Khalid Ahmed Qasim, aka Prisoner 242, has been cleared for release after spending almost half his life detained without charge at Guantanamo Bay. Human rights organization Reprieve says the 45-year-old Yemeni national was taken into custody in Afghanistan in Dec. 2001 and brought to the American base in May 2002, CNN reports. The Periodic Review Board set up under the Obama administration has decided that there is no longer any cause to hold Qasim in custody and he should be released to a country "with a strong rehabilitation and reintegration program." Under US law, Guantanamo detainees can't be released to Yemen.
According to Reprieve, Qasim, long considered one of the detention facility's "forever prisoners," was "severely tortured" during his years in custody. He had said he spent his first nine years at Guantanamo in solitary confinement and was on hunger strike for years. Qasim has said he traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to help people in need, and turned himself in to authorities after Northern Alliance warlords started hunting down anybody of Arab descent to turn over to US forces. He has said that after he was tortured, he falsely confessed to training with al-Qaeda.
The review board earlier determined that Qasim had, at most, a "low level of training and lack of leadership in al-Qaeda or the Taliban" but said he was ineligible for release because of an "inability to manage his emotions and actions" and a lack of plans for the future, CBS reports. It's not clear when or where Qasim will be resettled, but Reprieve lawyer Mark Maher says Qasim learned both English and Spanish during his 20 years at the facility so he should have a range of options. He says that when Qasim gets out, he plans to keep working on his art, some of which was displayed in an exhibition at CUNY Law School in New York in 2020. (More Guantanamo Bay stories.)
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