Last Sudanese Gitmo prisoners come home

KHARTOUM: The last Sudanese prisoners to be released from US detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba arrived home Thursday, as US President Barack Obama accelerates efforts to close the infamous facility.
US military personnel helped Mohammed Noor Uthman and Ibrahim Othman Ibrahim Idris onto the exit stairway of a US Air Force transport plane after it landed in Khartoum. Both former prisoners wore Muslim skull caps, and the bearded Idris smiled as a Sudanese official greeted him.
The United States announced on Wednesday that it had transferred the two men from the controversial prison at a US naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. Uthman, 51, and Idris, 52, were both considered by the US military to be members of Al-Qaeda.
The transfers came as Obama accelerated repatriations of Guantanamo detainees to meet his campaign promise to close the prison built to house terrorism suspects captured around the world.
His predecessor George W. Bush opened the facility after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Abubakr Elsiddig could not immediately say whether any restrictions would be placed on Uthman and Idris in their home country.
“I understand that they will be taken for a medical checkup,” he said.
A US defense official confirmed they were the last Sudanese held at Guantanamo. Idris was seen by the Pentagon as a veteran member of the terrorist network who swore loyalty to its now slain leader Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s. He was among the first detainees to arrive at Guantanamo Bay on January 11, 2002. Uthman was sent there in May of that year.
In exchange for a guilty plea to terrorism offenses in February 2011, part of Uthman’s 14-year sentence was suspended and he completed his term on Dec. 3.
Idris, who had been cleared for transfer since 2009 by an interagency task force, was released following an October order from the US District Court in Washington.
“As directed by the president’s January 22, 2009, executive order, the task force conducted a comprehensive review of Idris’s case, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, in making that designation,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale said.
“The United States coordinated with the government of Sudan regarding appropriate security measures and to ensure that these transfers are consistent with our humane treatment policy,” Breasseale said in a statement.
A senior Sudanese Foreign Ministry official, Abdulaziz Hassan Salih, told the state SUNA news agency that the prisoners’ release came after “intensive communication” between Foreign Minister Ali Karti and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Salih said Uthman and Idris had “suffered” in prison.