NEW YORK - The US military released two brothers on Thursday who had been held as detainees in the war against terrorism for helping to operate safe houses where suspected operatives of Al Qaeda holed up after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Writes The New York Times.

The Pentagon said that Mohammed Ahmed Ghulam Rabbani, 53, and Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, 55, who were never charged with any crimes during 20 years in U.S. custody, were flown to Pakistan in an arrangement with authorities there. The brothers were captured by Pakistan’s security services in Karachi in September 2002. They arrived at Guantánamo Bay in 2004 after being kept at a C.I.A.-run detention site in Afghanistan for about 550 days.They were approved for transfer in 2021.

It is unclear why they had remained in prison.The Pentagon said that Mohammed Ahmed Ghulam Rabbani, 53, and Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, 55, who were never charged with any crimes during 20 years in U.S. custody, were flown to Pakistan in an arrangement with authorities there.

The younger Mr. Rabbani, who goes by Ahmed, had distinguished himself at Guantánamo as both a prolific artist and a determined hunger striker who survived on nutritional supplements, sometimes forcibly fed to him through a tube.

Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer who has represented both men, said Ahmed Rabbani was “very damaged” from a seven-year hunger strike that began in early 2013 and “has a hard time holding food down. But he is getting better on that front.” “The irony is that today, and all through his hunger strike, when they were in communal living, he would cook for the other men,” Mr. Stafford Smith said, adding that the younger Mr. Rabbani wants to run a restaurant after he is reunited with his family.