Archive for January, 2008

Little noticed by the wider world, Jamil El-Banna, one of three British residents freed from Guantánamo in December, gave his first interview after his release to Jenny Engstrom of the Willesden and Brent Times. The article was published as the newspaper’s front page story on December 27, but, as it is does not appear to be available on the internet, I’ve taken this opportunity to reproduce the main body of it here.

The Willesden and Brent Times’ campaign to free Mr. El-Banna began in February 2006, and was a regular feature of the paper’s coverage until his release in December. For further information about Mr. El-Banna’s story, and the Spanish government’s request for his extradition on ill-founded terror charges, see here. Information about his first, brief extradition hearing (with Omar Deghayes), which took place on January 9, 2008, will follow shortly.

“Just So Happy To Be Home”
EXCLUSIVE by Jenny Engstrom

Newly released Guantánamo detainee Jamil El-Banna has told of his relief at being reunited with his family in an exclusive first interview with the Times. With his long tangled white beard and grey flowing hair, grown in protest of his mistreatment at the US detention camp, Jamil El-Banna looks much older than his 45 years. But despite his five-year ordeal in Guantánamo, he looks surprisingly cheerful and relaxed, with a spark in his eyes.

Caption from the article: “The first family portrait: Jamil El-Banna with his children Anas, 12, Mohammed, 11, Badeah, six, Abdulrahman, eight, and Mariam, four.”
Exclusive picture by Jenny Engstrom.

Sitting on his living room couch surrounded by all his children, Mr. El-Banna decided to give his first interview to the Willesden and Brent Times, which has been campaigning for his release for nearly two years. He said, “I’m just so happy to be home and to be back with my children. It’s wonderful to see them all, and to see my youngest daughter, Mariam, for the first time. I’m so grateful to the Times campaigning for me all this time and for keeping the issue in the public eye.”

The father-of-five was reunited with his family outside their home last Thursday, following his release from the US base in Cuba the day before. His children ran out in the street as the police van bringing him home pulled up outside their front door. It was the first time he had met his youngest daughter, Mariam, 4, who was not yet born when Mr. El-Banna was detained by the Americans.

The emotional homecoming proved too much for his eldest son, Anas, 12, who broke down in tears after embracing his father for the first time in five years. His wife, Sabah, said, “It was so emotional, Anas started crying. At first Mariam was a little scared. She didn’t recognize her dad with the long hair, but soon enough she calmed down. Marian has waited her whole life for this day. It was the first time she got to hug and kiss her dad and the first time he got to hug her.”

Mr. El-Banna also spoke of his ordeal in Guantánamo. He said, “It’s been hard. But one thing that kept me going all these years was the support I got from people all over the world and from all religious and social backgrounds. I received thousands of letters. I have tried to reply to the people who wrote to me, but I have not been able to answer all of them. Please accept my apologies. I don’t want them to feel I ignored them, but sometimes I wasn’t given enough paper by the guards.”

He added, “I would also like to thank all my solicitors: Gareth Peirce, Zachary Katznelson, Clive Stafford Smith and Brent Mickum, who have all helped me and my family, and also my MP, Sarah Teather. They have all supported my wife and children while I’ve been away. I can’t thank them enough. I feel they understand my situation and I will never forget everything they have done for me.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

On Wednesday January 9, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, two of the three British residents released from Guantánamo before Christmas, will face a brief hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in connection with the request, filed by the Spanish government on their return to the UK, for their extradition in connection with long-discredited terror charges. Sources close to the men have indicated that this is just a preliminary hearing and that there will be a full hearing in a few months’ time, with a final decision following up to six months later.

Detainees in Guantánamo.

Both men have spent the last few weeks with their families, attempting to get used to their freedom after long years without charge or trial in Guantánamo, where they were both treated horrendously, and although Timothy Workman, the British judge who granted them bail before Christmas, is to be commended for allowing them this brief period of readjustment in the comfort of their homes, the Spanish government’s groundless request for their extradition remains extraordinarily insensitive.

The following letter, addressing their plight and asking the Spanish government to drop its claim, was written by Harold Pinter, Baroness Kennedy, QC, Sir Geoffrey Bindman and Victoria Brittain, and appears in the Times.

Guantánamo two: There can’t be any justification for subjecting these men to further legal processes

Sir, The belief of the UK residents Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes that they had at last been restored to freedom in Britain after their five-year ordeal in Guantánamo Bay prison camp was cruelly disappointed when, on their arrival before Christmas, they were arrested at the behest of the Spanish Government demanding their extradition to face terrorism charges.

Both the US and British authorities have long been aware of the stale and flimsy evidence on which Spain relies, and both governments have made it clear that they do not regard the release of the men as posing any security threat. Were it otherwise their release would have been inconceivable.

Under the European Extradition Convention the British authorities have little choice but to act on a request from another European state and bring the suspect before the court. Fortunately, when the men were taken to Horseferry Road Magistrates Court, the district judge, Timothy Workman, had the wisdom and compassion to grant them bail pending a full hearing in the new year. They are in court today.

However weak these cases may be, and whatever may be the outcome of Spain’s application when it is fully heard, there can be no justification for subjecting the two men to the further ordeal of a prolonged and uncertain legal process after all they have gone through. We call on the Spanish Government to withdraw its ill-considered persecution of these men. They have suffered enough.

Harold Pinter
Baroness Kennedy, QC
Sir Geoffrey Bindman
Victoria Brittain

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, looks at the stories of the ten Saudis released from Guantánamo on December 29, and reveals that they include Taliban foot soldiers, missionaries, humanitarian aid workers, and one genuine surprise –- the director of a blacklisted charity, who was once regarded as a “high-value” detainee.

As 2007 drew to a close, the tally of detainees released from Guantánamo throughout the year rose to 122, as another ten Saudis were repatriated, to add to the 53 sent home between February and November.

With 492 detainees now released –- and 281 remaining –- the administration’s initial claim that the prison housed the “worst of the worst” grows ever more hollow. It should be noted, however, that, unlike most of the other detainees freed last year, the Saudis were not sent home because they had been cleared by the military review boards convened to assess whether they still posed a threat to the United States, or whether they still had significant intelligence value, but because of successful diplomatic negotiations between the US and Saudi governments.

After initial doubts, the Americans seem satisfied that the Saudi government’s rehabilitation program –- which involves psychological counseling, religious reeducation, job training, art therapy and financial support –- is proving successful.

Rehabilitation, Saudi-style. Photo by Kate Brooks for Time.

Even with this caveat, however, it appears that none of the ten Saudis just released was involved with al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. Like many others released in the last few years, four were Taliban foot soldiers, mostly recruited through fatwas issued by radical sheikhs in their homeland, ordering them to aid the Taliban in their inter-Muslim civil war against the Northern Alliance, which had begun long before 9/11. Four others were missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, including one, the charity director mentioned above, who had long been regarded by the Americans as a major player in al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Of the remaining two, the status of one is still difficult to ascertain, even after six years in US custody, and the story of the other –- Bandar Ali al-Rumaihi –- is completely unknown, as his name does not correspond with any of the names on the Pentagon’s lists of detainees.

The Taliban foot soldiers captured in Afghanistan

Three of the four Taliban foot soldiers were captured during the surrender of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz in November 2001, six weeks after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began. 21-year old Mishal Saad al-Rashid was typical of numerous men captured at this time, in his insistence that he went to Afghanistan, over a year “before any problem happened in America,” to help the Taliban fight General Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance.

He was confused that the Northern Alliance had formed a coalition with the United States, as the only coalition that he knew of was between the Northern Alliance and Russia. Although this misconception, repeated by several other detainees, was partly due to the propaganda issued by the pro-Taliban sheikhs in Saudi Arabia, it also had some basis in fact, at least in the case of Dostum, who had fought with the Russians during the Soviet invasion, before switching sides in the early 1990s.

In his tribunal at Guantánamo, al-Rashid accepted an allegation that he was a member of the Taliban (but not al-Qaeda), and also acknowledged that he had received military training in Afghanistan. He was one of several hundred Taliban fighters who surrendered after the fall of Kunduz, believing that they would be freed after handing over their weapons, but who discovered, instead, that they were to be imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a fortress run by General Dostum. After lax security enabled some of the prisoners to stage an uprising against their captors, the majority were killed during a week-long battle with the Northern Alliance, backed up by US and British Special Forces, and supported by American bombing raids.

Qala-i-Janghi’s most famous survivor, John Walker Lindh (left), the “American Taliban.” Photo © James Hill/Getty Images.

Responding to an allegation that he surrendered to Dostum’s forces, al-Rashid said that actually “they were tricked. Their agreement was they would return home and give up their arms. And then Dostum’s forces sold them for money to the United States.” When it came to an allegation that he had taken part in the uprising he was even more forthright, exclaiming, “What uprising? We didn’t do any uprising. We had given up our weapons, so how could we be part of an uprising? They [Dostum's troops] were the ones that had all the weapons. We tried to defend ourselves but we couldn’t because they had the weapons.” He added, “I was injured in my thigh and my shoulder. That was during the betrayal [when] Dostum had imprisoned us. If someone is bound, how do [they] shoot at [you]? That was a sure sign of betrayal.”

Also held in Qala-i-Janghi was 22-year old Nayif al-Usaymi, a college student, who explained that, as with several other detainees, he had been inspired to travel to Afghanistan to receive military training so that he could fight in Chechnya. According to the evidence against him in a military review at Guantánamo in 2006, in late 2000 he “read a fatwa which instructed young Muslim males to join the jihad in Chechnya. The fatwa stated the Russians were slaughtering Muslim brothers in the region, and fighting there was considered justified in accordance with the Koran, as well as meeting the status of martyr if killed.”

After meeting with a facilitator, who “provided him with instructions on obtaining a Pakistani visa as well as a specific route to take,” he arrived in Afghanistan in March 2001, where, after meeting two men who told him the history of the Taliban, he agreed to be recruited. Trained at the front lines near Kabul, he then spent eight months on the front lines at Khawaja Ghar, in northern Afghanistan, and was captured after the fall of Kunduz. Although he was taken to Qala-i-Janghi, he reported that he managed to escape from the fort. This was a rare occurrence, as most who tried to do so were shot and killed, but he was recaptured six weeks later.

In Guantánamo, he insisted that he “never saw any fighting because he was stationed at the rear of the front line,” and it was noted that he was regarded as “being of low intelligence or law enforcement value to the United States and also as unlikely to pose a threat to the US or its interests” by a Saudi delegation in 2002.

The third foot soldier, 18-year old Khalid al-Ghatani, was specifically recruited through a notorious pro-Taliban fatwa issued by the octogenarian Sheikh Hamoud al-Uqla, who, until his death in 2001, “encouraged people to fight jihad against the Christians and the Jews … condoned the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, and helped raise money for Osama bin Laden,” according to the US authorities.

After traveling to Afghanistan in autumn 2000, al-Ghatani spent six months at a camp named Pakistani Center No. 5, and then moved to the front lines at Khawaja Ghar, where he “guarded sleeping quarters/bunkers for Pakistani troops who fought at the front lines.” He was apparently captured after being shot by a sniper and spending time in a hospital in Kunduz, although in his tribunal it was alleged that he had fled to Pakistan, and, in a bizarre postscript, that he had stayed for two days with nine other mujahideen fighters in a stone house that was built into the mountain, and that “Approximately two weeks later Osama bin Laden came and stayed at the stone house.”

Photo by James Hill of prisoners (mostly Pakistanis) captured after the fall of Kunduz.

After his tribunal, the Presiding Officer noted that he “did not fire his weapon at any soldiers or persons,” and mention was also made of al-Ghatani’s own statement that he did not go to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, but to receive weapons training and to “stand guard.” He was, however, criticized for his behavior in Guantánamo, where, apparently, he had been “cited for assault, hostile activity and harassment of guards on numerous occasions,” and once for “making a weapon” –- although how this would have been possible, in the paranoid, security-obsessed cell blocks of Guantánamo, was not explained.

The Taliban foot soldier captured in Pakistan

In the Summary of Evidence against the fourth foot soldier, 25-year old Abdul Hakim al-Mousa, it was alleged that he traveled to Afghanistan for combat training and was recruited in Saudi Arabia by someone who “introduced him to the safe house system.” According to this account, he subsequently spent time at safe houses in Quetta, Khost, and Kandahar, and was arrested on February 7, 2002 with at least a dozen other detainees in a safe house –- or a number of safe houses –- in Karachi, which reportedly belonged to Abdu Ali Sharqawi.

Also known as Riyadh the Facilitator, Sharqawi is a supposedly “high-value” detainee, described as “part of the al-Qaeda network responsible for moving Arabs to and from Afghanistan.” Subjected to “extraordinary rendition” after his capture, he was sent to Jordan, to be “interrogated” by the Americans’ proxy torturers in the Jordanians’ notorious General Intelligence Department prison in Amman, where, he said, he was tortured continuously.

“I was told that if I wanted to leave with permanent disability both mental and physical, that that could be arranged,” he explained in a statement made in April 2006 that was released last month. “They said they had all the facilities of Jordan to achieve that. I was told that I had to talk, I had to tell them everything.” In January 2004, he was rendered back to a secret CIA-run facility in Afghanistan, where he stayed until September 2004, when he was finally transferred to Guantánamo.

Unlike Sharqawi, the other men captured in the raid were transferred to Guantánamo after processing in the US prison at Kandahar airport. Several of these men, including two Kuwaitis, have already been released, and there is little evidence that most of the others –- including al-Mousa –- had anything to do with al-Qaeda.

In Guantánamo, it was noted that a Saudi delegation had deemed him to be “of low intelligence or law enforcement value to the United States, and unlikely to pose a terrorist threat to the United States or its interests,” and although al-Mousa’s own explanation for his presence in Afghanistan was rather weak –- he said that he traveled “to defend himself against thieves, defend Saudi Arabia, and learn how to shoot a weapon for the purpose of hunting” –- the Americans’ allegations were no better.

Desperate to pin something on him, they resorted to guilt by association, alleging that one of the people he was captured with attended al-Farouq and “was escorted by a senior al-Qaeda member to a meeting where he presented money to Osama bin Laden,” and that another attended al-Farouq and “was present at a speech given by Osama bin Laden at the camp.”

The missionaries

Two of those released maintained throughout their imprisonment that they were missionaries. 28-year old taxi driver Jamil al-Kabi explained that, in 2000, he “sold his taxi and decided to devote more time to the Dawa, or ‘the call.’” After starting his mission in Mecca, by “going out and finding young Muslims who were not following the word of Islam and trying to get them to the mosque,” he then spent six months in Lahore, the home of Jamaat-al-Tablighi, the vast, worldwide missionary organization whose annual meetings in Pakistan and Bangladesh attract millions of followers.

Despite the size of the organization and its avowedly non-political manifesto, the US authorities have persistently maintained that it was actually “used as a cover to mask travel and activities of terrorists, including members of al-Qaeda.” In al-Kabi’s case, his subsequent missionary ventures in Indonesia and Malaysia attracted equally tangential allegations that Tablighi “recruits” from both countries traveled to militant training camps in Pakistan.

Describing the circumstances of his capture, al-Kabi said that, after traveling to Karachi, where he stayed at the Tablighi mosque for a month, he met four men and traveled with them to Kabul, where he stayed for four months at the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque and continued the Dawa, with the help of one of the men he had traveled with, who “helped him translate with people who did not speak Arabic.” When Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance, in early November 2001, he said that “word began to spread” that the Alliance soldiers “were killing all of the Arabs.” He and his companions fled to Jalalabad, where they stayed for a month before walking through the mountains to the Pakistani border, where he was captured.

The status of the other purported missionary, 21-year old Abdul Rahman al-Hataybi, had not been satisfactorily explained by the time of his release, even after nearly six years of interrogation. According to the allegations against him, after failing his military entrance exam he was “immediately contacted by a recruiter for al-Qaeda”, and was sent to Afghanistan, with all his expenses paid, to train at al-Farouq, a camp for Arab recruits, established by the Afghan warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the early 1990s, but associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11.

Although the US administration claimed that he had been “identified as a member of al-Qaeda by a foreign government service,” and reported that his name had been found on various documents recovered in raids on suspected al-Qaeda safe houses, al-Hataybi’s own story was consistently at odds with the American version.

The authorities acknowledged that he was a member of Jamaat-al-Tablighi, but largely overlooked his insistence that he had worked only as a missionary. In a number of comments listed under factors favoring release or transfer, al-Hataybi said that he “traveled to Pakistan for the sole purpose of providing missionary work to those individuals in need of assistance.” He claimed “never to have set foot in Afghanistan,” having conducted all his missionary work in Karachi and Lahore, and also claimed that “a Pakistani police intern tortured him, and forced him to say that he was part of al-Qaeda and that he had traveled to Afghanistan for the purpose of jihad.” He added that he “lied because he wanted the torture to stop.”

The humanitarian aid workers

Of the three humanitarian aid workers, the first, 19-year old Ziyad al-Bahuth, was captured by Pakistani forces after crossing the border in December 2001. He explained that he took 90,000 riyals (about $24,000) from Saudi Arabia to help the poor people in Afghanistan, and said that he gave the money to a man named Mohammed Khan to distribute via the Taliban, adding that he stayed for approximately a year to see how the money was distributed.

He admitted attending a Taliban training camp near Kabul for a week, and also admitted that he spent time in Kabul with a known member of the Taliban, who, he believed, facilitated his weapons training in order to encourage him to join the Taliban, but denied that he either joined the Taliban or had any relationship with al-Qaeda.

His tribunal was particularly noteworthy for the following exchange, which, while possibly demonstrating a healthy scepticism on the part of the US authorities, could also demonstrate how little they understood about the charitable obligations of Islam:

Presiding Officer: When you were around 18 years old, you raised 90,000 Riyals … to take to a country you had never been to before to give the money to the needy and the poor people. Is that right?
Detainee: Yes.
Presiding Officer: That is remarkable.

The second humanitarian aid worker, 29-year old Abdullah al-Utaybi, said that he left Saudi Arabia with $30,000 and traveled to Turkey, where he was looking for a wife. After the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began in October 2001, he said that he “decided to travel to Pakistan to offer his assistance and cash to Afghan refugees.” He stated that he flew to Pakistan but was captured at a checkpoint in Quetta, near the border, where the money was discovered and he was seized and handed over to US forces.

Al-Utaybi maintained that he had never set foot in Afghanistan, even though several unnamed individuals alleged that he had been the director of the Herat office of al-Wafa, a Saudi charity, based in Kabul, which was blacklisted by the US authorities in September 2001 for alleged ties with terrorism.

It has not been possible to establish whether there was any truth in these allegations, but one man who would certainly have known is Abdullah al-Matrafi, the director of al-Wafa in Afghanistan, whose inclusion in the latest batch of released detainees was genuinely surprising.

The director of a blacklisted charity

A father of three, Abdullah al-Matrafi, who was 38 years old at the time of his capture, had directed a fund-raising committee in Bosnia, and had worked as an imam in Mecca before establishing al-Wafa. At the time of his release, he was presumably aware that most of the other detainees who had worked for al-Wafa had been freed, as their claims that they were involved in genuine humanitarian aid work were accepted one by one. He, however, was regarded as a “high-value” detainee, against whom was stacked an array of allegations of his deep involvement with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

After the invasion of Afghanistan began, al-Matrafi sent his family to safety in Pakistan, but stayed on in Kabul, even though the organization’s stores were the targets of bombing raids, in which seven aid workers were killed. He finally left the capital when he was seriously injured in a bombing raid, and his family last heard from him on December 10, 2001, as he was about to board an Emirates flight from Lahore to Dubai. He never made it onto the plane. Abducted at the airport by US agents, he was transferred back to Afghanistan and put on the first flight to Guantánamo.

Little was heard about him in Guantánamo, although it was clear that the authorities regarded him as a major supporter of terrorism, alleging in his tribunal that he knew Osama bin Laden, that his plan to provide funds to bin Laden for training caused disagreement within al-Wafa, that he admitted that al-Wafa purchased weapons and vehicles for the Taliban, and that he “negotiated a deal that allowed the Taliban to direct al-Wafa’s activities.”

In his review boards, further allegations were added, including claims that he “admitted he took orders from Osama bin Laden,” that he “provided financial support to al-Qaeda after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and that he purchased medical laboratory equipment for a microbiologist who was “developing anthrax for al-Qaeda.”

Set against these allegations, however, were a number of counter-claims, which, typically, were ignored when the authorities declared him an “enemy combatant.” On several occasions, al-Matrafi stated that there was no relationship between al-Wafa and al-Qaeda, “explaining that al-Qaeda disliked al-Wafa, and both organizations were in disagreement.” It was also noted in the Summary of Evidence for his second review board that, two months before 9/11, he met with bin Laden at his house in Kandahar, and stated that the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss unresolved issues” from a previous meeting, “concerning disagreements between al-Wafa and al-Qaeda.”

A brief survey of al-Matrafi’s statements before his capture is sufficient to explain his refusal to accept that he was affiliated with terrorists. In October 2001, after al-Wafa was blacklisted, he appeared on the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera, protesting his innocence and offering to open up the organization’s accounts to public scrutiny.

In addition, two detainees in Guantánamo who had worked for al-Wafa backed up his statements. Ayman Batarfi, a Yemeni doctor who tended wounded soldiers during the battle of Tora Bora, pointed out that, although al-Wafa had a good working relationship with the Taliban, this was required to pursue its humanitarian work, and both Batarfi and another man, Mustafa Hamlili, an Algerian-born Pakistani resident who has been cleared for release, but is still in Guantánamo, reinforced al-Matrafi’s claim that the organization was regarded with suspicion by al-Qaeda because of its Saudi links.

Batarfi may, in fact, be the alleged “al-Qaeda facilitator” mentioned in the Summary of Evidence from al-Matrafi’s first review board, who identified him as “having problems with Osama bin Laden because [he] had come to do charity work in Afghanistan and was funded by the Saudi royal family, who Osama bin Laden rejected and denounced.” This source added, moreover, that al-Matrafi “would take Saudis from al-Farouq and try to send them back to Saudi Arabia.”

What was largely overlooked, however, was an even more compelling statement on al-Matrafi’s behalf. In May 2006, an audiotape from Osama bin Laden, whose authenticity was not called into doubt by US intelligence, explicitly stated that two detainees in Guantánamo –- al-Matrafi and the al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj –- had no connection whatsoever with al-Qaeda.

None of this helped him, however, and what probably counted against him more than anything else was the discovery, in August 2002, of a store of chemicals in offices used by al-Wafa in Kabul, which included “36 types of chemical, explosives, fuses and terrorist guide books.” Whether this had anything to do with him is unknown. His brother, Mohammed, reiterated that the organization had no links to al-Qaeda. “My brother and I have repeatedly said we have no terrorist links, and that any organization, official or non-governmental, is free to come and investigate our headquarters,” he told the press, adding, “We are only helping the Muslim people of Afghanistan.”

Time alone will tell what the Saudi government makes of Abdullah al-Matrafi on his return, but, like the allegations against his workers that disappeared under scrutiny like a malevolent mirage, it may well be that those who vouched for him were correct in their appraisal that he was the head of a charity that was required to work with the Taliban, but that was otherwise committed to bringing humanitarian aid to some of the most deprived people on earth.

This article draws on passages from my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

As published on CounterPunch, Antiwar.com and the Huffington Post.

Note:

The prisoners’ numbers (and variations on the spelling of their names) are as follows:

ISN 74: Mishal Saad al-Rashid (Mesh Arsad al-Rashid)
ISN 436: Nayif al-Usaymi
ISN 439: Khalid al-Ghatani
ISN 565: Abdul Hakim al-Mousa
ISN 216: Jamil al-Kabi
ISN 268: Abdul Rahman al-Hataybi
ISN 272: Ziyad al-Bahuth
ISN 243: Abdullah al-Utaybi
ISN 5: Abdullah al-Matrafi (Abdul Aziz, Abdallah Aiza)

As for Bandar Ali al-Rumaihi, the unidentified prisoner mentioned in the article, it seems that there was some confusion over the names of the released prisoners, as he is actually Abdullah al-Utaybi, who is referred to elsewhere by the DoD as Bendar al-Ataybi.

The released prisoner not referred to in the article is:

ISN 253: Faris Muslim al-Ansari (sometimes listed as Afghan)

Al-Ansari is discussed in Chapter 6 of The Guantánamo Files, and also in my article The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held At Guantánamo.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the eleven prisoners released from February to June 2009, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here).

On December 20, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Lenny Charles for the International News Network’s World Report. The viewer-funded INN constantly attempts to address the omissions of the mainstream media, and describes itself, through its TV and radio programming, as “Real News The Networks Won’t Tell You.”

In the interview, Lenny discussed my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, and asked me about recent events at Guantánamo: the release of two Sudanese humanitarian aid workers, Adel Hamad and Salim Adem, the release of three British residents and the Spanish government’s extradition request for two of the men, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, the story of the CIA’s destruction of videotapes recording the torture of two “high-value” detainees in CIA-run “black sites,” and the cases of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident still detained in Guantánamo, and Jose Padilla, a US “enemy combatant” who was held without charge or trial for three and a half years in solitary confinement on the US mainland. The cases of both of these men –- and their supposed connection with a “dirty bomb” plot in a US city –- are drenched in torture, and are also tied in with the interrogation of alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was one of the two “high-value” detainees whose recorded interrogations were destroyed by the CIA.

The full program, featuring world news followed by the interview, is available here.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

My thanks to Joanne Mariner, Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program Director at Human Rights Watch, who has described The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison as “An admirable book,” and has recommended it as one of her books of the year in a column for FindLaw.

Thanks also to the Brighton-based political activists at SchNEWS for a recent review, and to David Swanson, US author, activist and co-founder of the pro-impeachment website After Downing Street, for his enthusiastic endorsement of The Guantánamo Files as a “stunning new book,” in an article demolishing the administration’s claims that those who are opposed to US foreign policy hate the United States for its “freedom.” Writing of the book, Swanson notes, “Here they are: they. Who are ‘they’? Why did we pay people money to turn them over, imagining we’d get the right ‘they’ that way? Why did we torture them to tell us about others, imagining we’d learn something useful that way? Why do we look back on the slavery abolition movement with respect but look askance at those struggling to close Guantánamo and secret prisons because they wear orange jumpsuits and complain about things we never see on television?”

The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison is published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.