The transfers of Saad Muhammad Hufsayn Qahtani and Hamood Abdulla Hamood lower the prisoner population to 160 and follow the repatriation of two prisoners to Algeria this month.

The Saudi detainees, who had been held at Guantanamo since 2002, were not charged with a crime.

The facility was set up to house foreigners suspected of acts of terrorism against the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

US President Barack Obama promised to shut down the Guantanamo facility during his 2008 presidential campaign, saying it had damaged the reputation of the United States around the world. But he has been unable to do so during nearly five years in office, in part because of resistance from Congress.

One of the Saudi detainees, Hamood, 48, was initially listed by the US military as a Yemeni national, though his late father lived in Saudi Arabia.

Military documents alleged that he was an Al-Qaeda courier who fought on the front lines against US-led forces near Bagram, Afghanistan, and then fled to Pakistan. He was captured by Pakistani forces in a raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda safe house in February 2002.

Qahtani, 35, told US investigators that he was a student who went to Afghanistan in April 2001 to fight on the side of the Taliban. Military documents say he was an Al-Qaeda member who volunteered to become a suicide bomber. He fought US forces near Kabul, then fled through the Tora Bora mountains into Pakistan, where he was captured in December 2001.

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