Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani prisoner detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, arrived in Pakistan on Saturday following his release from the US military prison after more than 18 years, the Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement.
The 75-year-old was the oldest prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and was held on suspicion of ties to Al Qaeda but never charged with a crime. His release was approved in May last year after more than 16 years in custody at the US base in Cuba.
“The foreign ministry completed an extensive inter-agency process to facilitate the repatriation of Paracha.
“We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family,” the FO statement said.
Separately, Foreign Minister Bilawal-Bhutto Zardari also tweeted about his release.
Paracha, who lived in the US and owned property in New York City, was a wealthy businessman in Pakistan.
The US captured Paracha in Thailand in 2003 and had detained him at Guantanamo since September 2004.
Read: Buried at Guantanamo Bay — human rights, justice and the inmates deemed too guilty to stand trial
Authorities alleged he was an Al Qaeda “facilitator” who helped two of the conspirators in the September 11 plot with a financial transaction. But Paracha, who suffers from a number of ailments including diabetes and a heart condition, has denied his involvement in terrorism, saying he did not know the men he was dealing with were Al-Qaeda members.
However, the US has long asserted that it can hold detainees indefinitely without charge under the international laws of war.
Paracha’s son had also been arrested on the charge of helping suspected militants to get into the US through faulty documents months before his father’s arrest.
He was sentenced to 30 years in jail in 2005 by the federal court in New York, however, a judge threw out witness accounts in March 2020.
Uzair Paracha, a graduate from Pakistan’s prestigious Institute of Business Administration, was sent back to Pakistan in 2021 after the US government decided not to seek a new trial.
