WASHINGTON: The US Defence Department said on Wednesday that it had repatriated two Malaysian men from its Guantanamo prison, leaving 27 still held at the American base in Cuba.

“In consultation with our partners in Malaysia, we completed the requirements for responsible transfer,” the department said in a statement.

The two — Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep — had pleaded guilty “to multiple offenses, including murder in violation of the Law of War, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, conspiracy, and destruction of property in violation of the Law of War,” the Defence Department said in a statement. But they cooperated and provided testimony against the alleged mastermind of the 2002 attacks on nightclubs in Bali and the 2003 attack on a hotel in Jakarta, the department said.

Sentences of about five years in detention were approved for the men and it was “recommended that both men be repatriated or transferred to a third-party sovereign nation to serve the remainder of the approved sentence,” it said. Malaysia’s Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution confirmed the government had received the two Guantanamo Bay detainees and said the process was based on the principles of human rights and universal justice.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2024