The US Department of Justice announced Oct. 9 that Kuwaiti Guantánamo Bay detainee Khaled al-Mutairi has been returned to his home country. The US government alleged that al-Mutairi had fought against American troops in Afghanistan, but in his almost eight years at the facility, no charges were ever filed. Al-Mutairi maintains that he had traveled to Afghanistan to provide monetary support for schools. In his home country, al-Mutairi will participate in a rehabilitation program set up by the Kuwaiti government, designed to help former Guantánamo detainees recover and reintegrate into civilian life. The DoJ also announced that a second detainee, whose identity has not been released, was released to Belgium. Al-Mutairi's release leaves 222 detainees who must be dealt with before the Obama administration [2]'s goal of closing the facility can be realized.
Al-Mutairi's release was ordered by federal judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the US District Court for the District of Columbia when she granted his petition for habeas corpus in July. Al-Mutairi was one of several Kuwaiti detainees remaining at Guantanamo. Most recently, Kollar-Kotelly ordered the release of Fouad al-Rabiah, another Kuwaiti man who had been held for seven years under suspicion of aiding the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Two weeks before that order, Kollar-Kotelly denied the petition of Kuwaiti detainee Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah, who admitted to traveling to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban. (Jurist [3], Oct. 9)
See our last post on Gitmo and the torture scandal [4].
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