The Pentagon reduced its Guantánamo prison camps census to 174 foreign captives on Thursday, announcing that it had sent two Arabs to resettlement in Germany.

Germany's leading Der Spiegel newspaper identified one as Ahmed Mohammed al Shurfa, 34, a stateless man of Palestinian descent who was born in Saudi Arabia. He was seen by a hospital in Hamburg and would be resettled there.

The second was Mahmoud Salim al Ali, 36, according to the newspaper, a Syrian citizen would would be resettled by state authorities in Rhineland-Palatinate, in western Germany.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere announced the transfer hours ahead of the Defense Department in a statement that asked the media to grant the men anonymity to help them adapt to life in Germany.

De Maiziere noted in a statement that Germany took in another former inmate from Guantánamo in 2006 -- German-born Turkish citizen Murat Kurnaz, now 28. Kurnaz, however, had grown up in Germany and was repatriated as a resident to live with his mother.

For years, both before and after the Kurnaz repatriation, the Germany government balked at requests to resettle Guantánamo captives who had been cleared of wrongdoing but couldn't return to their homelands for fear of political or religious repression.

Hamburg, the resettlement site of one of the two men sent there this week, was also the base of an al Qaeda cell where some of the 9/11 hijackers lived before the terror attack.

German officials visited the prison camps earlier this year to interview resettlement candidates, and Der Spiegel quoted an unnamed government as saying, ``We haven't brought a sleeper into our country.''

De Maiziere said Thursday that said Germany had ``made its humanitarian contribution to closing the detention center.''

President Barack Obama said just last week he still seeks to empty the controversial detention center.

Thursday's transfer meant that 15 nations that have taken in noncitizens or nonresidents for resettlement from Guantánamo. They include Albania, Bermuda, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cape Verde, France, Georgia, Ireland, Latvia, Palau, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland. Italy also took custody of two Tunisians in late 2009 for trials.