Prisoners: Who's Still Held?

15 of the 16 men still held at Guantánamo who have been approved for release. Top row, from L to R: Moath Al-Alwi, Khalid Qasim, Ridah Al-Yazidi, Muieen Abd Al-Sattar, Toffiq Al-Bihani. Middle row: Said Salih Said Nashir, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, Sharqawi Al-Hajj, Abdulsalam Al-Hela, Sanad Al-Kazimi. Bottom row: Suhayl Al-Sharabi, Gouled Hassan Dourad, Omar Al-Rammah, Mohammed Abdul Malik, Hassan Bin Attash.

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By Andy Worthington; last updated in April 2023.

779 prisoners have been held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Of those, 739 have been released or transferred, including one who was transferred to the U.S. to be tried and subsequently convicted, and nine have died, the most recent being Adnan Latif, in September 2012.

30 men are still held, and three of these men were recommended for release by high-level governmental review processes under President Obama back in January 2010. A fourth man was approved for release towards the end of the Trump presidency, and 12 more men have been approved for release since President Biden took office in January 2021, out of 19 approved for release in total under Biden — three in May 2021, two more in June 2021, three more in October 2021, five more in November and December 2021, two more in February 2022 (see here, and here), two more in April 2022, another in July 2022, and another in September.

Seven of the men approved for release since Biden took office have been freed. The first, Mohammed al-Qahtani, was released in March 2022, sent back to Saudi Arabia where he can receive the urgent psychiatric support unavailable to him in Guantánamo, another, an Afghan, was freed in June, a third man, Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani and Guantánamo's oldest prisoner, was finally freed in October, two other Pakistanis, Ahmed and Abdul Rahim Rabbani, were finally freed in February 2023, Ghassan Al-Sharbi, a Saudi, was repatriated in March 2023, and Said Bakush, an Algerian, was repatriated in April. As a result, 16 men (53 percent of the men still held) are currently approved for release but still held.

Eleven others are facing or have faced trials in the broken military commission system, while the three others have been accurately described as "forever prisoners," held explicitly without charge or trial, and with their cases only reviewed via an administrative, rather than a legal process, the Periodic Review Boards, which were established under President Obama.

Trump released only one man in his four lamentable years in office, Ahmed al-Darbi, who was returned to Saudi Arabia for ongoing imprisonment in May 2018, six weeks later than he was supposed to have been repatriated under the terms of a plea deal he agreed to four years earlier.

In July 2021, President Biden also released a prisoner, sending Abdul Latif Nasser (approved for release in 2016) back to his home in Morocco, and, as noted above, in March 2022 he released a second prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani. At the start of April, Sufyian Barhoumi, another man approved for release in 2016, was repatriated to Algeria, in June Asadullah Haroon Gul, an Afghan, was also freed, and in October Saifullah Paracha was flown home to Pakistan. In February 2023, a sixth prisoner was released under President Biden, when Majid Khan, whose terrorism-related sentence ended on March 1, 2022, was resettled in Belize,and, as noted above, the Rabbani brothers were also freed in February, Ghassan Al-Sharbi in March, and Said Bakush in April. We hope to hear of more releases very soon.

To join the campaign for the prison's closure in 2023, print off a poster showing how long Guantánamo has been open, and urging Joe Biden to close it, via the Gitmo Clock, take a photo with it, and send it to us. The prison had been open for 6,950 days when Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, and marked its 7,671st day of operations on Jan. 11, 2023, the 21st anniversary of its opening.

Please also note that the numbers before the men’s names are their ISN numbers (the "Internment Security Numbers" by which they are identified in Guantánamo).

Some background to the list

196 of the 779 prisoners were released under President Obama, and although no prisoners were released for 15 months from January 2011, two Uighur prisoners (Muslims from China's Xinjiang province) were released in April 2012, another man, Ibrahim al-Qosi, who was given a two-year sentence after a plea deal in July 2010, was released in July 2012, and in September 2012, Omar Khadr, a former child prisoner, was transferred to Canada to serve the rest of the sentence he negotiated as part of plea deal in October 2010.

In August 2013, following a promise to resume releasing prisoners that President Obama made in May, after the majority of the remaining prisoners had embarked on a hunger strike to remind the world of their plight, two Algerians — cleared for release in January 2010 by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established when he took office in January 2009 — were released, and in December 2013 two more Algerians were repatriated — although these two men didn't want to go home — and two Saudis were then released.

These releases were then followed by the repatriation of two Sudanese prisoners — Noor Uthman Muhammed, as the result of a plea deal in February 2011, and Ibrahim Idris, who had been cleared for release by the task force, but whose eventual release was ordered by a judge after the Justice Department failed to contest his habeas corpus petition, accepting that he was severely mentally ill.

At the end of 2013, three more men were given new homes in Slovakia — the last of the 22 Uighurs (Muslims from China's oppressed Xinjiang province) whose release into the U.S. had been ordered by a judge in October 2008, but then overturned.

In March 2014, another Algerian — Ahmed Belbacha — was repatriated, and on May 31, 2014, five Taliban prisoners were released in Qatar, in exchange for the release of the sole U.S. prisoner of war in Afghanistan, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani Network since 2009.

In November 2014, Fawzi al-Odah, one of the last two Kuwaitis in Guantánamo, was freed, and, also in November 2014, six more prisoners were released — three Yemenis were given new homes in Georgia, a Yemeni and a Tunisian were resettled in Slovakia, and a Saudi was repatriated.

In December, six more men were released — four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian — who were accepted as refugees in Uruguay, and four Afghans were repatriated, and the very end of the year five more men — two Tunisians and three Yemenis — were sent to Kazakhstan.

In January 2015, another five men — all Yemenis — were resettled. Four of the men were sent to Oman, while the fifth was sent to Estonia, and in June 2015 another six Yemenis were resettled in Oman. In September 2015, a Moroccan was repatriated, and also a Saudi, who was a long-term hunger striker, and at the end of October a Mauritanian was repatriated, and Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, was released and returned to the U.K. On November 13, five Yemenis were released, sent to the United Arab Emirates, where, sadly, they have been subjected to ongoing imprisonment.

As 2016 began, two Yemenis were released, and given new homes in Ghana, Fayiz al-Kandari, the last Kuwaiti in the prison, was released, as was a Saudi, and ten Yemenis were given new homes in Oman. On the eve of the seventh anniversary of President Obama's promise to close the prison within a year (on January 22), it was announced that two more men had been freed — an Egyptian in Bosnia, and a Yemeni in Montenegro. In April, after over two months with no releases, two Libyans were given new homes in Senegal, although they were subsequently repatriated to Libya two years later, where they were imprisoned by militias, and nine Yemenis were then rehoused in Saudi Arabia. In June, another Yemeni was given a new home in Montenegro, and in July three more men were freed — one to Italy, and two to Serbia.

In August 2016, the largest single release under President Obama took place, when 15 men — 12 Yemenis and three Afghans — were sent to the United Arab Emirates, although they too were then subjected to ongoing imprisonment. Six of these men had been approved for release by Obama's task force in 2010, and nine others had been approved for release by Periodic Review Boards. In October, another release took place — of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, torture victim and best-selling author, who had also been approved for release by a PRB, and in December another Yemeni approved for release by a PRB was freed in Cape Verde. As 2017 began, President Obama released four more Yemeni prisoners — to Saudi Arabia. Ten men were released to Oman on Jan. 16, 2017, and four more men were released on Jan. 19, 2017, Obama's last day in office, some joining their beleaguered former prisoners in the UAE.