Khaled al-Mutairi, 34, was sent to the US naval base in southern Cuba after being arrested in Pakistan in 2001. He was picked up after traveling to Afghanistan with a charitable organization to build mosques and provide funds for schools and orphanages.
The US Department of Justice did not immediately confirm the prisoner’s release.
His lawyer, David Cynamon, said the Kuwaiti government recently completed a “state-of-the-art” rehabilitation center to receive Mutairi and other Kuwaiti detainees who remain at Guantanamo, where 221 “war on terror” prisoners are still held.
The new facility, modeled on Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program, “will provide detainees with access to education, medical care, group discussions and physical exercise to help them recover from their long ordeal in Guantanamo,” Cynamon said in a statement.
In July, US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the government to release Mutairi. She ordered the release of another Kuwaiti inmate, Fouad al-Rabiah, last month. But she denied a petition for release from Fawzi al-Odah, another Kuwaiti detainee.
Belgium’s Dutch-language television channel VTM earlier said another Guantanamo detainee, whose identity was not revealed, arrived at a military base north of Brussels on Thursday.
The man would assume a new identity in Belgium and receive aid from a non-governmental organization, according to VTM. The US and Belgian governments did not immediately confirm the report.
US President Barack Obama has ordered Guantanamo shuttered by January 22, but White House officials have admitted they may not meet the deadline as they encounter diplomatic, legal and political setbacks to the plans.
Only a trickle of detainees has been transferred from the jail since Obama took office.
A Tanzanian prisoner, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was sent to New York to be tried on charges of participating in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Another committed suicide.
Of those still held at the controversial prison camp, about 75 are waiting to be released and a further 60 are expected to be prosecuted.
