Mahmud Mujahid, 33, who allegedly underwent militant training at a secret camp in Afghanistan, is no longer a "significant threat" to the US and is eligible for transfer from the prison at some point, the board decided.
The decision by the board was the first in a series of review hearings that the Obama administration is holding to speed up the eventual closure of the US military prison for terrorist detainees, the Pentagon announced yesterday.
Mujahid had been accused of being an al-Qaeda fighter and bodyguard to Bin Laden.
Bin Laden was killed in a covert US raid in May, 2011, in Pakistan's garrison city Abbottabad.
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At one time, he was considered a "high risk" al-Qaeda fighter and "a committed jihadist."
The review board hearing for Mujahid was conducted behind closed doors under a 2011 directive by President Barack Obama to facilitate releases at Guantanamo. The Pentagon held it in secret to test how the process would work.
"This is just the first of many reviews that must take place in order to finally close Guantanamo," Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First, an advocate for detainees, was quoted as saying by the daily.
Obama has promised to shut the prison, but his efforts have been hampered by some in Congress and by difficulties in finding foreign nations willing to accept the detainees.
In changing Mujahid's status, the Pentagon said that "by consensus" the review members found that continuing to hold him indefinitely was no longer needed "to protect against a continuing significant threat to the US."
According to Pentagon records assessing Mujahid in 2008, he was captured with a group of al-Qaeda fighters known as the "Dirty 30" on December 15, 2001, by Pakistani forces as the group attempted to cross the border from Afghanistan.