For 19 minutes over a streaming video feed on Tuesday morning, the American public got its first glimpse into President Obama’s new review process for Guantánamo detainees, touted as a key step toward closing the notorious detention center.

The few members of the public who witnessed the session – a handful of journalists and representatives of human rights groups, more than 1,000 miles away in Virginia and watching on a 40-second delay – never heard from Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab al-Rahabi, a Yemeni who has been held without charge at Guantánamo Bay for 12 years.

Rahabi, a slim 34-year-old in a white shirt whom the Defense Department believes was “almost certainly” a member of al-Qaida, bobbed in his swivel chair, occasionally scratching his nose as his representatives read statements arguing for his release. He was not invited to speak, unlike during the panel’s Bush-era antecedent.

Then, at about 9.40am ET, the feed stopped, as the participants adjourned to begin a classified hearing – away from cameras, far from public view and expected to last for hours.

Tuesday’s session, streamed on to a flatscreen TV in a Defense Department-operated office building outside Washington, provided the first public peek into a process the Obama administration ordered begun in 2011 to help clear out the detention facility’s remaining population.

Nearly three years later, only one other so-called Periodic Review Board has taken place – a reminder of the grinding pace at which all matters related to Guantánamo unfold – and it did not have a public component.

But the public did not learn the names or faces of the representatives of the various agencies who will decide whether Rahabi poses a “continuing significant threat” to the US – the only question that the Periodic Review Board exists to adjudicate.

Those representatives are stand-ins for the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the military’s joint staff. They appeared as disembodied voices behind a camera that was trained on Rahabi, his translator, his civilian attorney, David Remes and a navy lieutenant commander and an air force major, Rahabi’s “personal representatives”, neither of whom were named.

The Pentagon later clarified that the board members from the six agencies were not themselves present at Guantánamo. They were streamed in via a video feed from the greater Washington area.

Nor did the Periodic Review Board give any insight into how the anonymous representatives of the agencies will decide whether Rahabi is a threat to the US. They are not necessarily lawyers, and the review they conduct is, Pentagon representatives stress, not a legal one. They conduct a factual review, taking into account everything from diplomatic considerations to his behavior under detention, and decide according to a standard that is not public.

While the easiest available analogy for the Periodic Review Board is to a parole hearing, there are significant differences. Rahabi has never been charged with any crime, let alone convicted. But his representatives did – as they would at a parole hearing – make his behavior during his time at Guantánamo, such as acting as a go-between for camp authorities and detainees engaging in hunger strikes, part of their argument for ending his detention.

Still, Rahabi has been one of the most vexing detainees the Obama administration has held since it inherited him, and the rest of the facility’s population, in 2009.

A task force convened by Obama early in his administration ruled Rahabi was one of 48 detainees who posed a security risk to the US but whom the government lacked evidence to bring to trial. But his presence on that list was not public until the Miami Herald won a lawsuit last year compelling its release.

Making matters even more complicated, Rahabi is Yemeni, subjecting him to a ban on transferring detainees from Guantánamo to Yemen that Obama imposed in 2010, citing deteriorating security in that country, and only lifted last May.

During the Tuesday hearing, one of the panel’s members said that while there were no “conclusive indications” Rahabi has “maintained associations” with terrorists, he has in the past “associated closely” with the leader of al-Qaida’s Yemeni affiliate, known as AQAP, and his “brother-in-law is a prominent extremist in Ibb”, a city in Yemen.





Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yemeni soldiers guard al-Qaida militants Sana'a, Yemen. Rahabi was known to associate with al-Qaida's yemeni affiliate in the past. Photograph: Yahya Arhab /EPA

“The marginal security environment in Ibb probably would give YM-037 [Rahabi] ample opportunity to join AQAP if he decided to reengage,” said the panel member, reading from a Defense Department statement posted to the Periodic Review Board’s website.

According to a 2008 Guantánamo document published by Wikileaks, Rahabi was considered a former bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and alumnus of a commando camp maintained by the Pakistani army who allegedly trained for a cancelled plane hijacking mission in Southeast Asia to complement the 9/11 plot. Rahabi has been at Guantánamo since the detention facility’s January 2002 inception, shortly after he was apprehended attempting to cross into Pakistan after the 2001 battle of Tora Bora.

Rahabi’s representatives contend that the detainee plans on seeking “peaceful employment,” either with his tailor father or as part of an “agricultural enterprise,” known as Yemeni Milk and Honey, whose business prospectus he has worked on while at Guantánamo.

The business plan is “stunningly detailed,” said Remes. The lawyer also alluded to the “love of watercolors” Rahabi cultivated at the detention center, and the desire the detainee has to reunite with a 13-year old daughter he has not seen since her infancy.

The Periodic Review Board is expected to come to a decision within 30 days as to whether to recommend transferring Rahabi from Guantánamo. Its criteria for making that decision is unclear.

But Rahabi’s status is unlikely to depend on the board’s decision alone.

Earlier this month, the board recommended the transfer of the first detainee whose case it considered, another Yemeni named Mahmoud al-Mujahid. But Mujahid remains one of Guantánamo's 155 detainees, about half of whom have at one point been cleared to leave – another reminder that the actual transfer of detainees is less dependent on threat assessments than it is on political and diplomatic machinations.

Nor is the Periodic Review Board the first US effort at something resembling a Guantánamo parole hearing.

During the Bush administration, a process called an Administrative Review Board similarly considered whether detainees posed ongoing threats to the United States. Like the current Periodic Review Board, it was not a process of law, nor did it reach a determination about the legality of any individual detention.

Those Administrative Review Boards met annually. The Periodic Review Boards, according to a Defense Department website, will occur every three years, with a “file review” occurring every six months to consider if there is new information that could impact the board’s decision.

Observers at Rahabi’s review said both the process and the limited visibility into it were disappointments.

“Every time the Obama administration has an opportunity to provide greater transparency, they choose not to, and the PRB is a perfect example of that,” said Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch.

“Refusing to allow us to hear the detainee speak feeds into the idea they’re so dangerous … while at the same time, we’re supposed to be confident in a decision to release him.”