The Kuwaiti, Fawzi al Odah, is also only the second low-level prisoner to be released from Guantanamo this year. Last year, President Obama had pledged to revive his efforts to close the prison. Administration officials said an end-of-year flurry might be coming: The Pentagon has notified Congress that nine other detainees, including six bound for Uruguay, may soon be transferred.

WASHINGTON — A Kuwaiti man held by the United States without trial for nearly 13 years in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was released early Wednesday, the military said. His repatriation is the first transfer to result from a new system of parole-board-like hearings to periodically review whether it is still necessary to keep holding prisoners.


Still, there are signs that disagreements remain within the administration over how much risk to accept as it tries to winnow down the population of low-level inmates and close the prison.

The administration had been poised to repatriate four Afghans who have long been approved for transfer, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently pulled back from that plan, according to officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations, said the administration decided at a “principals’ committee” meeting on Oct. 3 in the White House Situation Room, chaired by Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, to proceed with notifying Congress that it intended to repatriate the four Afghans.

The notice was supposed to be given within a week after the State Department obtained an unspecified security assurance from the Afghan government. That was completed three weeks ago, they said, but Hagel has still not sent the notice.

Although the Pentagon signed off on their repatriation as part of a 2009 interagency task force, officials familiar with the deliberations said Hagel decided to reassess the timing after General John F. Campbell, the top military leader in Afghanistan, and General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed concerns that they might attack US troops.


The officials also said that Hagel was still actively considering the proposed Afghan transfers.

A spokesman for Hagel, Rear Admiral John Kirby, declined to specifically comment about the Afghans. But he described the department’s deliberations about whether security risk has been mitigated as including “inputs from commanders in the field, whose perspectives are not only greatly valued by the secretary but heavily relied upon.”

It is unusual for a Cabinet secretary to independently reconsider a decision reached at a principals’ committee meeting. But Guantanamo transfers are an unusual type of policy decision because Congress has vested that authority in the secretary of defense. A statute says that at least 30 days before any transfer, he must notify lawmakers that he has determined that it would be in the national interest.

In an agreement with the Kuwaiti government, Odah, whose name is sometimes spelled Fouzi al Awda, will now live in custody there as part of a yearlong rehabilitation program, officials said.

He is the first detainee to be transferred since May, when the Obama administration sent five high-level Taliban prisoners — who were not recommended for release — to Qatar in a prisoner swap for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the only US prisoner of war from the Afghan war. Angering lawmakers, Hagel did not provide 30 days’ advance notice to Congress for that swap; the administration said any delay could have endangered Bergdahl’s life.


Since 2009, the executive branch has used a more stringent process of individualized review before releasing detainees. About 19 percent of former detainees released during the Bush administration have been deemed confirmed recidivists, compared with 6.8 percent of those released under the Obama administration.

Odah, the Kuwaiti released Wednesday, was a plaintiff in a case that helped establish that courts have jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus lawsuits filed by Guantanamo detainees. But in 2009, a judge upheld Odah’s wartime detention.