U.S. to send Kuwaiti prisoner at Guantanamo overseas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration has decided to transfer overseas a Kuwaiti held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and will not appeal a court decision freeing him, the Justice Department said on Monday.

In September, a U.S. district judge ordered the release of Fouad al Rabiah, a Kuwaiti Airways engineer, and harshly criticized the U.S. government for using coerced confessions to justify detaining him indefinitely.

Held at Guantanamo for almost eight years, al Rabiah was accused of providing money to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during a trip to Afghanistan in July 2001 and of helping Taliban fighters in the mountainous Tora Bora region during a subsequent trip in October.

His lawyers said it was a case of mistaken identity and that al Rabiah was in Afghanistan in October coordinating deliveries of aid supplies from Iran to refugees. Last month they asked the judge to enforce the order to release him.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted al Rabiah's release after finding that he had received only two weeks of military training, which was required in Kuwait, and that he had a record of charity work with no ties to terrorism.

"The government has determined not to appeal the case involving al Rabiah and is working toward completing the administrative and diplomatic processes necessary to effectuate (his) transfer expeditiously," said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department's national security division.

Congress has required the Obama administration to tell lawmakers when they plan to move detainees from the prison camp and to wait 15 days if they are being sent overseas.

There are 215 detainees still at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison, which President Barack Obama has pledged to close by January 22. However, political and legal hurdles are making it difficult for his administration to meet that goal.

The Obama administration is set to decide by mid-November which of the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo will face military commissions or charges in U.S. criminal courts. Some of the 215 detainees are expected to be released.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Chris Wilson)