Sana'a, Yemen - The former driver of al-Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden arrived in the Yemeni capital Sana'a Wednesday after his
release form the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, security
sources said.
Salim Hamdan, 40, arrived on a US military plane that landed in a
military base near Sana'a International Airport, the sources told
Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Hamdan was convicted by a US military commission in August of
supporting terrorism and sentenced to five and a half years in
prison. He is due for release in January with time served.
He was arrested by the US forces in Afghanistan in 2001, and
transferred to the Guantanamo prison in 2002.
Interior Ministry officials said Hamdan was taken to an
intelligence prison in Sana'a to serve the last five of his sentence.
A government official said Hamdan would be sent through a
rehabilitation programme.
'During his brief detention he would go through an extensive
rehabilitation programme that includes dialogue with religious
scholars,' the official told dpa.
About 100 of some 250 detainees at the controversial prison camp
in Guantanamo Bay are Yemenis. They have become the single largest
nationality locked up in Guantanamo as the prison's population
steadily declined from a peak of 600 in 2003.
Only 12 Yemenis have been released from the facility since it was
set up in 2002.
Of these, five were later released by Yemeni authorities while the
rest were put on trial in Yemen for falsifying identification
documents.
None was charged with terrorism-related activities.
A team of US lawyers representing Yemeni nationals detained at
Guantanamo appealed to the Yemeni government last year to take
visible steps to secure the release of its citizens.
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