The United States announced the release Wednesday from the Guantanamo military prison of a Saudi engineer seized over two decades ago as a suspect in the September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks but never charged.
Ghassan Al Sharbi, 48, was detained with an Al-Qaeda associate in March 2002. He was targeted because he had studied at an aeronautical university in Arizona and attended flight school with two Al-Qaeda hijackers in the 9/11 plot.
The US military had weighed charges against Sharbi and others but dropped them in 2008.
Yet it continued to hold him as an enemy combatant in the military prison in the US Navy’s base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His status remained limbo — he was never charged but not approved for release.
But in February 2022, the Pentagon’s Periodic Review Board, which deals with Guantanamo release petitions, ruled that the native of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, could be released.
It said he had no leadership or facilitator position in Al-Qaeda and was compliant in detention – after he was viewed as a hostile prisoner years earlier.
It also said he had unspecified “physical and mental health issues.”
The 2022 decision indicated he could enter Saudi Arabia’s longstanding rehabilitation program for radicals, which seeks to slowly change their viewpoint while ensuring they will be monitored as they return to society.
The review board said in a statement Wednesday that it recommended that Sharbi be transferred to Saudi custody “subject to the implementation of a comprehensive set of security measures including monitoring, travel restrictions and continued information sharing.”
With Sharbi’s release, 31 detainees remain at Guantanamo, down from a peak of nearly 800.
Of them, 17 are eligible for transfer, and the Pentagon and State Department seek countries to accept them.
Another three are eligible for a Periodic Review Board review, nine face charges under military commissions, and two have been convicted in such commissions. (AFP)
