US transfers Saudi Guantanamo detainee to Riyadh

The United States has repatriated a Saudi national to Saudi Arabia after keeping him behind bars in Guantanamo prison for 21 years over suspected involvement in the suspicious September 11, 2001 attacks.

According to Press TV, in a statement on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that it had released 48-year-old Saudi national Ghassan al-Sharbi and returned him to Saudi Arabia to "subject to the implementation of a comprehensive set of security measures including monitoring, travel restrictions and continued information sharing."

According to officials, Sharbi was released because he was deemed no longer enough of a threat to the US to be held in military detention.

Sharbi, an engineer and a native of Jeddah, was detained along with another alleged al-Qaeda associate in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002, and was taken to the Guantanamo military prison over purported involvement in the suspicious 9/11 attacks, which were claimed by the terrorist group of al-Qaeda.

He was deemed linked to the terror attacks because of his education in aeronautical engineering at an Arizona university and attending flight school with a pair of the al-Qaeda hijackers involved in the plot.

The US military had weighed charges against Sharbi and a number of others but dropped them in 2008. However, it continued to keep him behind bars as an enemy combatant in the military prison in the US Navy's base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his status remained in limbo.

Sharbi was never charged but was not approved for release, either.

In February 2022, the Pentagon's Periodic Review Board, which deals with Guantanamo release petitions, ruled that Sharbi's detention "was no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States."

It further said that he had no leadership or facilitator position in al-Qaeda, noting that he had unspecified "physical and mental health issues."

With Sharbi's release, 31 other detainees still remain at Guantanamo, down from a peak of nearly 800.

ME