Thirty-five-year-old Abdalmalik Wahab had been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for nearly 14 years without charge when he got some good news: The U.S. government was no longer interested in holding him.

A panel made up of representatives of six government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, determined on Dec. 5 that Abdalmalik was “almost certainly” a member of al-Qaida at one point but it was no longer worth keeping him at the U.S. base in Cuba.