Four Guantanamo Bay prisoners transferred to Afghanistan

Four prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay have been released and repatriated to Afghanistan, the US announced.

The men, who had been in the camp for more than 10 years, were named as Shawali Khan, Khi Ali Gul, Abdul Ghani and Mohammed Zahir. They had been cleared for transfer for some time and are not considered to represent security risks in Afghanistan, where US troops are still deployed.

The release of the men reduces the number of inmates held at Guantánamo to 132, eight of whom are from Afghanistan.

Khan, 51, was sent to Guantánamo 11 years ago “on the flimsiest of allegations”, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. His lawyers said he had been a driver for the Hamid Karzai government.

Gul, 51, was arrested in 2002 and accused of being a Taliban intelligence officer. He said he never worked for the group and that two of his “enemies” had turned him over to US troops.

Ghani, 42, was captured in 2002 as a suspected member of a Taliban-linked faction and was originally accused of “war crimes”. He said someone falsely accused him of carrying out a rocket attack; he was cleared by an inter-agency review.

Zahir, 61, was arrested in 2003 and accused of links to Taliban weapons caches, but he denied any connection and was also cleared for transfer.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order to close Guantánamo in January 2009. Earlier this month, six inmates were released to Uruguay.

A US official told Reuters the men were flown to Kabul overnight, aboard a US military plane, and released to Afghan authorities in the first such transfer since 2009. The official said the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, had requested the transfer.

Paul Lewis, the Defense Department’s special envoy for the closure of Guantánamo, said: “This repatriation reflects the Defence Department’s continued commitment to closing the detention facility at Guantánamo in a responsible manner.”

A Pentagon statement said the men had been “unanimously approved for transfer” by an inter-agency task force.