ACCRA: Two Yemenis transferred to Ghana after their release from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba said on Monday they hoped to live peacefully and rebuild their lives in the West African country.

Mahmud Umar Muhammad bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby were held in Guantanamo for more than a decade. Their transfer to Ghana was announced by the US Defense Department last week.

“We were wrongly arrested for 14 years without any charge against us but we are not looking for revenge. We want to live in Ghana quietly and peacefully and we want to put our life together,” Bin Atef told state radio on Monday.

Dozens of countries have received former Guantanamo Bay detainees but the transfers of Bin Atef and Dhuby were the first to Ghana.

The government has granted permission for the two to remain in the country for two years, subject to security clearances, and has sought to play down concerns about their presence in Ghana.

US Government documents posted online by the New York Times identified Dhuby, who was sent to Guantanamo in May 2002 after his capture in Afghanistan, as someone who had been asessed as “a probable member” of Al-Qaeda. Bin Atef was identified by in the same documents as “an admitted member of the Taliban.”

Both men had been cleared for release by the Pentagon years ago, however.

“I just want the listeners and the people of Ghana to know that we are not a part of any bad group, like Al-Qaeda or anything like that,” Bin Atef said on state-run UniiqFM.