RIYADH, 22 February 2007 — Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that seven Saudi detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba have been released by US authorities. The Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency that the seven detainees arrived in Riyadh yesterday morning. The ministry gave the names of the released detainees as: Majed Al-Harbi, Rashed Al-Ghamdi, Faisal Al-Naser, Muhammad Al-Harbi, Naser Al-Subaei, Abdullah Al-Judi and Majed Al-Qurashi.
Interior Minister Prince Naif welcomed the release of the Saudi detainees. “Following directives from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, the Kingdom is pursuing its efforts to get all Saudis held in Guantanamo Bay released,” he told SPA.
According to the spokesman of the Interior Ministry Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, this is the seventh group of detainees to be freed. Al-Turki said that the ministry had arranged for detainees’ families to meet the freed prisoners in Riyadh. Asked about the fate of other detainees previously released from the prison, the spokesman said that they had been tried according to the laws of the Kingdom and released.
“All in the six previous groups have been tried and released from prison,” he told Arab News. He said that the latest group had undergone medical tests upon their arrival and would be tried according to the Saudi laws. “If their trials produce no evidence against them, they will be released,” he said.
Arab News met some of the freed detainees’ family members yesterday. Abdullah Al-Subaei, the brother of Naser Al-Subaei, said he had learned about his brother’s release from the Interior Ministry which phoned the family early yesterday morning.
“We arrived from Jubail this morning to meet Naser in the afternoon,” he said. Abdullah said that his mother had been hospitalized due to high blood pressure due to her constant worrying about her son’s condition in prison. “As soon as we told her the good news, she immediately asked us to take her with us to Riyadh. Her spirits are up and we are all excited,” he went on. He said that it had been several years since he saw his brother and that the family understood that Naser had been captured by US authorities while doing charity work near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
“There have been no letters for over a year. We have been very worried. But thank God, he is back home now,” he said. Abdullah thanked Prince Muhammad ibn Naif, assistant interior minister for security affairs, for his support for the families of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
The release of the seven Saudis yesterday from Guantanamo puts the remaining number of Saudis still there at 68, down from the original 130, according to attorney Kateb Al-Shammari who represents the families of some of the Saudi detainees.
“The Saudi authorities have allowed families to visit their loved ones in prison every day for a week from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.,” he said. He also said that many of the families had arrived from areas outside of Riyadh and had been provided free air tickets and free accommodation by the Interior Ministry.
In November last year, a delegation of lawyers representing Saudi detainees held in Guantanamo Bay informed the Human Rights Watch (HRW) delegation visiting the Kingdom that detainees in the prison were still receiving brutal and inhumane treatment. Some of the lawyers read to the HRW officials letters which they had received from the inmates who wrote about beatings, hunger strikes and the desecration of the Holy Qur’an. HRW officials, for their part, said they had not been informed of such incidents but took notes of the points raised in the meeting.
