US releases Guantanamo Bay's oldest inmate Saifullah Paracha after 19 years

Saifullah Paracha, the oldest inmate at the US-run detention facility Guantanamo Bay has been released to his home country Pakistan after 19 years of detention. 

Paracha, 75, was arrested from Thailand two years after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US and was accused of being an al-Qaeda sympathiser, reports the BBC.

However, he has maintained his innocence and claimed a love for the US. 

Paracha, who studied in the US, had an import-export business supplying major US retailers. US authorities accused him of having contact with al-Qaeda figures, including Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2008, Paracha's lawyer said the businessman had met bin Laden in 1999, and again a year later, in connection with the production of a television programme.

"The Foreign Ministry completed an extensive inter-agency process to facilitate the repatriation of Mr Paracha," Pakistan's foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday (29 October). 

In May, the US approved Paracha's release concluding only that he was "not a continuing threat" to the US.

Like most prisoners at Guantanamo, Paracha – aged 74 or 75 – was never formally charged and had little legal power to challenge his detention, reports Al Jazeera. 

Guantanamo Bay was established in the wake of 9/11 to hold suspected al-Qaeda members captured during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Of the 780 inmates held during the US's so-called "war on terror", 732 were released without charge. Many of them were imprisoned for more than a decade without legal means to challenge their detention.

Since it first opened, Guantanamo has become notorious for human rights abuses and the fact that the US administration did not consider its prisoners to be entitled to any protection according to international laws.

US President Joe Biden is under pressure to clear out uncharged prisoners at Guantanamo and move ahead with the trials of those accused of having direct ties to al-Qaeda.

Among the roughly 40 inmates left are several men who allegedly had direct roles in 9/11 and other al-Qaeda attacks.