The U.S. flew five men held at the naval prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to new homes in Slovakia and the country of Georgia on Thursday, the Defense Department said Thursday, bringing the number of detainees down to 143 from a onetime high of almost 800.
The Pentagon announced the transfers in two brief press releases that included only the men's names and the countries that had agreed to accept them. Three of them — identified as Salah Mohammed Salih Al-Dhabi, Abdel Ghaib Ahmad Hakim and Abdul Khaled Al-Baydani — were sent to Georgia, and the two others — Hashim Bin Ali Bin Amor Sliti and Husayn Salim Muhammad Al-Mutari Yafai — were sent to Slovakia.
At its peak after the start of the war in Iraq, the prison camps held 779 prisoners captured as "enemy combatants" or terrorism suspects in more than a dozen countries. Earlier this year, the U.S. agreed to trade five detainees in exchange for the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by the Taliban since 2009.
