A 75-year-old Pakistani man who was the oldest prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, has been released and returned home, the foreign ministry in Islamabad said, writes The Guardian.

Saifullah Paracha was reunited with his family after more than 17 years in custody at the US base in Cuba, it said.

Paracha had been held since 2003 on suspicion of having links with al-Qaida, but was never charged with a crime. He was notified that his release had been approved in May 2021 having been cleared by the prisoner review board, along with two other men, in November 2020.

As is customary, the notification did not provide detailed reasons for the decision and concluded only that Paracha was “not a continuing threat” to the US, according to Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, who represented him at his hearing at the time.

In Pakistan, the foreign affairs ministry said it had completed an extensive inter-agency process to facilitate Paracha’s repatriation: “We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family”.

Paracha, who lived in the US and owned property in New York City, was a wealthy businessperson in Pakistan. Authorities alleged he was an al-Qaida “facilitator” who helped two of the conspirators in the 11 September 2001 terrorism attack with a financial transaction.

He has maintained that he did not know they were with al-Qaida and denied any involvement in terrorism.

The US captured Paracha in Thailand in 2003 and had held him at Guantánamo since September 2004. Washington has long asserted that it can hold detainees indefinitely without charge under the international laws of war.