The number of detainees remaining at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility dropped to 76 this week, following the transfers of two prisoners to the Government of Serbia.
The Pentagon announced the transfers of Tajik national, Muhammadi Davlatov, and Yemeni-born Mansur Ahmad Saad al-Dayfi in a statement on Monday. The men had been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2002.
One of the detainees, al-Dayfi was cleared for transfer last October, after an inter-agency review board overturned a prior determination in 2010 that he was too dangerous for release.
The other man, Davlatov, who also goes by the name of Umar Abdulayev, had long been cleared for transfer by the Bush administration, but feared returning to his home country.
His lawyer Matthew O’Hara told the Miami Herald in 2009 that Davlatov would “rather stay another seven years in Guantánamo than go back to Tajikistan.”
Speaking to the paper on Monday, O’Hara said he was “delighted” for his client.
“It took way too long but it’s an enormous victory that he would get out of Guantánamo and he wouldn’t go to Tajikistan,” the attorney stated.
In a press release, Secretary of State John Kerry thanked Serbia for its “generous assistance.” Serbia is the 31st country since 2009 to accept transferred detainees.
The latest round of transfers come as President Obama’s opportunities to close the prison rapidly narrow.
Last month, Reuters reported that the President had clashed with his Attorney General Loretta Lynch over a policy change that would allow Gitmo detainees to plead guilty in US courts via videoconference. The move would have allowed the President to work around restriction imposed by Congress, barring detainees from coming to the US to face trial or imprisonment.
Lynch said the procedure violated US criminal justice rules, and the President opted not to overrule the Attorney General.
It was also reported last month that the administration was no longer considering taking executive action to close the facility without the approval of Congress.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan had threatened to sue the President if he acted unilaterally to close Guantanamo.
