U.S. officials have said. Saleh has refused to do so fearing a backlash among his people, the officials said, and, as of late last month, he preferred for Yemen to set up its own rehabilitation centers.

Obama has pledged to close Guantanamo, a Navy detention center that houses suspected terrorists, by early next year. U.S. officials have been searching for places to resettle detainees, lobbying hard with foreign governments. The pace of those efforts picked up last month after Congress said it would prevent detainees, even those cleared of wrongdoing, from being brought to the U.S.

Over the last week alone, the Obama administration transferred 10 detainees out of Guantanamo. Two were sent to Chad and Iraq, one was brought to New York to stand trial in civilian court, four were sent to Bermuda and three to Saudi Arabia.

A deal in principle has been reached with the Pacific island nation of Palau to accept some Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs. That leaves 229 detainees still at the U.S. military detention center in Cuba.

Hundreds of extremists, including Guantanamo detainees, have gone through the Saudi rehabilitation program, receiving job training, psychological therapy and religious re-education before being sent back to society. The vast majority have not rejoined the fight, according to Saudi officials and terrorism experts.

Yet some have. In February, Saudi Arabia said that 11 former Guantanamo detainees who went through the rehab program were on its government’s most wanted terrorist list for their connections to al-Qaida. Among them was Said Ali al-Shihri, who emerged as a leader of Yemen’s branch of al-Qaida after being released from the Saudi program last year.