Kuwaiti released from Guantanamo arrives home

Fawzi Al Odah arrived in Kuwait City on Thursday morning, greeted by about 40 family members after having spent 13 years in Guantanamo Bay.

Kuwait Fawzi Al Odah, who was released from Guantanamo Bay, kissing his mother’s hands as he is welcomed at a military hospital in Kuwait City after 13 years in prison. AFP Photo/Family handout

KUWAIT CITY // A Kuwaiti, who had been held for 13 years at US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba arrived home on Thursday.

Fawzi Al Odah had been one of two Kuwaitis still detained in the holding centre for US “war on terror” prisoners that President Barack Obama has long promised to shut down.

“Fawzi arrived early this morning. He is in good health,” his father Khaled Al Odah said.

Mr Odah said his son, 37, was taken straight to a military hospital for a check-up.

After a week, he will be transferred to a government-run rehabilitation centre for an unspecified period but his close relatives will be allowed to visit him.

Fawzi was greeted at the airport by his father and two brothers. At the military hospital, around 40 family members, including his mother and grandmother, were allowed to visit him.

Activists posted pictures of him embracing his mother and kissing her head. Another photograph showed him with his young niece.

His father had led a support group for the families of the Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo.

He has always maintained that his son was an aid worker and never took part in any fighting in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, that might warrant any allegation of being an enemy combatant.

Fawzi was seized by tribesmen in northern Pakistan in late 2001, and sold to the Pakistani army which handed him over to the United States.

He was captured alongside his compatriot Fayez Al Kandari, who is the only Kuwaiti still held at Guantanamo.

Fawzi was the first inmate freed since late May.

The periodic review board which approved the release of Fawzi has advised against releasing Kandari, ruling that he “almost certainly retains an extremist mindset and had close ties with high-level Al Qaeda leaders in the past”.

The Obama administration said on Wednesday that it plans to speed up releases from Guantanamo.

“The department of defence hopes to transfer more than a dozen detainees to countries in South America and Europe, in the next two months, through the winter,” a Pentagon official said.

Another US defence official said the administration was “working diligently to transfer the remaining detainees from Guantanamo”.

“Closing Guantanamo is a priority for the defence department,” Lt Col Myles Caggins said.

* Agence France-Presse