Following Release of Saudi Gitmo Detainee, Obama Administration Urged to Take

The review board, which is made up of high-level officials from various USA government agencies, announced in June that it had chose to release Shalabi.

He protested his indefinite confinement without charge with a hunger strike that he launched in 2006.

Saudi Abdul Rahman Shalabi, 39, was repatriated less than a week after the United States sent a Moroccan home restrained inside a USA military cargo plane.

The Guantanamo Bay prison was established in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States. Shalabi was the seventh confirmed release from the facility this year. He has now been transferred to a militant rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia and will continue to be monitored, according to the Associated Press. He has required tube feedings on a daily basis for the past nine years. Shalabi’s brother had been transferred out of Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia during George W. Bush’s presidency. The United States coordinated with the Saudi government to ensure this transfer took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures. The US military says he was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and an associate of other senior figures in al-Qaida. He has signed off on the transfer of eight detainees since taking the top job at the Pentagon in mid-February, but most of those were previously arranged.

The sun rises over the Guantanamo detention facility on May 13, 2009 on the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base on Cuba.

The review and transfer were part of a directive by President Barack Obama who said shortly after assuming office that he wanted to close the controversial prison.