Yemen to receive 7 Gitmo prisoners [Archives:2007/1041/Front Page]

By:Mohammed Al-Jabri
SANA'A, April 11 ) Yemen will receive seven prisoners soon to be released by the United States from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, Yemen's Ministry of Defense revealed.

The ministry's 26 September.net news web site reported that Yemen will receive the seven after completing procedures with U.S. authorities.

The detainees to be released are: Mohammed Sa'eed bin Salma, Mohammed Hassan Al-Odaini, Sadeq Mohammed Ismail, Ali Yahya Al-Mahdi, Adel Sa'eed Al-Hajj, Ali Nasser Al-Kadi and Farouq Ali Mohammed.

It's estimated that more than 120 Yemeni nationals are being held at Guantanamo; however, the U.S. government has submitted to Yemen a list of only 106 Yemeni prisoners.

A team including U.S. attorneys representing Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo is due to visit Yemen in May to meet with the detainees' families, briefing them on the situation of their detained relatives.

On Monday, 13 Guantanamo detainees reportedly began a long-term hunger strike at the detention facility to protest against a new policy of strapping prisoners into restraint chairs while they are fed via plastic tubes inserted through their nostrils.

The 13 striking detainees are the highest number to endure the force-feeding regimen on an extended basis since early 2006, when the U.S. military broke a long-running hunger strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners into “restraint chairs” while they are fed via plastic tubes inserted through their nostrils, the New York Times reported.

Prisoners on hunger strike are monitored constantly and subjected to feeding twice a day.

The newspaper quoted 27-year old Yemeni Adnan Farhan Abdullatif as saying, “My wish is to die. We're living in a dying situation.”

Yemen is an ally of the United States in its fight against terrorism.
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