U.S. Transfers First Guantánamo Detainee Under Trump, Who Vowed to Fill It
[ad_1] WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has transferred a Guantánamo Bay prisoner to the custody of Saudi Arabia, a spokeswoman announced on Wednesday. The handoff is the first time a detainee has left the wartime prison under President Trump, who vowed to fill it back up but has now instead overseen a reduction in its population. The prisoner, Ahmed Muhammed Haza al-Darbi , is unlikely to be set free soon. American officials intend for him to serve the roughly nine years remaining in a 13-year sentence he received after pleading guilty before a military commission to terrorism-related offenses involving a 2002 Qaeda attack on a French-flagged oil tanker off Yemen’s coast. “My words will not do justice to what I lived through in these years and to the men I leave behind in prison,” Mr. Darbi said in a statement provided through his volunteer lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York. “No one should remain at Guantánamo without a trial. There is no justice in th...