The United States has held a total of 115 Yemeni citizens at Guantanamo Bay, forty-two of whom have since been transferred out of the facility.
[1] Only Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia had a greater number of their citizens held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
[5] Falkoff wrote that the delay in his release is due to a failure of the United States and Yemeni governments to reach an agreement on the security arrangements for the detainees, following their repatriation.
[citation needed] On December 25, 2009, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (whose mother is from Yemen)[6] allegedly tried to set off a suicide bomb on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.
By December 27, 2009, responding to rumors that Abdulmutallab had confessed to being trained and equipped in Yemen, various American politicians, including Joe Lieberman, Pete Hoekstra, Peter T. King and Bennie Thompson, called for American President Barack Obama to halt plans to repatriate the Yemenis.