Saudi man released from Guantanamo

MIAMI — A Saudi citizen who has spent the past 12 years detained at Guantanamo Bay has been released, the Pentagon said Saturday, in an ongoing push to whittle down the prison population at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Muhammad al-Zahrani was sent to his homeland based on the conclusion of a U.S. government board that has been re-evaluating the need to continue holding some of the men as prisoners, the Pentagon said in a statement. He will take part in a Saudi program to rehabilitate militants.

Al-Zahrani, who is about 45, had been held at Guantanamo since August 2002, according to military records. A report by the Periodic Review Board said he traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 and “almost certainly” joined al-Qaida, trained in military tactics and fought the Northern Alliance.

His lawyers, in a statement to the board, described him as a “middle-aged, ailing man who desperately wants to return to Saudi Arabia.” They said his father died while he was in U.S. custody and “his only wish is to see his ailing mother before she passes away.”

Al-Zahrani is the seventh prisoner to leave Guantanamo Bay in just the past two weeks.