[02/July/2009]

WASHINGTON, July 02 (Saba) - Yemen has renewed its request to the U.S. administration to release all Yemeni detainees at the U.S.-run Guantanamo and Bagram prisons and hand them over to Yemen.

In a meeting gathered the Yemeni embassy's political consultant in Washington Khaled Al-Kathiry with deputy assistant of the U.S. Justice Minister Bruce Swartz, the two Yemeni and U.S. officials talked over the conditions of the Yemeni detainees in the U.S. Guantanamo and Bagram military bases.

Al-Kathiry and Swartz discussed the legal and healthy circumstances of Sheikh
Mohammed al-Moayad and his companion Mohammed Zayed who have been spent six years in US prisons.

The U.S. official said that the U.S administration is currently preparing several procedures to transfer al-Moayad to a medical center.

"Under the directives of President Barack Obama, a U.S. committee is currently reviewing the files of a number of the Yemeni detainees", said Swartz.

Swartz praised the good level of the mutual cooperation between his country and Yemen in various fields.

Nearly 100 Yemenis remain at Guantanamo, the largest national group by far and almost half the 239 detainees at the camp. More than a dozen Yemenis have been cleared for return, and the vast majority have never been charged, but in the more than seven years since Guantanamo began receiving prisoners.

The U.S. has sent only 14 Yemenis home and only two in the past two years.

For al-Moayad, 60, and Zayed, 38, they were arrested in Germany in 2003 and extradited to the United States. A US court sentenced al-Moayad in 2005 to 75 years in prison and Zayed to 45 years over alleged financial support of al-Qaeda.

A US Court of Appeals overturned the convictions last October and ordered a retrial because of inflammatory testimony about unrelated terrorism cases in the first trial. Yemen has repeatedly called for the release of the two men.

Yemeni officials say al-Moayad was lured to Germany by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through a Yemeni agent and a Muslim American who asked the scholar to come to Germany ostensibly to receive a donation for a charity he runs in Sana'a.

MD/YA

Saba