EXCLUSIVE: Oman Expels Two Dozen Ex-Guantanamo Detainees To Yemen

Edited by Sam Thielman

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ALMOST ALL OF THE 28 YEMENI MEN whom the sultanate of Oman agreed to resettle from Guantanamo Bay between 2015 and 2017 have been expelled from the country over the past few weeks, FOREVER WARS has learned. 

Five sources familiar with the expulsion, including two Yemeni survivors of Guantanamo themselves, told FOREVER WARS that an eviction foreshadowed since at least the spring has sent nearly all the repatriated former detainees back to their native Yemen. The handful who remain in Oman are expected to face imminent deportation. 

The Obama administration had prevailed upon Oman to accept the Yemenis. Both that administration and human-rights experts concluded that these men would likely face persecution in Yemen owing to both the stigma of Guantanamo and Yemen's ongoing U.S.-facilitated instability. That risk of so-called "refoulement" remains, according to some of the men who have been sent back to Yemen and their advocates. 

 "Former Guantanamo detainees are treated as disposable and unimportant."

The reasons behind the expulsion are unclear, even to the many of the at least 24 men expelled thus far. Several former Guantanamo detainees and their advocates have over the past ten years praised the hospitality the Omani sultanate extended to them. Some said that Omani officials told them that the U.S. had approved the expulsion.

"The Omani officials informed us that the U.S. government had given them the green light to send us back to Yemen," one former Guantanamo detainee told FOREVER WARS on condition of anonymity for his safety. "When we asked for proof of this, they refused to provide any. It became clear that their primary goal was to deport us and have us say that we left willingly." 

The State Department did not substantively respond to questions from FOREVER WARS about the U.S. giving any tacit or explicit "green light" for the expulsions, or whether it asked Oman for any measures or reassurances that the Yemenis would be protected. Vincent Picard, a spokesman for the State Department, said that Oman "has provided support and financial aid to these detainees for far longer than we originally asked," adding that the U.S. "never had the expectation that former Guantanamo detainees would remain in receiving countries forever." He directed further questions to Oman, whose Washington embassy did not respond to FOREVER WARS. The International Committee of the Red Cross did not provide a substantive response by publication time. 

Unlike many other countries accepting Guantanamo detainees, Oman granted them healthcare, housing, job training and some financial resources. But even though they were free from their direct captivity, the former detainees found their lives constrained. They were unable to travel outside Oman, own businesses, or pursue higher education. Still, despite their diminished prospects, many of them found work, got married and had children. 

A second former Guantanamo detainee, also granted anonymity for his safety, said that he had wished to stay in Oman, but the Omanis threatened him with the loss of the life he had built for himself. 

"The Omanis treated us well until the day they informed us that we had to leave," the former detainee said. "On that day, officials threatened us, saying that if we chose to stay, we would lose housing, residency, healthcare and our children wouldn't be able to attend school. We would be left without jobs. One of them even warned, 'We are going to show you the other face,' implying that they would make our lives unbearable until we agreed to leave."

Advocates for the detainees said that Oman had compromised the principle of non-refoulement, which holds that countries may not send asylum-seekers, ex-prisoners or others to a country of origin where such people remain at risk of retribution. It's not a hypothetical fear. At least one former Guantanamo detainee, Abdulkadir al-Madhfari, whom the United Arab Emirates released into Yemen years ago, was promptly detained by the Houthis. If the United States gave any form of green light to the sultanate for the expulsion, the advocates said, then it, too, bears culpability for eroding a bedrock principle of human-rights protection. 

"This term non-refoulement contains a simple idea, which is one of our oldest international law protections, basically that a person should never be sent back to a country where he could be the subject of torture or life-threatening harm. Non-refoulement should be an absolute protection, because countries like Oman have a choice to protect these vulnerable torture survivors or not," said Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who until last year was the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. "Sending these men to Yemen puts them in profound danger. Yemen is a country in the midst of a brutal civil war, and is also being bombed by the United States and other allied countries. Sending former Guantanamo detainees, men who have been the victims of U.S. torture and ill-treatment back to Yemen flies in the face of the most fundamental human rights obligations of both Oman and the United States."

Beth D. Jacob, an attorney who represents two Yemenis who left Guantanamo for Oman, added that at least some of those sent back to Yemen may be at risk of persecution or physical harm. "Not all of them have families to come back to, and it is not always safe for the families to have someone rejoin them with the stigma of Guantanamo, even if that stigma is unfair or untrue," Jacob said.  

Mansoor Adayfi, a former Guantanamo detainee who now coordinates CAGE International's Guantanamo Project, and has been in touch with several of the men he met in the infamous detention center. "When the men arrived in Yemen, they were shocked," Adayfi said. "It was expensive, there was no health care, no education, no jobs… It's a big mess." 

In May, the Washington Post reported that Oman had sent word of the imminent expulsions. The Post quoted Lee Wolosky, Kaidenow's predecessor in the Obama administration who negotiated the Oman transfers, as saying the expulsion, while unfair and unfortunate, did not "violate any agreement or understanding made with the United States at the time of transfer." 

Jacob disputed that. "My clients and I were told at the time that this was a permanent transfer. They were told to rebuild their new lives and make a home. They told me when they got to Oman, the Omanis welcomed them in and told them 'This is your new home,'" she said. "This is particularly surprising because Oman treated them so well. The welcome they received and the support they received from Oman was superb." 

Jacob also noted that at least some of the Yemeni former Guantanamo detainees wished to return to Yemen. Not long after the Washington Post report, Omar Deghayes, a Libyan former Guantanamo detainee, posted to LinkedIn a message praising the support provided them by the sultanate and stating, seemingly from the perspective of the Yemeni ex-detainees, "Regarding the issue of returning to Yemen, some of us expressed willingness to go back if and when the situation improves, while others decided to stay."   

Added Ní Aoláin, the former U.N. rapporteur: "No one is saying that former detainees get to stay forever in Oman. But the idea of sending torture victim survivors back to a country of conflict and bombing, where they will not be safe, is a travesty. The United States should be doing everything in its diplomatic power to protect the victims of torture and ill-treatment at Guantanamo. It should provide every support to Oman to keep these men safe and in Oman until it is safe to send them home. Instead, former Guantanamo detainees are treated as disposable and unimportant. The U.S. has forgotten its international law obligations to those whom it has ill-treated and tortured, but the world will not".

A final cohort of 11 Yemeni detainees remain at Guantanamo. They do not face charges before the military commissions there. The Biden administration reportedly struck another deal with Oman to accept them, but canceled it after the post-October 7 turmoil in the Middle East. (Oman, while generally stable, came under attack last month from the so-called Islamic State.) An anonymous official quoted by the Post in May said the Omanis were "making room" for the next cohort, setting off speculation – speculation that FOREVER WARS cannot confirm, and frankly does not even understand – that the transfer may ultimately go through, even without a deal for a ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas. But why Oman would expel 28 people to make room for 11 is unclear. 

Only one former Guantanamo detainee sent to Oman does not face expulsion. But his circumstances are more tragic. 

That man, Emad Hassan, experienced a decade and a half of captivity by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, all due to a misunderstanding. Apprehended by the Pakistanis in a post-9/11 sweep of foreigners, Hassan was a Yemeni from the unfortunately-named town of al-Qaeda. When an American interrogator asked him if he was from al-Qaeda, Hassan told the truth, and it doomed him. 

Hassan was ultimately released to Oman – and was told by the Omanis this spring that he would have to leave. But the severely ill Hassan passed away before his expulsion. Adayfi, his friend, will memorialize Hassan in tomorrow's edition of FOREVER WARS. 

In general, Adayfi said, the experience of the Yemenis in Oman is a symptom of "Guantanamo 2.0," or what he calls life after Guantanamo.

"We live after Guantanamo a life of stigma and surveillance," Adayfi told FOREVER WARS. "The U.S. punished us for 15 years. The rest of the world punishes us for the rest of our lives." 

THE EXPULSION OF THE YEMENIS FROM OMAN is not the only piece of disturbing Guantanamo news recently. Last week, Ravil Mingazov, a Russian national who spent the past 22 years in detention centers from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay to the United Arab Emirates, was sent by the UAE to Russia, where he is very likely to face persecution. 

FOREVER WARS friend Elise Swain reports for The Intercept:

The UAE eventually expelled all the [23] Guantánamo detainees it had promised to keep to their countries of origin, leaving Mingazov behind as the only former Guantánamo detainee still in the Emirates.

Multiple human rights organizations and Mingazov’s immediate family have for years sought to block this outcome. Fears escalated last October when Russian and Emirati officials pushed the prisoner to accept a Russian offer of custody. 

Choosing to remain in solitary confinement in the UAE, Mingazov refused to sign documents that would trigger a return to Russia. Now he has been sent without his sign-off, according to his son.

Advocacy groups have been raising public awareness about Mingazov’s situation for years. Nonetheless, he languished in solitary confinement for the entirety of his seven years in the UAE. He had no access to a lawyer, and phone calls to his family were cut off, then denied completely, when he would start to speak about his conditions, his son explained. 

Two sources of mine with extensive but diverse familiarity on this issue were extremely fired up about it. The UAE violated unambiguous assurances that they would not send Mingazov back to Russia, which each of my sources found deeply alarming, particularly from an increasingly close U.S. regional ally. Whatever happened here, the UAE could reasonably expect that it was not going to encounter significant American opposition, given that the UAE has done this to all other Guantanamo veterans it agreed to resettle.

Neither of my sources, however, offered a theory as to why the UAE opted to fulfill the Russian offer at this time. Elise's story notes that the Russians and the Emiratis closed in on one last fall. As she reported at the time, the United Nations warned of "substantiated risks to Mr. Mingazov’s physical and moral integrity, if repatriated against his will."

One of my sources called attention to Mingazov's desertion from the Russian military more than two decades ago. The source expected the Russians to offer Mingazov a choice between prison and re-enlistment/deployment to Ukraine. 

This has been a disgraceful summer for everything involving Guantanamo. That is truly saying a lot, considering what Guantanamo is, was and always will be.

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