A seventy-five-year-old man from Pakistan who was the oldest detainee in the Guantanamo prison was released and returned to Pakistan today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced.
Saifulah Paraca has returned to his family after more than 17 years spent in detention at the US Guantanamo base in Cuba.
Paraca has been held in prison since 2003 on suspicion of having ties to Al Qaeda, but has never been charged.
His release was approved in November 2020, as were two other prisoners, and confirmed in May last year.
According to usual practice, no detailed explanation was given for that decision, it was only said that Paraca no longer poses a threat to the US, said the lawyer who represented him.
Paracha, who lived in the US and owned real estate in New York, was a wealthy businessman from Pakistan. The US authorities accused him of aiding Al Qaeda, and of helping two men who participated in the planning of the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, through a financial transaction.
He has always said he did not know they were Al Qaeda and denied any involvement in terrorism.
The US captured him in Thailand in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo since September 2004.
Washington has long argued that it can hold prisoners indefinitely under the international laws of war.
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