U.S. to Free 16 Saudi Terrorism Suspects

Sixteen of the estimated 128 Saudi terrorism suspects imprisoned here will be released to their government this week in the largest transfer of detainees in a year, a Saudi official announced Wednesday.

The U.S. decision to release the 16 suggests diplomatic headway by the State Department in getting foreign governments to take responsibility for their detained nationals and clearing the way for reducing the prisoner population, still numbering more than 460, at this U.S. base in southern Cuba.

The decision to release the 16 was announced in Washington by the visiting Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, who said the men would be jailed upon arrival while a judicial review weighed whether criminal charges were in order.

The Pentagon refused to confirm Saud’s announcement.

The transfer would bring to about 288 the number of Guantanamo captives sent off the island since the first of at least 759 arrived in January 2002.

With more than 100 other Saudis in detention here, the foreign minister’s announcement could signal the Saudi government’s willingness to assure Washington that the transferred prisoners would not be subjected to torture or allowed to threaten U.S. security. Saudis account for the second-largest national group among the “enemy combatants” after Afghans, who number more than 200 and also are being gradually repatriated under negotiated conditions.

Saud said the 16 who were headed home were the first Saudis to leave Guantanamo, but Pentagon announcements last year said three were sent home in July and a fourth in November. Their release would be the largest since April 2005, when 17 Afghans and a Turkish citizen deemed “no longer enemy combatants” were sent to their home countries.

Most of the 19 hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were Saudi citizens; most, if not all, were in conflict with the kingdom’s leadership. This raised concerns among human rights monitors that the men detained in connection with the U.S.-led war on terrorism could face abuse once back in the hands of their government.

“Human Rights Watch has been and remains seriously concerned about the U.S. government’s insistence on using diplomatic assurances to paper over its responsibility not to send people where they will face a substantial likelihood of torture,” said Katherine Newell Bierman, counter-terrorism counsel for the rights group in Washington.

In an account of Saud’s announcement posted on the Saudi Embassy’s website, the foreign minister said the transferred detainees would “be jailed, and the proof against them examined. They will then either be put on trial or released. For those found guilty at trial, punishments will be determined by the courts.”

Saud declined to identify the 16 being transferred or to disclose whether either of the two Saudi detainees charged so far were among them. Jabran Said bin al Qahtani, 29, and Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi, 31, are among the most hostile to the U.S. military tribunal process of the 10 prisoners formally charged so far.

Release of the 16 Saudis would bring to about 465 the number of prisoners at Guantanamo’s sprawl of razor-wire-encircled metal mesh cells, wooden barracks and maximum-security prison at the base here.