Businessman Saifullah Paracha, who was arrested in 2003 and accused of financing al-Qaeda, was by no means charged like most prisoners.
The oldest inmate on the United States-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba Saifullah Paracha has been launched to his dwelling nation Pakistan after almost 20 years of detention with out trial, the South Asian nation’s overseas ministry mentioned.
“The Overseas Ministry accomplished an in depth inter-agency course of to facilitate the repatriation of Mr Paracha,” the ministry mentioned in an announcement on Saturday.
“We're glad that a Pakistani citizen detained overseas is lastly reunited together with his household.”
Businessman Paracha was arrested in 2003 in Thailand and accused of financing the armed group, however he has maintained his innocence.
In Could, the US authorized Paracha’s launch concluding solely that he was “not a seamless risk” to the US.
Like most prisoners at Guantanamo, Paracha – aged 74 or 75 – was by no means formally charged and had little authorized energy to problem his detention.
The secretive US army jail was established within the wake of 9/11 to carry suspected al-Qaeda members captured throughout the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
However of the 780 inmates held throughout the US’s so-called “warfare on terror”, 732 had been launched with out cost. A lot of them had been imprisoned for greater than a decade with out authorized means to problem their detention.
Practically 40 prisoners stay within the world’s most notorious detention facility, which has change into an emblem of human rights abuses.
Paracha’s return dwelling on Saturday comes after US President Joe Biden final yr authorized his launch, together with that of one other Pakistani nationwide Abdul Rabbani, 55, and Yemen native Uthman Abdul al-Rahim Uthman, 41.
Biden is beneath strain to filter uncharged prisoners at Guantanamo and transfer forward with the trials of these accused of getting direct ties to al-Qaeda.
Among the many roughly 40 inmates left are a number of males who allegedly had direct roles in 9/11 and different al-Qaeda assaults.
Paracha, who studied within the US, had an import-export enterprise supplying main US retailers.
US authorities accused him of getting contact with al-Qaeda figures, together with Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
In 2008, Paracha’s lawyer mentioned the businessman had met bin Laden in 1999, and once more a yr later, in reference to the manufacturing of a tv programme.
Reprieve, a UK-based human rights charity, described Paracha as a “endlessly prisoner”.
Because it first opened, Guantanamo has change into infamous for human rights abuses and the truth that the US administration didn't contemplate its prisoners to be entitled to any safety in line with worldwide legal guidelines.
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