Kuwaiti Guantanamo inmate freed as U.S. plans dozen more releases

The United States is preparing to release more than a dozen Guantanamo detainees as President Barack Obama works toward his long-promised goal of closing the controversial military prison, a U.S. defence official said Wednesday. The news comes the same day the Defense Department sent home one of two remaining detained Kuwaitis, bringing the total population at the jail on a U.S. naval base in Cuba to 148. Fawzi al-Odah, 37, who spent nearly 13 years in U.S. detention, took off in a Kuwaiti government plane at 5:30 a.m., Lt.-Col. Myles Caggins told AFP.

There’s no bitterness; there’s no anger. There’s just excitement and joy that he will be going home.

Eric Lewis, lawyer for Fawzi al-Odah

An Obama administration task force charged with evaluating all the prisoners at Guantanamo placed al-Odah and another Kuwaiti among a group slated for indefinite “law of war detention,” meaning they were too dangerous to release but who could not be prosecuted either because there was not enough evidence or for some other reason. The administration also set up a Periodic Review Board that has been slowly reevaluating the prisoners with parole-style hearings to determine if some can be released as part of an overall effort to eventually close the detention center. Recent media reports have suggested Obama was considering circumventing Congress, where he faces staunch opposition, to pave the way for shuttering the war-on-terror prison.

The president has always had the ability to close Guantanamo. A less friendly Congress may finally help him use that authority.

Andrea Prasow, an expert at Human Rights Watch

Guantanamo Americas