RIYADH (Dispatches) – A Saudi detainee at Guantanamo Bay who allegedly tried to take part in the 9/11 hijacking plot has been sent back to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon has announced.
Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani, 46, has been held at the U.S. base in Cuba since 2002, NBC News reported.
His lawyers maintain that he has displayed symptoms of schizophrenia since a young age, and in 2002 an FBI official saw al-Qahtani speaking to non-existent people, hearing voices and crouching in a corner of his cell while covering himself with a sheet for hours.
A U.S. review board determined in 2021 that his detention “was no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States”.
In February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin informed Congress that al-Qahtani would be sent home.
According to a Guantanamo detainee profile, al-Qahtani was trained by Al-Qaeda and had sought unsuccessful entrance to the U.S. a month before the attack and was later captured by U.S. troops and sent to Guantánamo in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
He was exposed to brutal beatings, sleep deprivation, and extended solitary confinement leading to his mental illness, according to reports.
Charges against Qahtani had been dropped more than a decade ago in 2008, but he was left to languish behind the bars.
In all, 38 detainees remain at the infamous detention facility. Of those, 19 are eligible for transfer, 7 are eligible for a Periodic Review Board, 10 are involved in the military commissions’ process and two detainees have been convicted in military commissions.
The 19 September 11 hijackers were affiliated with the Al-Qaeda group hailing from four countries; fifteen of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia, two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon, and one from Egypt.
None of the hijackers were from Afghanistan, yet the United States imposed a harsh 20-year long war on the country while maintaining strong political and economic ties with the Saudi kingdom.
Former U.S. president Barak Obama had promised to shut Guantanamo when he campaigned for office in 2008 and set up the periodic review Board system, a panel composed of several U.S. national security agencies during his tenure, but failed to close the prison during his eight years in office.
This is the second repatriation of Guantanamo detainees during the Biden administration, which has said that he intends to close the facility.