US Releases 5 Guantanamo Bay Detainees

The US government has released five people previously held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the government of Kazakhstan.

The New York Times reports that the group consists of three Yemenis and two Tunisians. They are a part of the 28 people the US has released from Guantanamo in 2014 alone.

The Yemenis were arrested in 2001 by the Pakistani military and handed to the US government, where they spent 12 years at the Cuba facility. Although they are just now being released, the US government determined that they were not a threat to the US or its interests five years ago. The Yemenis' names are Asim Thabit Abdullah al-Khalaqi, Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna and Sabri Mohammad Ibrahim Al Qurashi.

The Tunisians are known as Adel al-Hakeemy and Abdullah bin Ali al-Lufti. Hakeemy spent just shy of 13 years in US custody, while Lufti was held for almost 12 years.

The release of these prisoners comes just weeks after Uruguay accepted six detainees on behalf of the United States. Prisoners have also been released to Afghanistan.

The flurry of releases caps off the work by Cliff Sloan, the government bureaucrat charged with shutting down Guantanamo Bay, which Obama promised he would do when he first ran for office in 2008.

Sloan resigned from his position after a year and a half amid rumors that he was frustrated with the slow pace with which the Department of Defense would approve of his transfer requests. It has also been reported that this foot dragging by the DoD was a major factor in the decision to force out the previous Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel.

There are around 130 detainees left at Guantanamo Bay.