One of the very first Guantanamo detainees -- still classified as among the most dangerous -- testified Tuesday to an expert panel that could ultimately see him freed, as efforts intensify to close the controversial jail.

Yemeni Abdel Malik Wahab al Rahabi, 34, appeared frail and serious in a white prison tunic during the 19-minute hearing in Guantanamo of the "Periodic Review Board."

One of the men suspected of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks was twice ejected from a U.S. military court Tuesday after making outbursts about secret CIA prisons and torture.

Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of helping the hijackers enter the United States and of financing the airliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, also claimed that the judge hearing the case was biased.

Only a dozen prisoners remain on hunger strike at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, eight months after the start of their protest fast.

While some detainees may well one day refuse to take food again, for now most have chosen to end their hunger strike, attorneys for the inmates said.

A third Guantanamo Bay detainee alleged to have been tortured in a secret CIA jail in Poland has been granted formal victim status here, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Poland is one of several EU members suspected of having hosted secret prisons or "black sites" set up by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to hold suspected al-Qaida militants after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

One Yemeni prisoner at Guantanamo Bay says it is an agonizing, cruel punishment that he would not wish on anyone.

U.S. federal Judge Gladys Kessler describes it as a "painful, humiliating and degrading process."

The end of Ramadan has left authorities at the Guantanamo Bay military jail preparing for an uptick in unrest at the controversial prison, U.S. officials say.

The annual Muslim fast is traditionally regarded as an unofficial truce at Guantanamo, where some inmates have been held for around a decade without trial.

Guantanamo detainees are marking six months of an unprecedented hunger strike that has trained attention on the more than 150 men held at the U.S. military prison without charge or trial.

The strike began on February 6 as a spontaneous reaction to a cell sweep in which guards allegedly mishandled copies of the Koran, but soon grew into a mass protest against the legal limbo within the walls of the War on Terror prison.

President Barack Obama was to welcome his Yemeni counterpart to the White House Thursday against a backdrop of drone strikes and the unresolved fate of Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo.

The meeting with President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi comes hours after a deadly U.S. drone strike in Yemen, where Washington has been deeply involved in a campaign against al-Qaida in the Arabian Pensinsula (AQAP).

Relatives of Yemenis being held at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention center protested outside Washington's mission in Sanaa on Monday, calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to free the detainees.

"Freedom, freedom for the detainees!," chanted dozens of protesters, some dressed in orange -- the color of jumpsuits worn by Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The United States has handed over two former Guantanamo detainees to their native Mauritania after they were cleared by American courts of suspected terror-related activities, activists and security officials said.

The two men -- Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz -- arrived in Nouakchott on Friday night "after having been cleared by American tribunals", Hamoud Ould Nebagha, the head of a group that works for the liberation of Mauritanians held at Guantanamo Bay told AFP on Saturday.