Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer to be released

A Saudi detainee with residency status in Britain is expected to be freed from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in June following a campaign for his release.

Britain has made repeated calls since 2010 for the release of Shaker Aamer, who has a British wife and four children in London.

The 48-year-old is alleged to have been a key Britain-based recruiter and financier for al-Qaeda and to have worked for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Aamer's representatives say the charges were based on a false confession extracted under torture.

He was captured and handed over to US forces in Afghanistan in 2001, and says he was moved to a US black site and tortured to extract a confession. He was then moved to Guantanamo Bay in 2002.

He was cleared for release in 2007.

Aamer, who has been held at Guantanamo without charge for more than 13 years, will likely be transferred to an undisclosed country over the summer, probably in June, along with up to 10 other detainees, a US government official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

Those detainees include 46-year-old Moroccan Yunis Shokuri and 45-year-old Mauritanian Ahmed Abdel Aziz, who would be sent to their home countries, the source said, confirming a report in the Washington Post.

The official told AFP that the transfer will take place after a 30-day notice period to Congress, following a sign-off from Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

A total of 122 detainees remain at Guantanamo, 57 of whom have been deemed "releasable" by a review committee, including those slated for release this summer.

"The goal is to transfer all 57," said Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins, a Pentagon spokesman.

"We're going to support the president's mission of closing Guantanamo through transfers of detainees and prosecutions through military commissions," he said.

US President Barack Obama has repeatedly vowed to close the prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Cliff Stone, until last year the State Department official appointed by President Obama to deal with prisoner transfers, told Sky News: "I very strongly believe that if he has been approved for transfer and you have a country that is willing to accept the person in whom the US government has confidence about their security capabilities, and there's not an issue about humane treatment of the individual, then there is no sound reason for delay."

Finding a host country for inmates who can't go home has been a major headache for the administration, however, with 48 Yemeni prisoners now unable to be repatriated due to conflict in their home country.