Board recommends transfer of mentally ill Guantanamo detainee suspected of plan to be ’20th hijacker’ on 9/11

U.S. military and intelligence officials suspected Qahtani, who developed schizophrenia after suffering a traumatic brain injury, of joining al-Qaeda and intending to become the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Qahtani, then in his 20s, attempted to enter the United States on Aug. 4, 2001, "after almost certainly having been selected by senior al-Qa’ida members to be the 20′th hijacker for the 9/ 11 attacks,” according to government documents, but he was returned to Saudi Arabia after being questioned by Customs officials.

He then traveled to Afghanistan, was captured by Pakistani forces near the border in late 2001, and handed over to the Americans.

A senior Bush administration official told The Washington Post in 2009 that Qahtani had been tortured by the U.S. government, and that is why she did not recommend him for trial alongside the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four other detainees facing trial in connection with the terrorist attacks.

“We tortured Qahtani,” Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions at Guantanamo told The Post. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Qahtani, like the vast majority of the nearly 800 men to be detained at Guantanamo, has never been charged.

A psychiatrist who evaluated him in 2016, Emily Karem, found that the abuse Qahtani suffered at Guantanamo had exacerbated the effects of his mental illness and led to post-traumatic stress disorder, and advised that he could not receive successful treatment at Guantanamo.

Qahtani’s attorneys, Ramzy Kassem and Shane Kadidal, who contend he is a “mentally-ill torture victim” have long pressed for his repatriation to Saudi Arabia.

The case for Guantanamo inmates’ continued detention are reviewed by a Periodic Review Board made up of several national security agencies, including the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The board reached the unanimous decision that Qahtani should be repatriated, in a recommendation published Friday.

The New York Times first reported on the board’s recommendation.

“In making this determination, the Board recognizes the detainee presents some level of threat in light of his past activities and associations,” the panel wrote. It recommended that he be repatriated to Saudi Arabia, where he has family support, to participate in the country’s extremist rehabilitation program.

“[T]he Board understood that Saudi Arabia can provide comprehensive mental health care, and . . . monitor the detainee after completion of the rehabilitation program,” the decision said.

Nineteen of the 39 men remaining at the prison have now been cleared for transfer.