Yemen reaffirms never conditions Gitmo returns

SANA'A, June 08 (Saba) - An official source on Sunday rejected
claims by the National Organization for Defending Rights and
Freedoms HOOD that the Yemeni government refuses to accept its
Guantanamo detainees, saying such claims were baseless.

Yemen has never conditioned and will never ask for money from the US
in return for the transfer of its nationals at Guantanamo to their
homeland, however, the Yemeni government insists on sending the
Yemeni detainees home, the source said.

"I wonder reclaiming that Yemen sought money for the return of its
people, after Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi illustrated Yemen's
stance towards the detainees in April," the source added.

Furthermore, Yemen even rejects sending its citizens to another
country, the source said, pointing to a US plan aiming at sending
all or some of the Yemeni detainees to Saudi Arabia.

The US praises the Saudi rehabilitation programs and facilities,
saying under such rehabilitation programs and facilities they can
ensure the returnees would never regroup.

Earlier, the US said they had talked to Saudis over the plan.

Yemen firmly rejected the move, saying it harms its sovereignty. It
assured the US that it would prepare suitable rehabilitation
programs to ensure the best reintegration of the detainees after
their release.

Recently, the US Defense Minister Robert Gates discussed, while on a
visit to Riyadh, the topic of the Yemeni detainees, saying the US
and the Kingdom tackled sending Yemeni detainees to Saudi centers.

On April 26, Yemen denied reports that it asked for $ 100 million
from the US government in return it accepts its Guantanamo
detainees, affirming it welcomes sending its nationals to their
homeland and assuring effective rehabilitation programs would be
prepared for the returnees.

Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi said the reports were baseless,
pointing to Yemen's persistent efforts and calls for releasing its
citizens detained at the US jail in Cuba.

The sum of $ 11 million Yemen had received from the US government
was not under a deal to send the detainees to their homeland, rather
it was in US aid to enable the government to prepare rehabilitation
programs for the returnees, Al-Qirbi made clear.

Part of the sum would be used to establish a rehabilitation center
of Yemeni Gitmo returnees, he said.

Their cases would be handled based on their files and international
evidence, he concluded.

Head of the HOOD lawyer Khalid al-Anesi earlier said that the
government had placed conditions for receiving its detainees, who
the US recently said were posing the biggest obstacle to closing the
jail.

The US wants to shut the prison by January 2010.

100 out of the remaining inmates at the US naval base at Guantanamo
bay, Cuba, are Yemenis.

Late on Monday, a Yemeni Gitmo detainee died at the US jail, with
the US officials saying it was an apparent suicide. Mohammed Ahmed
Abdullah Saleh, 31, had been on a long hunger strike and he was
found dead in his cell late on Monday night.

His death was the sixth at Guantanamo since the US began arresting
terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks.

Five of the six deaths were suicides and the other died of a cancer.

Salah was buried at his village in Yemen's southern province of
Abyan on Saturday.

FR