Guantánamo’s Sole Kenyan Prisoner Is Freed; 15 Other Men Long Approved for Release Must Now Be Freed Too

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Wonderful news from Guantánamo, as Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, the prison’s sole Kenyan prisoner, and one of 16 men who had long been approved for release, has been repatriated and reunited with his family, leaving 29 men in total still held at the prison.

The release confirms that, behind the scenes, the Biden administration has taken seriously the scandal of holding 16 men unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes — decisions that were taken between two and four years ago, and in three outlying cases, nearly 15 years ago.

Bajabu, with two other men, was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, a parole-type process established by President Obama in 2013, almost three years ago, on December 27, 2021, but had not been freed in part because the review process is purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to free any of these men if they cannot be bothered or find it politically inconvenient.

With Donald Trump about to take office, President Biden has, evidently, belatedly recognized that it might help his legacy to finally address the plight of these 16 men, many of whom had been told that they would be resettled in Oman in October 2023, but had their release cancelled — when a plane was already on the tarmac at Guantánamo — because of what the administration perceived as the “political optics” of freeing anyone from Guantánamo after the Hamas attacks in southern Israel.

The release also brings to an end the second longest period in Guantánamo’s entire sordid history that no prisoner has been freed. The last release from the prison, before Bajabu, was 20 months ago, in April 2023, and the longest time that elapsed when no prisoner was freed was three years and two months, from May 2018, when Donald Trump released the sole prisoner transferred under his watch (a Saudi repatriated to continue serving a prison sentence that had started at Guantánamo), and July 2021, when President Biden released the first of the eleven prisoners who have now been freed in his four years in office.

Bajabu had been held for nearly 18 years, but was never charged with a crime, as is the case with the majority of the 779 men held at Guantánamo by the US military since the prison opened nearly 23 years ago. An outlier, who arrived at the prison in March 2007, he had been seized in connection with his alleged involvement in terrorism in East Africa, although, as I explained when I wrote about him in March, marking 800 days since he had been approved for release, the entire story of his capture and transfer to Guantanamo was “largely incomprehensible.”

As I stated in my article:

For the US authorities, he was regarded as having had “a close relationship with high-level operational planners and members of Al-Qa’ida in East Africa,” and had also been involved in terrorist attacks in Mombasa in November 2002, although investigators working with his lawyers at Reprieve suggested that what had actually happened was that, as I described it in 2021, “he was seized and badly beaten by Kenyan police, who, although they ‘apparently found no evidence linking [him] to any criminal activity … drove him to an airport and handed him, with no form of judicial process, to US military personnel.’”

From Kenya, “he was flown to Djibouti, ‘where he was detained in a shipping container on a US military base and told by interrogators that he was about to embark on a “long, long journey,” and was then flown to Afghanistan, where he was held at Bagram ‘in appalling conditions,’ and at a second prison, and was then flown to Guantánamo.”

After his arrival at Guantánamo, he was clearly not considered significant, as he was not given a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which was a pre-requisite for being put forward for a trial by military commission, suggesting that there was actually no case against him. This was a a suspicion that was essentially confirmed after President Obama took office, when the Guantánamo Review Task Force {Obama’s first review process, in 2009] didn’t recommend him for prosecution, putting him, instead, in the group of 48 men recommended for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial [who were subsequently made eligible for the PRBs].

In May 2016, a Periodic Review Board reviewed his case, but upheld his ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial, and in 2019, under Donald Trump, he boycotted his next hearing, in common with the majority of the prisoners, who had appropriately concluded that the entire process had become a sham. He then had to wait until September 2021 for a PRB under President Biden, at which, finally, he was approved for release, after a hearing in which his attorney, Mark Maher, had pointed out that he was “among the most compliant detainees,” and had also noted his devotion to peace and healing.

As Carol Rosenberg noted in a New York Times article about Bajabu’s release, at that same PRB hearing Mark Maher also told the board that he “had two sisters living in Kenya and a wife and children living in Somalia, who would move to Kenya to be reunited with him”, adding also that his devotion to peace and healing included studying the works of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

It is very much to be hoped that this release is followed by the release of more of, or, preferably, all of the 15 other men who have long been approved for release and who have been waiting for so long for their freedom to be restored.

President Biden has only three more days to finalize any releases or resettlements that have not yet been confirmed, because, by law, Congress demands 30 days’ notification before any Guantánamo prisoner is freed, meaning that, to be freed by January 19, before Trump takes office, and, presumably, seals Guantánamo shut once more, Congress must be notified by December 20.

Hopefully, however, other arrangements for the release of prisoners are already in place. As the Department of Defense explained in its press release about Bajabu’s release, “On Nov. 14, 2024, Secretary of Defense Austin notified Congress of his intent to repatriate Bajabu to Kenya.”

We must hope that, over the last month, Lloyd Austin did the same for other men approved for release.

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See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009 (out of the 532 released by President Bush), the 196 prisoners released from February 2009 to January 2017 by President Obama, the one prisoner released by Donald Trump, and the first ten prisoners released by President Biden, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else – either in print or on the internet – although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files, and for the stories of the other 390 prisoners released by President Bush, see my archive of articles based on the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011: June 2007 – 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 – 16 Saudis; August 2007 – 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 – 16 Saudis; 1 Mauritanian; 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 – 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; 14 Saudis; December 2007 – 2 Sudanese; 13 Afghans (here and here); 3 British residents; 10 Saudis; May 2008 – 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 – 2 Algerians; 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 – 2 Algerians; September 2008 – 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 – 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; 2 Algerians; 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan), repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 – 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 —1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani); 4 Uighurs to Bermuda; 1 Iraqi; 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad); 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni; 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); 2 Somalis; 4 Afghans; 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland; 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania; 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini); 1 Algerian; 1 Syrian to Cape Verde, 1 Uzbek to Latvia, 1 unidentified Afghan to Spain; September 2010 — 1 Palestinian, 1 Syrian to Germany; January 2011 — 1 Algerian; April 2012 — 2 Uighurs to El Salvador; July 2012 — 1 Sudanese; September 2012 — 1 Canadian (Omar Khadr) to ongoing imprisonment in Canada; August 2013 — 2 Algerians; December 2013 — 2 Algerians; 2 Saudis; 2 Sudanese; 3 Uighurs to Slovakia; March 2014 — 1 Algerian (Ahmed Belbacha); May 2014 — 5 Afghans to Qatar (in a prisoner swap for US PoW Bowe Bergdahl); November 2014 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fawzi al-Odah); 3 Yemenis to Georgia, 1 Yemeni and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia, and 1 Saudi; December 2014 — 4 Syrians, 1 Palestinian and 1 Tunisian to Uruguay; 4 Afghans; 2 Tunisians and 3 Yemenis to Kazakhstan; January 2015 — 4 Yemenis to Oman, 1 Yemeni to Estonia; June 2015 — 6 Yemenis to Oman; September 2015 — 1 Moroccan and 1 Saudi; October 2015 — 1 Mauritanian and 1 British resident (Shaker Aamer); November 2015 — 5 Yemenis to the United Arab Emirates; January 2016 — 2 Yemenis to Ghana; 1 Kuwaiti (Fayiz al-Kandari) and 1 Saudi; 10 Yemenis to Oman; 1 Egyptian to Bosnia and 1 Yemeni to Montenegro; April 2016 — 2 Libyans to Senegal; 9 Yemenis to Saudi Arabia; June 2016 — 1 Yemeni to Montenegro; July 2016 — 1 Tajik and 1 Yemeni to Serbia, 1 Yemeni to Italy; August 2016 — 12 Yemenis and 3 Afghans to the United Arab Emirates (see here and here); October 2016 — 1 Mauritanian (Mohammedou Ould Slahi); December 2016 — 1 Yemeni to Cape Verde; January 2017 — 4 Yemenis to Saudi Arabia; 8 Yemenis and 2 Afghans to Oman; 1 Russian, 1 Afghan and 1 Yemeni to the United Arab Emirates, and 1 Saudi repatriated to Saudi Arabia for continued detention; May 2018 — 1 Saudi to continued imprisonment in Saudi Arabia; July 2021 — 1 Moroccan; March 2022 — 1 Saudi (Mohammed al-Qahtani); April 2022 — 1 Algerian; June 2022 — 1 Afghan; October 2022 — 1 Pakistani (Saifullah Paracha); February 2023 — 1 Pakistani to Belize (Majid Khan); 2 Pakistanis; March 2023 — 1 Saudi; April 2023 — 1 Algerian.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

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