AMERICAN authorities have recommended releasing a mentally ill inmate from Guantanamo Bay and repatriating him to Saudi Arabia, according to a government document published yesterday.

Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured by interrogators at the United States (US) military base in Cuba, where he has been detained for almost two decades following suspicion of being Al Qaeda’s intended 20th hijacker for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The government dropped its case against him in 2008 due to the abuse he experienced at the prison.

The al-Qahtani’s detention is “no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the US”, said the Periodic Review Board, a panel composed of several US national security agencies, in a summary of its decision.

The body, in its final determination dated February 4, said al-Qahtani is “eligible for transfer” and recommended he be repatriated to Saudi Arabia, where he can receive mental health care and be enrolled in a rehabilitation centre for extremists.

It noted his “significantly compromised mental health condition and available family support”.

Security measures, including surveillance and travel restrictions, are also recommended.

Al-Qahtani was one of the first prisoners sent to Guantanamo in January 2002.

He had flown to Orlando, Florida on August 4, 2001, but was denied entry to the country and sent back to Dubai. He was eventually captured in Afghanistan in December 2001.

His torture at the prison was widely documented and spurred on international human rights groups’ calls for the site to be shut. He was subjected to prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and other abuses.

“We tortured Qahtani,” Susan Crawford, a top judicial official in the Bush administration said in 2009, according to a Washington Post article.

In January, the US approved the release of five of the remaining 39 men still at Guantanamo.

Ten others, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as “KSM”, are awaiting trial by a military commission.

The detention centre, run by the US Navy, was created after the attacks to house detainees in the US “war on terror” and has been called a site of “unparalleled notoriety” by United Nations rights experts. – AFP, February 5, 2022.