A Pakistani individual jailed by the United States for 18 years in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp without trial on suspicion of connections to al Qaeda went home to Pakistan on Saturday after being the oldest prisoner at the detention center.
Saifullah Paracha, 75, was originally seized in Thailand in July 2003 and brought to the US military facility at Bagram, Afghanistan, before being transferred in 2004 to the camp in the US naval station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Authorities stated he was an al-Qaeda ‘facilitator’ who aided two of the conspirators in the Sept. 11 plot with a money transaction after the attacks.
Those conspirators were allegedly Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is suspected of organizing the 9/11 attacks, and Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi.
Khalid Mohammed remains at Guantanamo Bay, with no trial death sentence trial date scheduled after the January 2021 trial was delayed due to COVID-19. Ammar al-Baluchi is also being held at Guantanamo Bay.
‘We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family,’ the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
At 75, Paracha was the oldest inmate at the camp, according to Reprieve, a London-based human rights organisation that worked on his case. He was never charged.
Paracha admits to storing $500,000, but maintains he didn’t know the conspirators were al-Qaeda and denies any involvement in terrorism.
Paracha was captured in Thailand in 2003 during an FBI sting. Paracha believed he was going to discuss a merchandising deal with Kmart, only to be seized by intelligence agents and flown to Afghanistan.
The US has held him at Guantanamo since September 2004 and has long asserted that it can hold detainees indefinitely without charge under the international laws of war.
The Department of Defense confirmed the repatriation and said Paracha’s continued detention was no longer necessary to protect against a ‘significant threat’ to the security of the United States.
The United States has not transferred a detainee from Guantanamo Bay to Pakistan since 2008.
The most recent release from the prison camp established during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in pursuit of the al Qaeda network responsible for the 9/11 attacks is Paracha.
The camp’s practice of keeping huge numbers of captives without prosecuting or trying them earned international attention.
Its population peaked at over 800 convicts, then fell throughout the Obama administration (2009-2017).
According to the Department of Defense, there are still 35 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, of which 20 are eligible for transfer and three for a Periodic Review Board.
Nine individuals are now active in the military commissions process, while three have been convicted in military commissions.