Shawki Awad Balzuhair

In 2016, Bulzhair had his long delayed Period Review Board hearing. The officials who made recommendations following that review were told that the Karachi Six cell had never existed, after all.

In 2009, following an attempted bombing by a Nigerian jihadist who had been trained and equipped in Yemen, the United States stopped repatriating Yemenis to Yemen. Bulzhair was transferred to Cape Verde on December 4, 2016.

When he assumed office in January 2009 President Barack Obama made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo. He promised the use of torture would cease at the camp. He promised to institute a new review system. That new review system was composed of officials from six departments, where the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. When it reported back, a year later, the Joint Review Task Force classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them. On April 9, 2013, that document was made public after a Freedom of Information Act request. Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald was to call Balzuhair and 78 other men "forever prisoners".

On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts. His 12-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on May 18, 2008. It was signed by camp commandant Rear Admiral David M. Thomas Jr.. He recommended continued detention.

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, lead by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:

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. In 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

Shawki Awad Balzuhair (born July 24, 1981) is a citizen of Yemen, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His detainee ID number is 838. The Department of Defense reports that Balzuhair was born on July 24, 1981, in Hadramout, Yemen.