GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba _ A former detainee repatriated by the Obama administration in late 2009 was killed in recent air strikes in Yemen, the Pentagon said Monday.
Navy Capt. Jeff Davis identified the dead detainee as Yasir Ali Abdallah al-Silmi, who was killed Thursday "in a U.S. strike in Abyan Governorate, Yemen." Davis said al-Silmi was held at Guantanamo as Detainee 679, where he was called Mohammed Tahar. He was returned to his homeland in December 2009.
Tahar's brother, Ali Abdullah Ahmed, also was held at Guantanamo, and was among three captives the military said committed suicide simultaneously at Camp Delta in 2006.
Tahar's leaked 2006 Guantanamo prison profile shows he was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002 in coordinated security services raids that scooped up suspected foreign fighters in three different suspected al-Qaida safe houses.
The most prominent among them was the high-value detainee known as Abu Zubaydah.
Tahar's prison profile put him at a different site, the Issa safe house, but described him as similar to those captured at the Zubaydah safe house, intending to return "to Afghanistan to conduct attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces using improvised explosive devices." Many of the captives captured that day were subsequently released.
