WASHINGTON — The Pentagon sent three Guantanamo detainees to Saudi Arabia on Friday, capping a week of far-flung transfers that the Obama administration said signaled global cooperation in its effort to close the controversial prison camps in southeast Cuba.
''With these latest transfers, the U.S. government has moved nine detainees over the course of this week to locations in Bermuda, Chad, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia,'' said Justice Department attorney Matthew Olsen in a statement late Friday.
In fact, the tally was 10 detainees sent from the remote prison camps. The week opened with the first-ever transfer of a war-on-terror captive from Guantanamo to U.S. soil for trial.
Federal marshals moved Tanzanian Ahmed Ghailani, about 35, from Guantanamo's prison camp for former CIA captives to New York City for federal court arraignment. He is accused of conspiring in al Qaeda's twin suicide bombings of two East African U.S. embassies in 1998, and could be sentenced to death, if convicted at a civilian criminal trial.
Friday, the Justice Department said, Khalid Saad Mohammed, 35, Abdalaziz Kareem Salim Al Noofayaee, 33, and Ahmed Zaid Salim Zuhair, 36, were all repatriated to the Saudi Kingdom. An Obama administration task force approved them for release, it said after years held at Guantanamo under suspicions of terror ties.
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