By The Western Journal (Politics) | Created at 2025-01-07 18:59:56 | Updated at 2025-01-12 23:43:22
5 days ago
The control tower of Camp VI detention facility is pictured at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, on April 17, 2019. (Alex Brandon - File / AP)
President Joe Biden’s pardons and commutations have already made his lame-duck transitional period notorious.
Now, in what The New York Times described as a “secret operation” early Monday, he’s nearly halved the population of the country’s most notorious prison for terrorists and terrorism suspects.
He sent Guantanamo Bay prisoners back to the Middle East.
The transfer was announced in an after-the-fact news release from the Defense Department, which stated that 11 Yemeni nationals had been shipped from the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Sultanate of Oman.
All of the men are former members of the terrorist group al-Qaida who were captured in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to NPR.
Two of the men are suspected of having served as bodyguards to the now-deservedly deceased al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, according to the New York Post.
The Biden administration was on the cusp of releasing them to Oman back in October 2023 when the plan was “derailed” by objections in Congress, according to the Times.
And there are still objections in Congress.
Should Guantanamo Bay remain open?
In a post on the social media platform X, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called the move “utterly shameful.”
She was replying to a post by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’d used the same words to describe reports that President-elect Donald Trump planned to pardon some of those convicted for their role in the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
It is utterly shameful that today the Biden administration released 11 Yemeni terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and sent them back to Oman.
Releasing Islamic terrorists who would kill every American in the name of their god is a dangerous endorsement of terrorism.
It is wrong. It… https://t.co/zsuaAvLXeH
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) January 6, 2025
And there was plenty of opposition elsewhere, too.
“He’s trying to cause as much damage as possible on his way out,” the conservative LibsofTikTok X account commented.
JUST IN: Joe Biden has released 11 Yemeni t*rrorists from Guantánamo Bay who were captured in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
He’s trying to cause as much damage as possible on his way out. pic.twitter.com/aynURQRIiJ
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 6, 2025
“Infuriating,” wrote conservative commentator Nick Sorter.
#BREAKING: Joe Biden has just RELEASED 11 YEMENI TERRORlSTS from Guantanamo Bay just days before leaving office
Infuriating.
These terr*rists were captured in the aftermath of 9/11, and despite the rapidly deteriorating state of the Middle East, Biden decided to send them… pic.twitter.com/42w3xIX2Y7
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 6, 2025
Conservative radio host Jimmy Failla took a more comical perspective:
The bad news is Biden just released 11 Guantanamo Bay detainees. The good news is The View just lost its last 11 viewers.
— Jimmy Failla (@jimmyfailla) January 7, 2025
“The bad news is Biden just released 11 Guantanamo Bay detainees,” he wrote. “The good news is The View just lost its last 11 viewers.”
The Times reported that the transfer left the prison — a culturally and politically charged institution popularly known as “Gitmo” — with just 15 prisoners, in two buildings with room for 250.
It is the fewest it’s held since it opened with 20 prisoners in January 2002, according to the Times.
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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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