The Biden administration on Monday transferred a detainee out of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility for the first time, sending a Moroccan man back home five years after he was recommended for discharge.
Abdullatif Nasser, 56, was cleared for repatriation by a review board on July 11, 2016 but remained at Guantanamo for the duration of the Trump presidency.
Military intelligence accused Nasser of being a former Taliban fighter who fought the U.S. invading forces in 2001 in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan. He was never charged with a crime.
The Periodic Review Board (PRB) process determined that Nasser's detention no longer remained necessary to protect U.S. national security, the Pentagon said Monday in a statement.
A senior administration official told reporters on a briefing call on Monday that of the 39 remaining prisoners, 10 have been recommended for transfer.
'At the present moment 10 detainees… have been recommended for transfer by the periodic review board,' the official said, adding 'the administration is very focused on getting them transferred.'
The two officials on the call would not give a timeline for when these transfers will happen or an estimate on when they plan to shutter Guantanamo for good.
Of the remaining population at the facility, the second administration official revealed, 17 are eligible for the PRB process, although it has not been conducted yet. Another 10 are involved in military review process and two have been convicted.
The PRB recommended authorization for Nasser's repatriation to Morocco six months before Donald Trump took office, but the process couldn't be completed before the end of the Obama administration, it said.
The transfer of Nasser could suggest President Joe Biden is making efforts to reduce the Guantanamo population.
The board review specifically focuses on determining if an inmate were released, would they pose a continued significant threat to the security of the U.S. It was determined Nassar, and the 10 other inmates already cleared, would not.
The transfer on Monday is the first prisoner Joe Biden has released from the detention facility during his presidency. Nasser was cleared for released in July 2016, but remained in the facility through Trump's presidency
Biden intends to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here protesters hold up photos of prisoners still being held there on June 14, 2021. So far, 10 of the 39 remaining detainees have been cleared by the periodical review board to be released
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama supported the prisoner transfer process, but it stalled under President Donald Trump.
Trump said even before he took office that there should be no further releases from 'Gitmo,' as Guantanamo Bay is often called.
'These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield,' he said at one point.
Only one detainee left Guantanamo during the Trump years – A confessed Qaeda terrorist who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia to serve out a prison sentence imposed by a U.S. military commission.
The possibility that former Guantanamo prisoners would resume hostile activities has long been a concern that has played into the debate over releases. The office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a 2016 report that about 17 per cent of the 728 detainees who had been released were 'confirmed' and 12 per cent were 'suspected' of re-engaging in such activities.
But the vast majority of those re-engagements occurred with former prisoners who did not go through the security review that was set up under Obama. A task force that included agencies such as the Defense Department and the CIA analyzed who was held at Guantanamo and determined who could be released and who should continue in detention.
The U.S. thanked Morocco for facilitating Nasser's transfer back home.
'The United States commends the Kingdom of Morocco for its long-time partnership in securing both countries´ national security interests,' the Pentagon statement said. 'The United States is also extremely grateful for the Kingdom´s willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.'
The U.S. military prison is located on Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in south east Cuba.
Nasser initially got news he was going to be released in the summer of 2016, when one of his lawyers called him at the detention center and told him the U.S. had decided he no longer posed a threat and could go home.
He thought he'd return to Morocco soon: 'I've been here 14 years,' he said at the time. 'A few months more is nothing.'
U.S. forces delivered Nasser to Moroccan government custody early Monday morning.
His Chicago-based attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, said Nasser's family in Casablanca pledged to support him and give him work at his brother's swimming pool cleaning business, according to The New York Times.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a May interview the administration will 'bring some focus' to the issue in coming months
Durkin called the last four years of Mr. Nasser's 19-year detention 'collateral damage of the Trump administration's and zealous Republican war-on-terror hawks' raw politics.'
'If this were a wrongful conviction case in Cook County, it would be worth $20 million,' he said in a statement on the matter.
'We applaud the Biden administration for causing no further harm.'
Nasser´s journey to the Cuban prison was a long one. He was a member of a nonviolent but illegal Moroccan Sufi Islam group in the 1980s, according to his Pentagon file. In 1996, he was recruited to fight in Chechyna but ended up in Afghanistan, where he trained at an al-Qaida camp. He was captured after fighting U.S. forces there and sent to Guantanamo in May 2002.
An unidentified military official appointed to represent him before the review board said he studied math, computer science and English at Guantanamo, creating a 2,000-word Arabic-English dictionary. The official told the board that Nasser 'deeply regrets his actions of the past' and expressed confidence he would reintegrate in society.s
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