Reduction of Guantanamo prisoners to 26 people with the transfer of a member of al-Qaeda to Tunisia

According to Isna, 59-year-old Reza bin Saleh El-Yazidi spent several years in this prison because no agreement was reached to return or relocate him.

According to the New York Times, he was never tried in a court-martial and his transfer to Tunisia was approved a decade ago.

The man’s airlift to Tunisia in a secretive operation was completed 11 months after the US Department of Defense notified Congress that an agreement had been reached to bring him back to Tunisia. The Pentagon has not provided any details on the security arrangements surrounding the Guantanamo detainee’s return.

Elizidi’s transfer is the fourth transfer in the last two weeks and the latest efforts of the Biden administration to reduce the prison population in this prison, which held 40 prisoners when Biden took office. Elizidi’s departure leaves 26 detainees, 14 of whom are ready to be transferred to other countries based on diplomatic and security agreements.

Elizidi is the last of dozens of Tunisians who were once in Guantanamo, and most of them were captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and were transferred to this prison as terrorist suspects.

According to documents leaked in 2007, Pakistani forces arrested Elizaidi near the border with Afghanistan in December 2001, when he was among a group of 30 men trying to escape from the Tora Bora war zone. Some of them were the bodyguards of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda.

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