A man who was locked up in the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison for 18 years without charge has finally been released.
Saifullah Paracha, 75, who was the camp's oldest prisoner, was released and allowed to return to his native Pakistan.
Two years after the September 11 2001 attack on the World Trade Centres in New York, Mr Paracha was arrested and accused of being an al-Qaeda sympathiser.
He has always maintained his innocence and was never charged of any crime.
Confirming the prisoner's release, Pakistan's foreign ministry said: "Mr Saif Ullah Paracha, a Pakistani national, who was detained in Guantanamo Bay, has been released and reached Pakistan on Saturday, 29 October 2022."
It continued: "We are glad that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad is finally reunited with his family."
Clive Stafford-Smith, Mr Paracha's lawyer, told the BBC's Newshour programme: "He's been cleared for release [for] well over a year... he used to hum to me The Eagles song Hotel California, where you can [according to the lyrics] check out 'but you can never leave'".
Mr Paracha was detained in 2003 in a sting operation by the FBI.
He was accused of contacting senior al-Qaeda figures including Osama bin Laden.
In February 2021, the Biden administration said it intends to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, which was opened in 2002.
The facility, on the eastern tip of Cuba, was designed to be a place where suspects in the war on terror could be interrogated.
But prisoners have been indefinitely detained, many without charges or trial and subjected to reported abuse.
As the US war on terror dragged on, the detention facility became an international symbol of US rights abuses in the post-9/11 era.
There are still 35 people being held at Guantanamo.
Mr Stafford-Smith has vowed to continue the fight to free the remaining prisoners.
He said: "I was there at the start (we sued on Feb 19, 2002) & I will be there at the end. The work does not stop until everyone is free from Guantanamo Bay.
"It is a blot on us as Americans & since we started it we need to finish it. Meanwhile my apologies as an American to all victims..."
