U.S. Transfers First Detainee Out of Gitmo Under Trump, Who Vowed to Fill Its Cells

[Miles Archer]

U.S. Transfers First Detainee Out of Gitmo Under Trump, Who Vowed to Fill Its Cells



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/us/politics/guantanamo-detainee-transferred-trump-al-darbi.html

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.

***

Mr. Obama, who inherited 242 detainees from Mr. Bush, shared that view and significantly winnowed the inmate population without adding new detainees. But Congress blocked him from bringing several dozen detainees deemed untransferable to a different prison on domestic soil.

By contrast, Mr. Trump boasted during the campaign that he would not only keep the prison open, but also “load it up with some bad dudes.” But defying the expectations created by that rhetoric, his administration, too, has brought no new captives to Guantánamo — and now the population has instead shrunk.

[lagomorph777]

1. Good - need to free up some room there

...for Manafort, Flynn, Page, Pruitt, ... and Trump.