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 September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

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 "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 9/11 terror 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.

Newly released FBI memo hints at Saudi involvment with 9/11 hijackers

The FBI has released the first batch of certain documents related to its investigation of the 9/11 attacks which fortified suspicions of official Saudi involvement with the hijackers of the planes.

Successive US administrations have refused to release classified government documents related to the FBI's investigation into the Saudi Arabian government's involvement in 9/11.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers that staged the 9/11 attacks were from Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has, however, long denied any role in the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

Washington's promises of closing down the site go back to the first tenure of former President Barack Obama, between 2009 and 2013.

Obama had made the closing of Guantanamo one of his top priorities and issued an executive order to do so soon after assuming office in 2009. However, he failed to achieve that goal by the end of his second term in the face of stiff opposition in Congress. His successor, Donald Trump, rescinded Obama's order to close Guantanamo.

US President Joe Biden also pledged during his presidential campaign to declassify and make public some documents related to the FBI's 9/11 investigation. In September 2021, he ordered to release the documents.

US to miss deadline for release of 9/11 documents on Saudi involvement: Justice Department

The US Justice Department says it would miss a deadline to release documents on Saudi Arabia’s role in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

But 28 pages were extracted from a 2002 Congressional inquiry into the attacks. Several US Senators and House lawmakers have been calling for the disclosure of the pages, which purportedly contain evidence of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Takfiri terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Daesh are widely believed to have their ideological roots in Wahhabism, which is the radical ideology dominating Saudi Arabia, freely preached by regime-backed clerics there.

Takfirism is the practice of denouncing subscribers to other schools of thought as "infidels" and considering their lives to be expendable.

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