The closing down of the Guantanamo detention centre was in US' security interest, the Obama administration maintained on Wednesday, amid a clamour among lawmakers for a review of the decision and for stopping of the transfer of detainees to Yemen.
"We believe closing Gitmo is in the national security interest of the country," a senior administration official said.
Soon after coming to power, US President Barack Obama, had announced his decision to close the Guantanamo detention centre in one year.
With reports emerging that two Al Qaeda leaders, once Guantanamo detainees, were behind the failed plot to bomb a US Airliner mid-air, several lawmakers demanded the decision be reviewed and the sending of detainees to Yemen be stopped.
Though unlikely to meet its deadline of January 2010, the Guantanamo detention centre is on its way to be closed with many of the detainees expected to be transferred to Yemen.
"We are confident that any transfers that we are making are being made not only consistent with our national security interests but also with what we consider to be a fundamental national security interest in closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay," said a senior Administration official.
He was responding to question referring to demands by several US lawmakers in this regard who said the Guantanamo detainees should not be released to Yemen at this time.
"I think some of us were struck by the fact that when Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula was formed... one of the recruiting and motivational tools it used... to generate sympathy for its cause as well as recruits was the facility at Guantanamo Bay," the official said.
Three top Republican Senators -- Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Joe Lieberman -- wrote to Obama expressing concern over the transfer of six Yemeni detainees held at Guantanamo.
The Senators urged that until the US was certain the detainees would not return to the battlefield, all detainee transfers to Yemen should cease.
"It is worth noting that Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula's longstanding deputy Said Ali al-Shihri, was previously held in Guantanamo Bay, but was released in 2007," the Senators wrote.
He subsequently returned to the battlefield and has been implicated in numerous terrorist plots, they said.
The senators said many of the other leaders of AQAP were previously held in Yemeni custody but escaped in February 2006 from a maximum-security prison in Sanaa, Yemen's capital.
Referring to the fact that the Department of Defense has estimated that at least 14 percent of released detainees have reengaged in terrorism, they said: "The current conditions and threat of AQAP activities are clear evidence of the danger in repatriating these Yemeni detainees at this time".
Senator Dianne Feinstein Yemen was "too unstable", while lawmaker Frank Wolf in a letter also urged Obama to halt transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen.
"It is inconceivable that you would release terrorist detainees to Yemen and Afghanistan at the same time you are launching missiles at terrorist targets," Wolf said.
