A Yemeni Al-Qaeda suspect has been declared eligible for release from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, raising to 56 the number of inmates awaiting transfer to another country, US authorities said Thursday.
Saeed Sarem Jarabh, 36, an alleged bodyguard of slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was found by a review board to no longer be a "significant" threat to US security.
The board reached the decision by consensus on March 5, a statement on its website said.
The board "determined continued law of war detention of the detainee is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States."
But on March 6, the six member board said another Yemeni detainee, 38-year-old Khaled Qasim, should not be released, citing his "high-level of significant non-compliance while in detention."
The board said Qasim was a highly trained Al Qaeda operative and given his behavior in detention they feared he could return to the network on his release.
It scheduled another review in six months.
The two Yemenis have been held at Guantanamo for more than 13 years.
The presence of so many Yemenis, who form a majority of the remaining 122 inmates in Guantanamo, has complicated President Barack Obama's goal of closing the offshore prison.
Instability in Yemen has made it impossible to send them home, forcing Washington to find third countries willing to take them.
While some have recently been transferred to Estonia and Oman, 48 more are awaiting countries that will take them.
With the latest review board decisions, Guantanamo's prison population is now evenly divided between a group of inmates eligible for release and another group that is not.
In addition, the prison holds ten so-called "high value" prisoners, including five who face trial by a military tribunal for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Those proceedings have been at a standstill since February 25 after the judge suspended pretrial hearings over a rule requiring judges overseeing tribunals to stay permanently at the base in Cuba.
The Defense Department has scrapped the rule and replaced the senior official involved.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday named Paul Oostburg Sanz as the new convening authority of the tribunals.