The Biden administration has been quietly laying the groundwork to release prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center and at least move closer to being able to shut it down.

Some might call it a hunch or an instinct, the supernatural moment that stops you in your tracks.

WASHINGTON A federal judge has turned back an effort to delay an independent medical review for a Saudi citizen held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center who was so badly mistreated in American custody that he cannot be put on trial. The government has never said what it plans to do with him and his attorneys are seeking to have him returned to his native Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. The prisoner has been diagnosed with severe mental illness, including schizophrenia, apparently due to a brain injury from a childhood car accident in Saudi Arabia. Ramzi Kassem, an attorney for al-Qahtani, said he thinks the government is worried about what an independent medical panel would conclude about his client. Theyre concerned the mixed medical commission will come back and say he meets the criteria for medical repatriation, said Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York.