[5] According to historian Andy Worthington, the author of The Guantanamo Files, Gherebi had settled in Pakistan after fleeing Muammar Gaddafi's repressive regime in Libya.

[citation needed] Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.

[10] Following the Supreme Court's ruling the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.

[7][13] Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:[14] On 25 April 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts.

[3][4] Citing his formerly secret Joint Task Force Assessment, published by the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks in April 2011, Fox News described Ghereby as someone who "has been involved in extremist activities since at least the mid-1990s.