WASHINGTON: The United States announced Wednesday the release from the Guantanamo military prison of a Saudi engineer who was captured two decades ago as a suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks but was never charged.
Ghassan al-Sharbi, 48, was detained in March 2002 along with an al-Qaeda associate. He was targeted because he attended an aeronautical university in Arizona and attended flight school with two of the al-Qaeda hijackers involved in the 9/11 plot. .
The US military had considered charges against Sharbi and several others, but they were dismissed in 2008.
Yet he was held as an enemy combatant at the military prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his status remained defunct – he was never charged but was not granted release.
But in February 2022, the Pentagon’s Periodic Review Board, which deals with Guantanamo Bay release requests, ruled that the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia resident could be released.
It said he had no leadership or facilitator position in al-Qaida and was amenable to detention – whereas years earlier he had been viewed as an enemy prisoner.
He also said he had unspecified “physical and mental health issues”.
The 2022 decision indicated that he could enter Saudi Arabia’s long-standing rehabilitation program for radicals, which seeks to gradually change its approach while ensuring that they are monitored when they return to society.
The review board said in a statement on Wednesday that it had recommended that Sharbi be transferred to Saudi custody “with a comprehensive set of Saudi security measures including surveillance, travel restrictions and continued information sharing”.
With Sharbi’s release, 31 detainees remain at Guantanamo, down from a peak of about 800.
17 of them are eligible for transfer and the Pentagon and the State Department are trying to accept them from the countries.
Three more are eligible for periodic review board review, while nine are facing charges under military commissions and two have been convicted at such commissions.
