WH silent on Yemeni detention facility

The White House on Thursday wouldn’t confirm a report that the administration was in talks with Yemen to set up a detention facility outside its capital city of Sana to house suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the U.S. government continued “to work on transfers” from Guantanamo, but that he wouldn’t comment on “conversations or negotiations with the Yemeni government.”

“It is and remains the president’s goal to close the Gitmo facility,” Carney said. “That’s a goal shared by many, both Democrats and Republicans, including military leaders, because it’s in the interests of our national security in the United States.”

Carney’s sidestepping came on the heels of a Los Angeles Times report that said U.S. and Yemeni officials were negotiating how the facility would be funded and whether it would function as a prison or type of halfway house to allow detainees to reenter society.

Read more from The Hill.