The key to the transfer’s approval was Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program, the review board stated in an unclassified summary obtained by the New York Times.
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They said he had been on a hunger strike since 2005.
Prior to his release, Shalabi was on a nine-year hunger strike in protest of his detention.
The United States has transferred Abdul Shalabi, a detainee at the USA naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the government of Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
Shalabi, who has never been charged with any crime, is due to undergo a rehabilitation program for militants in Saudi Arabia. His lawyer says the military tube-fed him daily to prevent him from starving to death.
Shalabi’s brother had been transferred out of Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia during George W. Bush’s presidency. Shalabi was the seventh confirmed release from the facility this year.
Younis Abdurrahman Chekkouri was transferred on Thursday to Morocco.
A 2008 Pentagon document said he was captured by Pakistani forces in December 2001 while attempting to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border after fleeing from bin Laden’s Tora Bora mountain complex.
The administration is working to release as many cleared prisoners as possible before 2017 to help Obama make good on a campaign promise to close the prison. Human rights advocates have criticized the indefinite detention without charges of the prisoners held there.
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President Barack Obama has repeatedly demanded the closure of the facility but has struggled in the face of opposition in Congress and from other countries reluctant to take in one-time terror suspects.
