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Hundreds of Yemeni families of Guantanamo detainees demonstrated outside Yemen's Parliament |
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Iqbal Tamimi / Journalist and Human Rights activist 13 /2 / 2008
Hundreds of families and relatives of Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo demonstrated before the parliament to demand more pressure on the Yemeni and American governments to work to release 104 Yemeni detainees remaining in Guantanamo prison.
The statement was issued by ‘Hood’ the Yemeni human rights organization, which means the vast majority of them in Guantanamo after being released Most of the detainees from other nationalities.
Demonstrators of women, men and children lifted pictures of the detainees and banners boring sentences like(we demand the closure of Guantanamo prison, free our children immediately, we demand the closer of secret prisons in the United States and other areas claiming they were built to counteract terrorism). Two Yemeni human rights organizations, The Hood Organization and the Organization of Alkarama were working for years to help free the prisoners of Guantanamo; they both issued a message to the parliament in which they stated: "The families and relatives of prisoners in Guantanamo demand the closure of all illegal American prisons including the ones in Afghanistan, and Cuba. And they demand the release of all detainees and returning them back to their countries including Yemenis who are definitively the largest number amongst other different nationalities. The letter noted that although many States have received most of its citizens in those prisons, Yemen still has not received but only 17 detainees, four of whom were extradited from secret prisons and 13 were released from Guantanamo, leaving 104 Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo, and two in Bagram prison detained there since six years. The families and relatives of the Yemeni detainees requested of the Yemeni Parliament and the government to make more efforts and pressure on the American government to take serious action regarding the process to release the prisoners.  They called also for the formation of a parliamentary committee to follow up the issues related with the Yemeni prisoners abroad, and finding facts about what has been done by the Yemeni government in this regard. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on the United States of America many times to handed over Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo, as well as the detainees Muhammad Ali Almoayyed, and his Mohammed Zayed.
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The National Coalition