Faha Sultan - History

History

In January 2002, the United States completed the first phase of construction of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at its naval base in Cuba. It was designed to hold enemy combatants captured in its war on terror - most taken during action in Afghanistan beginning in the fall of 2001. In total, the US has held 133 Saudi Arabian citizens at Guantanamo. The United States has held a total of 778 detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps at its naval base in Cuba since the camps opened on January 11, 2002. The camp population peaked in 2004 at approximately 660. As of September 2012, 167 detainees remain at Guantanamo.

Three Saudis: Yasser Talal Al Zahrani, Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi and Abdul Rahman al-Amri, died at Guantanamo in 2006 and 2007 during their detention. All were announced by the United States Department of Defense (DOD) as suicides.

The first two were among three men who died on June 10, 2006; the circumstances of their deaths have been strongly questioned by numerous sources, including the Saudi government and the men's families. Journalists and the Center for Policy and Research in its 2009 report have noted glaring inconsistencies in the NCIS report of 2008. Based on an account by four former guards at Guantanamo, Scott Horton suggested in 2010 that the men died as a result of torture and government agencies tried to cover this up.

Al-Amri died on May 30, 2007 as an apparent suicide, according to DOD.

As a result of these deaths, the Saudi government strongly pressured the United States to repatriate its citizens. It developed a reintegration program for former detainees and has worked with them on religious re-education, and reintegrating them into society by arranging for marriages and jobs. From June 2006 and December 2007, a total of 93 Saudi citizens were returned to the country. As of today, eleven Saudi citizens are still held at the detention camp.