WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi

18.6.09

Ibn al-Shaykh al-LibiIn a world exclusive, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, reveals new information, from a source in Libya, about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the former US “ghost prisoner” who died in a Libyan jail last month, focusing, in particular, on the prisons in which he was held, and the ways in which torture was used by his interrogators.

Since the story first emerged last month that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri) had died in a Libyan prison, speculation has been rife that the Libyan newspaper Oea, which claimed that he had died by committing suicide, was covering up the fact that he had actually been murdered.

Once the Bush administration’s most famous “ghost prisoner,” al-Libi had been the emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, but his notoriety stemmed not from his own activities, but from the fact that, after his capture in December 2001, he was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where, under torture, he made a false confession that two al-Qaeda operatives had been receiving information from Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical and biological weapons, which was subsequently used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The death of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi

There were several signs to indicate that the story of al-Libi’s death was suspicious. Oea is owned by one of Colonel Gaddafi’s sons, and, as Hafed al-Ghwell, a Libyan-American and a prominent critic of the Gaddafi regime, explained to Newsweek, “This idea of committing suicide in your prison cell is an old story in Libya.” He added that, throughout Gaddafi’s 40-year rule, there had been several instances in which political prisoners were reported to have committed suicide, but that “then the families get the bodies back and discover the prisoners had been shot in the back or tortured to death.”

In addition, two Human Rights Watch researchers had briefly met al-Libi in the courtyard of Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison just two weeks before his death, and, although he refused to talk to them, they said that he “looked well,” and it was also revealed in the days after his death that lawyers for Abu Zubaydah, another former “ghost prisoner,” who was sent to Guantánamo in September 2006, had been attempting to make contact with al-Libi as a possible witness in any forthcoming trial involving their client.

A week after the death, Newsweek reported that US officials “are skeptical about the supposed suicide,” and that the Obama administration “is pressing the Libyan government to explain” al-Libi’s death. Speaking anonymously, an administration official “familiar with the case” told Newsweek, “We want answers. We want to know what really happened here.”

The Newsweek article also explained that US officials feared that al-Libi’s death “could reopen questions about the [CIA]’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program and further complicate the president’s plans to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention center.” I have no idea how al-Libi’s death could possibly impact on President Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo, but when it comes to asking uncomfortable questions about the Bush administration’s program of “extraordinary rendition” and torture, involving secret prisons run by the CIA, and other prisons in third countries, the Newsweek article was certainly accurate.

New revelations about al-Libi’s torture

Following al-Libi’s death, disturbing details of his detention in at least seven different locations around the world have emerged in statements made by a source inside Libya. This source, who wishes to remain anonymous for his own safety and for the safety of his family, has stated that he met al-Libi at the prison before his death, and that al-Libi explained to him what had happened to him in the four years and three months between his capture and his rendition to Libya in the spring of 2006.

The story that al-Libi told to this source in Abu Salim prison was related to me by former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, who was just a teenager when he arrived in the UK in the 1980s from Libya, where his father, a lawyer and trade union activist, had been murdered by the Gaddafi regime. I cannot, of course, verify the details of the story Deghayes told me via the source in Libya, as al-Libi’s death brought to an end any possibility that he would one day be able to explain what happened to him at the hands of US forces, the Libyan authorities and others involved in his rendition and torture, but so many of the details correspond with facts that have already been established through other research, that it seems certain to me that the story is true.

According to Deghayes, the Libyan source explained that al-Libi told him that, after his capture, when he was held briefly in Afghanistan (in the US prison at Kandahar airport, and on the USS Bataan, according to a previous report – PDF), he was rendered to Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan, and was then rendered back to Afghanistan, where he was held in three separate prisons run by, or under the control of the CIA. He also explained that he was subjected to torture in all these locations, and provided disturbing details of how he was manipulated by his interrogators.

Torture in Egypt and Mauritania

These countries have all been mentioned in previous reports, but some of the details are new. Al-Libi’s time in Egypt, of course, is where the notorious lie about al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was extracted, which, incidentally, should be hurled in the face of former Vice President Cheney, every time he is invited onto a TV show to repeat his claims that torture saved the US from further terrorist attacks — and to ignore the crucial role he played in actually using torture to launch an illegal war.

The purported secret prison in MauritaniaFrom Egypt, according to the Libyan source, al-Libi was rendered to a prison in Mauritania. This too has been mentioned before, in an article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh in June 2007, which followed revelations in the Washington Post in November 2005 that the CIA had used a secret prison in Poland to hold “high-value detainees” (and, apparently, another in Rumania for “lower-level prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq”). In December 2005, ABC News reported that eleven “high-value detainees” — including al-Libi — had been held in Poland (a list is here), and in the New Yorker Hersh explained how he had been told that Mauritania was chosen as a new location when the existence of the Polish prison was revealed:

I was told by the former senior intelligence official and a government consultant that after the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe was revealed, in the Washington Post, in late 2005, the Administration responded with a new detainee center in Mauritania. After a new government friendly to the US took power, in a bloodless coup d’état in August 2005, they said, it was much easier for the intelligence community to mask secret flights there.

The problem with this story for the chronology that al-Libi told the Libyan source is that he did not mention being held in Poland at all, and indicated that he had been moved to Mauritania after being held in Egypt, presumably sometime in 2002 or 2003. It may be that the source was mistaken, although it is also possible that the US administration arranged a deal at this time, as officials were working closely with the Mauritanian government after the 9/11 attacks. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national who lived in Germany and had been in contact with the 9/11 attackers, was handed over to US agents in November 2001, prompting him to state, in his tribunal at Guantánamo, “My country turned me over, shortcutting all kinds of due process of law, like a candy bar to the United States.” Slahi also stated that US agents had interrogated him in Mauritania a month before, when one of them threatened to bring in “black people” to torture him.

Torture in Morocco and Jordan

From Mauritania, al-Libi said that he was taken to Morocco. Little has emerged about this claim previously, although the author and journalist Peter Bergen noted in a major survey of “extraordinary rendition” last year that Morocco was one of the countries in which al-Libi was held, and if he was indeed rendered there in late 2002 or sometime in 2003, it would have corresponded with the time that the British resident Binyam Mohamed was held (between July 2002 and January 2004), when there was clearly an active relationship involving the use of torture that was negotiated between the US and Moroccan governments.

Double Jeopardy, a 2008 report by Human Rights WatchFrom there, al-Libi said, he was rendered to Jordan, to a detention facility run by the notorious GID (General Intelligence Department). In a report in April 2008, entitled “Double Jeopardy,” Human Rights Watch found that at least 14 non-Jordanian prisoners had been rendered by the CIA to Jordanian custody between 2001 and 2004, and a former prisoner held in 2004-05 told a researcher that “a guard spoke of a Libyan prisoner who had been rendered by the Americans,” and that he “thought the prisoner’s name was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, but he was not certain.” The ex-prisoner also explained that this Libyan prisoner was “held on the very top floor of the GID facility, away from all the other prisoners,” and that a guard had told him,

They were hiding some Libyan guy who had been handed over by the Americans to be interrogated. They didn’t want the ICRC to know about him. And they didn’t want the Libyan to know where he was. So they chose dark-skinned guards, and they put the guards in green trousers and yellow shirts, so the Libyan thought he was in Africa.

Human Rights Watch also noted that another source, who had had contact with al-Libi, said that he believed that he was held in Jordan “for a couple of months,” and I find this mention of “a couple of months” particularly interesting, because it fits with the Libyan source’s proposal that al-Libi was not held for up to two years in Egypt, as previous reports have tended to suggest, but was in fact moved over a two-year period between Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan until, if the author and journalist Stephen Grey is correct, he was rendered back to Bagram on November 22, 2003, to a secret part of the prison, run by the CIA, that was known as “The Hangar.”

Identifying other prisoners through the use of torture

What makes this scenario even more compelling, however, is the Libyan source’s comment — never previously reported — that, in each prison, other “terror suspects” were brought before al-Libi, and he was required to identify those that he knew — or, under torture, those that he didn’t know.

This partly ties in with the report of his death in the Oea newspaper, which noted that “he had left Libya in 1986 to travel to Morocco, Mauritania and then to Saudi Arabia where he was recruited in 1990 to join Islamist militants in Afghanistan” (in other words, that he spent time in two countries where he was later rendered by the CIA), and also indicates that he was, essentially, taken on a torture tour of prisons in Africa and the Middle East to identify those who had trained at Khaldan — or, again, those who hadn’t, but who were implicated through the use of torture.

Under non-coercive conditions, with skilled interrogators like the FBI operatives who initially interrogated al-Libi after his capture (before CIA agents took over, sealed him in a tiny box and sent him to Egypt, while one agent told him, “You’re going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I’m going to find your mother and I’m going to f*** her”), it’s possible that this approach would have yielded genuine intelligence, but in the circumstances that actually prevailed — in which waterboarding produced the false confession about the link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein — the picture conjured up is of a terrifying kind of international witch hunt, about as far removed from notions of justice, the pursuit of truth and government accountability as is imaginable.

Moreover, the story becomes even more chilling with the realization that prisoners were also repeatedly shown photographs of other “terror suspects” to identify. No reports confirm that this also happened to al-Libi, but it is inconceivable that it did not take place, and on a regular basis, because it happened to every other prisoner regarded as having intelligence value. One was Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi (also identified as Abdu Ali Sharqawi), a Yemeni seized in Karachi in February 2002. Rendered by the CIA to Jordan, where he was held for two years before being rendered to Afghanistan and then Guantánamo, where he is still held, al-Sharqawi explained, in a note written while in GID detention in 2002, which was later smuggled out of the prison,

I was being interrogated all the time, in the evening and in the day. I was shown thousands of photos, and I really mean thousands, I am not exaggerating … And in between all this you have the torture, the abuse, the cursing, humiliation. They had threatened me with being sexually abused and electrocuted. I was told that if I wanted to leave with permanent disability both mental and physical, that that could be arranged. 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.

Al-Sharqawi also explained, as Human Rights Watch described it, that “GID interrogators were extremely eager to provide information to the CIA.” In his prison note, he stated,

Every time that the interrogator asks me about a certain piece of information, and I talk, he asks me if I told this to the Americans. And if I say no he jumps for joy, and he leaves me and goes to report it to his superiors, and they rejoice.

Human Rights Watch also stated that al-Sharqawi “later told his lawyers that one of his Jordanian interrogators acknowledged that he was asking questions that the Americans had provided.”

Another detailed account was provided by Abu Hamza al-Tabuki, a Saudi national, seized in Karachi, Pakistan, in late 2001 and returned to Saudi Arabia in late 2002 or early 2003 (and later released), who wrote an account of his experiences that was made available to Human Rights Watch by a former prisoner who had been held with him.

As Human Rights Watch explained in its report, “Al-Tabuki claimed that the point of the abuse was to obtain information, even false information” and in his account he wrote,

The questions focused on Osama bin Laden and his wives and children, his location, and on members of al-Qaeda. I was shown pictures of bearded and non-bearded Yemeni, Saudi, Jordanian, and Egyptian individuals. I was asked the names of these individuals, and forced to identify them even if I didn’t know them. Many times, I even made up names for them because I did not know who they were and was forced under physical duress to identify them.

They tortured me a great deal in order to make me confess to them about the American targets that al-Qaeda was planning to hit, even though I had no knowledge about that. They even forced me, through torture, to make up fictitious targets, about which they could report to the Americans. Their [American] masters would later discover that these were empty threats, and that such targets were made up under torture.

Torture in Afghanistan

The US base - and prison - at BagramAccording to the Libyan source, after his imprisonment in Jordan, al-Libi was rendered to Afghanistan, where he spent time in three prisons run by the CIA: “The Hangar” inside Bagram airbase, the “Dark Prison” near Kabul, where dozens of prisoners were held, and another prison in the Panjshir valley, in the mountains north of Kabul, which was the home of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, who was assassinated just two days before the 9/11 attacks.

Few researchers have come across the use of the Panjshir prison as part of a network of secret prisons used by the CIA in Afghanistan, but it was mentioned briefly last summer in the trial by Military Commission of Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, when the judge in the case, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, ruled out the use of any testimony obtained when he was held in the Panjshir prison shortly after his capture — and where, according to Hamdan, CIA agents “repeatedly tied him up, put a bag over his head and knocked him to the ground” — because of the “highly coercive environments and conditions under which they were made.”

Furthermore, Omar Deghayes told me that, in Guantánamo, another prisoner had spoken about being held with al-Libi in the Panjshir prison. That prisoner — who is still held — is Sanad al-Kazimi, a Yemeni seized in the United Arab Emirates in January 2003, who was then rendered to secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan — including the “Dark Prison” — where he was tortured for a year and eight months before being transferred to Guantánamo.

abuyahyaallibiIn my book The Guantánamo Files, I also discussed the Panjshir prison, as it was mentioned by Abu Yahya al-Libi, one of four prisoners who escaped from Bagram in July 2005, in a post on an obscure French language website, which has since disappeared from the Internet. Abu Yahya al-Libi described 12 prisoners who were held with him in Bagram (only some of whom were subsequently transferred to Guantánamo), and explained how they had passed through a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, including Panjshir, where they had all endured “hard torture.” He did not mention Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, but he did provide the most extraordinary insight into the location of the prison, explaining that, in February 2004, he and an Algerian prisoner called Abdul Haq (whose current whereabouts are unknown) had actually escaped from the Panjshir prison for a day and a half, before being recaptured in the “driving snow and freezing cold” of the mountains.

A disturbing conclusion

As with many of the details of al-Libi’s story, it is difficult to know how accurate is the chronology proposed by the Libyan source. It seems plausible to me that, after 22 months in Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan, he arrived at Bagram on November 22, 2003, as Stephen Grey stated, and was then held in Afghanistan for approximately two years and four months before his return to Libya.

However, it’s also possible that he was held in Poland, but did not know where he was (as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross that he only worked out that he was held in Poland when he saw a label in Polish on a bottle of mineral water), and it’s also worth noting that what is also missing from the Libyan account is any mention of Guantánamo, even though it has long been suspected that the CIA ran a secret prison within the grounds of the naval base, but separate from the other prison blocks.

This was first reported in the Washington Post in December 2004, when Dana Priest wrote that, inside the naval base, “the CIA has maintained a detention facility for valuable al-Qaeda captives that has never been mentioned in public, according to military officials and several current and former intelligence officers.” Priest also noted that the secret prison “housed detainees from Pakistan, West Africa, Yemen and other countries under the strictest secrecy,” according to her sources, and that a US official who had recently visited the base told her, “People are constantly leaving and coming.”

At the time, Priest noted, “It is unclear whether the facility is still in operation today,” but the widespread presumption is that it closed down sometime after June 2004, after the Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights, paving the way for lawyers to visit the prisoners, and thereby breaking the shroud of secrecy, which, until that point, had successfully covered the prison and its workings. Perhaps even more significantly, however, Omar Deghayes told me that rumors of the secret prison’s existence — and of the presence of “high-value detainees,” including Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi — were also widespread within Guantánamo.

In the end, though, what is most significant about al-Libi’s torture tour through US proxy prisons and prisons run by the CIA is the realization that, throughout his long ordeal, US interrogators or their proxies were persistently using torture to secure information from him about other prisoners and other suspects — either in the presence of these men, or through the use of photographs — that was just as unreliable as his “confession” about the connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and that these other “confessions” must, in turn, have led to further arrests and further torture, with a cumulative effect that is truly mind-boggling in its scale.

A corollary about Khaldan

As if this were not disturbing enough, what no one wants to talk about is the fact that, throughout his years as the emir of the Khaldan training camp, al-Libi was not connected to al-Qaeda. An independent operator, and a veteran of the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, al-Libi was committed to providing military training to mujahideen from around the world, including those who wanted to continue the struggle against the Soviet Union in Chechnya.

This does not, of course, mean that he was not a dangerous figure, as alumni of his camp apparently included Zacarias Moussaoui, a failed 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks, and the failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid (both of whom are serving life sentences in the US), and the interest of others who attended the camp was focused on terrorist operations in North Africa and Europe, but it does indicate that the Bush administration’s insistence on relating all mujahideen activity to al-Qaeda was severely misplaced, and also demonstrates that “terrorist training” — or “preparation for jihad” — was a broad field that included training in self-defense and preparation for military activity on behalf of other Muslims, as well as what we generally understand as terrorism.

Abu ZubaydahIn the case of the Khaldan camp, for example, it is rarely, if ever mentioned that al-Libi’s refusal to cooperate with Osama bin Laden led to the Taliban closing the camp in 2000, even though this story emerged at Guantánamo on two separate occasions, and has ramifications not only for al-Libi’s case, but also for that of Abu Zubaydah. A supposed “high-value detainee,” Zubaydah is routinely described as a “senior al-Qaeda operative,” even though, according to Dan Coleman of the FBI, an old-school interrogator who was involved in his case before the CIA took over, and who was implacably opposed to the use of torture, he was nothing more than “a ‘safehouse keeper’ with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did.”

Coleman’s view was reinforced at Guantánamo by Khalid al-Hubayshi, a Saudi who was subsequently released from Guantánamo, who explained in his tribunal that, far from being a mastermind, Abu Zubaydah was responsible for “receiving people and financing the camp [Khaldan],” that he once bought him travel tickets, and that he was the man he went to when he needed a replacement passport. Al-Hubayshi also noted that Zubaydah did not have a long-standing relationship with bin Laden. When asked, “When you were with Abu Zubaydah, did you ever see Osama bin Laden?” he replied, “In 1998, Abu Zubaydah and Osama bin Laden didn’t like each other,” and adding, “In 2001, I think the relationship was okay.” Although al-Hubayshi did not mention al-Libi, he also explained that bin Laden put pressure on Zubaydah to close Khaldan, essentially because he wanted to run more camps himself.

In 2007, after Abu Zubaydah and 13 other “high-value detainees” had been transferred to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons, Zubaydah was finally allowed to speak in his tribunal, when he explained that he was tortured by the CIA to admit that he worked with Osama bin Laden, but insisted, “I’m not his partner and I’m not a member of al-Qaeda.” He also explained that his only role was to operate a guest house used by those who were training at Khaldan, and confirmed al-Hubayshi’s analysis of his relationship with bin Laden, saying, “Bin Laden wanted al-Qaeda to have control of Khaldan, but we refused since we had different ideas.”

His comments took on even more significance this week, when the ACLU, having managed, through a Freedom of Information lawsuit, to force the CIA to review passages in his testimony that had been censored in 2007, released a new version of the tribunal transcript (PDF), which included Zubaydah stating that, after CIA operatives tortured him to admit that he was bin Laden’s partner and the number three in al-Qaeda, “They told me sorry we discover that you are not number three, not a partner even not a fighter.”

Moreover, Abu Zubaydah explained that he opposed attacks on civilian targets, which brought him into conflict with bin Laden, and although he admitted that he had been an enemy of the United States since childhood, because of its support for Israel, pointed out that his enmity was towards the government and the military, and not the American people. The same may have been true of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose motivation appears to have focused more on providing training for Muslims to overcome oppression in their homelands, and in countries where Muslims were being oppressed, than on signing up for bin Laden’s global jihad against the United States. However, unless documents ever come to light providing details of his interrogations, his death last month — in circumstances that seem to have benefited both the Libyan and American governments, as the US flag was raised over the American embassy in Tripoli for the first time in 30 years, just three days after his death — means that we will never know for certain.

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.

For a sequence of articles dealing with the use of torture by the CIA, on “high-value detainees,” and in the secret prisons, see: Guantánamo’s tangled web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majid Khan, dubious US convictions, and a dying man (July 2007), Jane Mayer on the CIA’s “black sites,” condemnation by the Red Cross, and Guantánamo’s “high-value” detainees (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) (August 2007), Waterboarding: two questions for Michael Hayden about three “high-value” detainees now in Guantánamo (February 2008), Six in Guantánamo Charged with 9/11 Murders: Why Now? And What About the Torture? (February 2008), The Insignificance and Insanity of Abu Zubaydah: Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Confirms FBI’s Doubts (April 2008), Guantánamo Trials: Another Torture Victim Charged (Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, July 2008), Secret Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed: Six “High-Value” Guantánamo Prisoners Held, Plus “Ghost Prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (August 2008), Will the Bush administration be held accountable for war crimes? (December 2008), The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part One) and The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part Two) (December 2008), Prosecuting the Bush Administration’s Torturers (March 2009), Abu Zubaydah: The Futility Of Torture and A Trail of Broken Lives (March 2009), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part One), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two), 9/11 Commission Director Philip Zelikow Condemns Bush Torture Program, Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?, CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months before DoJ Approval, Even In Cheney’s Bleak World, The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Torture Story Is A New Low (all April 2009), Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison , Dick Cheney And The Death Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, The “Suicide” Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: Why The Media Silence?, Two Experts Cast Doubt On Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s “Suicide”, Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney On Use Of Torture To Invade Iraq, In the Guardian: Death in Libya, betrayal by the West (in the Guardian here), Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney’s Iraq Lies Again (And Rumsfeld And The CIA). Also see the extensive archive of articles about the Military Commissions.

For other stories discussing the use of torture in secret prisons, see: An unreported story from Guantánamo: the tale of Sanad al-Kazimi (August 2007), Rendered to Egypt for torture, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni is released from Guantánamo (September 2008), A History of Music Torture in the “War on Terror” (December 2008), Seven Years of Torture: Binyam Mohamed Tells His Story (March 2009), and also see the extensive Binyam Mohamed archive. And for other stories discussing torture at Guantánamo and/or in “conventional” US prisons in Afghanistan, see: The testimony of Guantánamo detainee Omar Deghayes: includes allegations of previously unreported murders in the US prison at Bagram airbase (August 2007), Guantánamo Transcripts: “Ghost” Prisoners Speak After Five And A Half Years, And “9/11 hijacker” Recants His Tortured Confession (September 2007), The Trials of Omar Khadr, Guantánamo’s “child soldier” (November 2007), Former US interrogator Damien Corsetti recalls the torture of prisoners in Bagram and Abu Ghraib (December 2007), Guantánamo’s shambolic trials (February 2008), Torture allegations dog Guantánamo trials (March 2008), Sami al-Haj: the banned torture pictures of a journalist in Guantánamo (April 2008), Former Guantánamo Prosecutor Condemns “Chaotic” Trials in Case of Teenage Torture Victim (Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld on Mohamed Jawad, January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (Mohammed El-Gharani, January 2009), Bush Era Ends With Guantánamo Trial Chief’s Torture Confession (Susan Crawford on Mohammed al-Qahtani, January 2009), Forgotten in Guantánamo: British Resident Shaker Aamer (March 2009), A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad (June 2009) and the extensive archive of articles about the Military Commissions.

87 Responses

  1. Mark E says...

    “in which waterboarding produced the false confession about the link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein”

    Andy, he said this before being waterboarded.
    http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/05/wilkerson_responds_sort_of.asp

    Second, the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein was not “false.” Yes, the two had internal schisms about cooperating but that doesn’t mean that it still didn’t happen. Why go to an extremist stance and imply there was “no” link?

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    Erm, because Saddam Hussein hated and feared the jihadists of al-Qaeda who wanted to topple his regime, and who probably couldn’t believe their luck when the US did it for them.

  3. New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...

  4. The Boiling Frog says...

    Andy, please don’t misconstrue this short comment as a criticism or the whole of my reaction to this piece (I’m still reading it…), but I wonder if there is a ‘typo’ in the following paragraph..? (Not sure whether HTML works in comments or not, so I’ve taken the liberty of capitalizing the word – “not” – that I think doesn’t belong).

    Moreover, the story becomes even more chilling with the realization that prisoners were also repeatedly shown photographs of other “terror suspects” to identify. No reports confirm that this also happened to al-Libi, but it is inconceivable that it did NOT take place, and on a regular basis, because it happened to every other prisoner regarded as having intelligence value.

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    Nothing misconstrued.
    I think it’s the double negative that causes the confusion. It may have made more sense to write, “No reports confirm that this also happened to al-Libi, but it is probable that it did take place, and on a regular basis, because it happened to every other prisoner regarded as having intelligence value.”

  6. Connie L. Nash says...

    Within the bill of War Supplemental Funding Just Approved (See Wash Post) find the following paragraph!

    “…the final bill also reveals congressional differences with Obama’s foreign policy vision. Worried about the incarceration of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in their districts or states, congressional Democrats joined with Republicans to STRIP $80 million from the bill to implement Obama’s plan to close the detainee facility there. The bill allows for the movement of Guantanamo detainees to the United States solely for trials.”

  7. Bruno says...

    It’s quite amazing to see that there are still people running around that believe the Hussein – bin Laden link. Their proof? You can’t disprove their allegation. Uh, OK.

    The White House is part of a plot by Alpha Centauri to take over our minds via alien radio waves. Just because I have no proof, doesn’t mean it is not true, right? Right? :\

  8. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Bruno. A bit of sanity never goes amiss first thing in the morning …

  9. Mathias says...

    Chilling news…

    Just want to point out that the Mother Jones list is not entirely accurate, more news about that by December!

  10. The Boiling Frog says...

    Andy, my face is red. Your sentence construction is fine. For some reason, I misread “inconceivable” as “conceivable”.

    What you have written makes total sense and is, I think, the best way of putting it. Sorry for the interruption…

  11. Andy Worthington says...

    No problem. It’s good to know that someone’s watching my syntax …

  12. The Boiling Frog says...

    As long as that’s all they’re watching…heheheh.

    (I know, probably not funny, but I’ve never been able to resist a lame attempt at humour.)

  13. Andy Worthington says...

    Well, I know my friends are watching my back, and as for the rest, I try to maintain my belief in freedom of speech …

  14. Andy Worthington says...

    Marcy Wheeler’s started a discussion about this article over on Empty Wheel (thanks, Marcy!):

    She writes,

    I’m particularly interested in which IDs al-Libi may have made. As Andy reviews, like Abu Zubaydah, al-Libi was associated with the mujahideen training camp Khaldan — not with al-Qaeda directly. I’m interested in that, given my recent focus on Hassan Ghul, because the only reference to Ghul in the 9/11 Report is a description of Ghul assisting one of the men who would be slotted for the 9/11 plot (but who ultimately backed out) in getting training.

    [After mid-March 2000, Mushabib al-Hamlan] and two travel companions obtained Pakistani visas in Sharjah, UAE, and traveled to Islamabad, where al-Qaeda facilitator Hassan Ghul took them to a guesthouse managed by Abu Zubaydah. Days later, two men helped Hamlan cross the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. At the Khaldan camp, Hamlan received military training courses.

    Now, that report is sourced to a detainee interrogation dated March 16, 2003. The report can’t be from either AZ or KSM (because they are among the 10 detainees whom the government would allow the Commission to name). But it might be attributable to al-Libi — I don’t know whether he would have known all that information or not. And while the link to the original reporting appears to be dead, Wiki reports that Ghul’s ID was confirmed after authorities faxed a picture of Ghul to the CIA. So someone appears to have been IDing Ghul in January 2004, when he was captured.

    Now, I raise all this in relation to Ghul because as of mid-2004 (which is, remember, close to the time CIA asked for permission to torture him), the one reference to Ghul in the 9/11 Report — which considered the issue of Iraqi-al-Qaeda ties quite closely — is a reference to 2000, and a reference that would implicate AZ and al-Libi rather than al-Qaeda.

  15. Andy Worthington says...

    And this is a fascinating reply from Mary:

    I know your focus here is on trying to track what did happen with Ghul, but I’m going to toss [Omar] al-Faruq [aka al-Farouq] back in again too on the issue of the “identifications” and cross identifications and misidentifications etc. Also Maher Arar.

    Re: Zubaydah and al-Libi, the information that has come out from CSRTs more and more indicates that the Khaldan training camp was, as you mention, not an al-Qaeda camp, although at one point there had been some cooperation between those running the camp and pre-camp guest house (Zubaydah) and al-Qaeda. Some of the info now is that because of disputes, al-Qaeda was getting or had gotten the Taliban to close the camp in 2001.

    So you had Zubaydah picked up early on. One thing he does is name al-Faruq and this begins a round of circular, torture/abuse based cross-IDs that all crumble later.

    Al-Faruq is disappeared in June of 2002, supposedly on Zubaydah’s information. Z also supposedly tells them that al-Faruq is al-Qaeda’s top gun for Southeast Asia. Stories indicate that al-Faruq, also, was abused/tortured starting in June/July — in advance of the August memos. And that he “broke” on Sept 9. He IDs al-Libi as being a part of the al-Qaeda governing council and Zubaydah as being al-Qaeda (both of which were false). Also, he “confesses” that al-Libi and Zubaydah have given him orders to plan large-scale attacks against U.S. interests in Indonesia, Malaysia, (the) Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia. “In particular,” the document continues, “(al-)Faruq prepared a plan to conduct simultaneous car/truck bomb attacks against U.S. embassies in the region to take place on or near” the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Al-Faruq said that, despite his arrest, backup operatives were in place to “assume responsibilities to carry out operations as planned.”

    So the torture of one ratchets up the “need” to torture the others. If Zubaydah under abuse IDs al-Faruq as a top al-Qaeda operative, and then al-Faruq under abuse tells you that al-Libi is on the al-Qaeda governing council and al-Libi and Zubaydah ordered al-Faruq to plan bomb attacks in most of the southeast Asian countries he can successfully name, then you pretty much have to go back and torture Zubaydah and al-Libi more, right? After all, now you “know” that they ordered and know about bomb attacks, right? Except, none of it seemed to pan out.

    And as it became clear that Z was not a member of al-Qaeda, the young man taken with Zubaydah, who told the CIA just that, is handed off to Syria to disappear and the man who made the ID is supposedly killed, under some odd circumstances and ones where the Brits involved are staying pretty mum, so no one is ever going to be able to ask him about how it was that he came to make those false IDs.

    It would sure be nice if the intel reports Time says it had back in 2002 were made public, especially since al-Faruq was also a prime source for the info that the al-Haramain charity laundered money for and was a front for al-Qaeda and some of his info, provided under whatever circumstances, may have been used to initiate things such as illegal surveillance here at home.

    Faruq told his interrogators “money was laundered through the foundation by donors from the Middle East. Government sources tell TIME that U.S. investigators believe the charity is a ‘significant’ source of funding for terrorist groups associated with al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia. Counterterrorism officials are also investigating possible links between al-Qaeda and top al-Haramain officials in Saudi Arabia.”

    In a pretty ironic twist, the man who provided the al-Qaeda ID for Z and al-Libi was also wanted later as a witness in connection with the investigation of a sergeant accused of abuse at Bagram. It was when no one could produce him for that investigation, in November of 2005, that it was “admitted” that he had “escaped” from Bagram that July. And then later there is his supposed death in Sept 2006, in a massive op by the Brits in Basra, although they refuse to confirm the ID of the guy they killed as being al-Faruq. And there is also the whiffy overlay of allegations by Indonesian intel that al-Faruq was a CIA guy all along.

    Jumping ship on the ID front, you also have in September of 2002, right after the lawyers’ torture field trip to GITMO, the use of Khadr, who was desperate to be released, trying to chummy up to the FBI by identifying a picture of Arar as someone he had seen at an Afghan training camp. No checking to see if he could be wrong (as Canadians confirmed later), instead just Thompson signing off on shipping Arar to torture. Probably while sipping a Pepsi.

    All of which makes you wonder a bit about [Khaled] el-Masri too. There was so little to support what was done to him, it makes you wonder if this wonderful resource of getting tortured people to ID “other al-Qaeda” from pictures was used there too (”do you know him, is he al-Qaeda”) if not in connection with the original decision to go overboard, then later in trying to paper up a file to justify why they had him.

  16. Thomas says...

    Thank You Andy for all the important information that you have provided to those of us to whom the “official” legend stinks, and we wish to understand how these events ACTUALLY occurred….And I am NOT referring to the WEAKLY STANDARD..!!!

    I played the Peter Lance ‘talk’ at the booksellers “book passages”04/17/2007 [1 hour & 43 Min] and while I do not agree with all of what he says, it is a treasure trove of 911/ war on terror/ false flag.. info, with copious amounts of interrogation information…

    With Patric Fitzgerald threatening to sue Lance & his publisher…the book could well get “legs” when it comes out SOON..!! “Triple Cross” ** 607 pages!!

    Thank You Andy for your outstanding and valuable work.

  17. Andy Worthington says...

    Hi Thomas,
    Thanks for the supportive words.
    For anyone intrigued by this talk of Peter Lance, check out his site:
    http://web.me.com/netgraph1/peterlance.com/Home/Home.html

  18. Andy Worthington says...

    Oh, and right now there’s a lively discussion going on at Empty Wheel, as mentioned above:
    http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/06/19/ibn-sheikh-al-libi-ids-others/

  19. Salpha says...

    Mr. Worthington just outstanding work.

    I wonder if anybody really believe that the Obama administration is really concern or really want to know what really happened to Al Libi? Would it not be more convenient for this admistration and the last one that he died from suicide? Is it only an attempt to show that President Obama is concerned so it will stop his critics that he made a u-turn on his promise to restore the rule of law?

  20. Andy Worthington says...

    Hi Salpha,
    Welcome to the site! (no one else will know this, but Salpha has brightened a few of my days with comments on my cross-postings at the Huffington Post, and has also encouraged the editors to promote my work!)

    I think you’re right, and that it was pure political bravado, a show of concern. I’d be very surprised if we hear about any follow-up expressing further concerns by US officials.

    So good to hear from you!

  21. Andy Worthington says...

    So to explain more about Salpha, I saw that she’d registered on my site, and emailed to ask if she was the “Salpha” from the Huffington Post. And this was her reply, which did that “brightening up my day” thing:

    Yes I am the humble Salpha. I am totally french from Gatineau, Qc, Ca. and have such a hard time to write in english. It takes me several hours to write little post. I wish I could comment more because your work is historical. I recognise and honour that you are on a quest or a journey for the truth and I share this value with you.

    Merci Infiniment pour votre passion pour la vérité (Thank you for your passion for the truth)

  22. the talking dog says...

    Bienvenue a Salpha; mon ami Monsieur Worthington est la premiere journaliste du monde sur les questions de la guerre contre le terrorisme, maintenant.

    Well, another brilliant piece of journalism here.

    In the end, what is most amazing about this story is not the particulars of the incredible barbarity and illegality of BUSH, Cheney, et al. (and the guy in charge gets to be “all-caps” and the lead name on the eventual indictment, even if my college classmate our current President seems hellbent on making himself an accessory to their crimes through enabling them after the fact, if nothing else)… we knew that any Administration that was going to rely on the Addington-Yoo Spanish Inquisition “enhanced interrogation” rationales was barbaric and had nothing but contempt for the rule of law.

    But some of us were almost willing to give the Bushmen a pass on the “evil or stupidly incompetent?” question by pointing out their utter incompetence: only an idiot would actually believe that the purpose of torture was for any purpose other than to secure false confessions, not to get usable “actionable intel.”

    Ah, but it turns out they were onto us: they knew the utter folly of trying to get anything but false confessions from torture… they were trying to get false confessions after all, in this case, of anything useful to justify the inevitable war with Saddam’s Iraq.

    The puzzle pieces continue to be connected; the ugly mosaic comes more clearly into focus. The 20th Century was filled with ugly regimes, from the Fascists of Europe to the Communists of Eurasia to Cold War sideshows in the Third World… but right now, it seems, the United States of America has now established itself as “the ugly regime” of the early part of the 21st Century, using the same ugly tactics as its ugly predecessors.

    Pas bon.

  23. Andy Worthington says...

    Hi TD.
    Merci beaucoup, et c’est tout vrai. Quel cauchemar!

    I have to say though that I’m not convinced that it was all about false confessions. What really gave me the chills, as I joined the dots between the testimony of former Jordanian prisoners collected by Human Rights Watch and al-Libi’s ID-based “torture tour” of African torture prisons was that they were after actionable intellligence. I don’t believe they were after lies to justify the invasion of Iraq, but were seeking the “truth” that existed only in Cheney’s mind. So of course when they were told about lies — or about the fact that the majority of the prisoners in Guantanamo had no actionable intelligence, for example, because they were the wrong men — they didn’t believe it, and may not to this day.

    And with al-Libi, and the Khaldan story — a decade or more of training mujiahideen — what I think appealed to them the most was the part he could play in their belated attempt to make up for their pre-9/11 intelligence failures by identifying every single “terrorist” in the world. Never mind that most of Khaldan’s trainees were not terrorists — or al-Farouq’s, for that matter — and never mind that torture doesn’t produce the truth, and, once embarked upon, only begets more torture, and never mind that, once they embarked on their lawless path, they had no way of feeding any of these hundreds — or thousands — of prisoners into any court system: they didn’t care. They were taking on evil as bold Americans do.

    And if we were to look closely into the mind of any tyrant, I’m sure we’d see the same thing: belief, apparently unclouded by the paranoia, viciousness and vengeful impulses that are in fact apparent to any objective and reasonably intelligent observer.

    Pas bon, indeed.

  24. Salpha says...

    I agree with you Mr. Worthington as defining Cheney as a tyrant and he is still convinced to this day he did the right thing. Furthermore, I think if Cheney would have been given more power some kind of an attack on Iran was on his priority list. It is these kinds of guys who in some way find it to the top and make sure the human species espouse their worse instincts. They set the tone for even greater crimes to be committed by their workforce below them. So the circle of violence and horrors never end.

    TD Thanks for your welcome. What is worrisome for me in this new millennium is the confirmation that the Homo Sapiens (wise or intelligent – believe or not that is what Sapiens mean) is becoming more of a Homo Horribilis. It seems we have not learn yet.

    Pas bon du tout

  25. Saed Kheesha says...

    I am writing from libya ……regarding the death of Ibn-Alshaykh, the situation still not clear. High level guys (who called the Tent Guys) in libyan regime are involved.

  26. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks! Anyone out there know more?

  27. Connie L. Nash says...

    I posted the following three blog posts which some of u may not have seen? And I also will attempt a discussion related to this World Exclusive post which needs MUCH more attention even then it is thankfully getting here! Also am disseminating the piece which I imagine other here are doing as well to favorite media groups, sites, Op Ed writers, others? As always, thanks for the excellent reporting which we get NOWHERE else at this in depth level of thorough, interesting and well-written coverage. I predict Andy will have more WORLD EXCLUSIVES so let’s all get out the word.

    (Just out today)
    U.S. Govt. Threatens to Prosecute Waterboarding (read as sardonic – links have videos, a suggested Action from home, references and the Rally Action URL for Wash DC speak of the Nation-Wide Effort):
    http://oneheartforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-govt-threatens-to-prosecute.html

    (Internal)US INTERROGATIONS REPORT May Be Released Soon
    http://oneheartforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-interrogations-report-said-to-be.htmlUS INTERROGATIONS REPORT May Be Released Soon

    (From Wed or Thurs?)Andy Worthington’s article (also follow on CagePrisoners.com)
    WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Info from Libya about US “Ghost Prisoner”
    http://oneheartforpeace.blogspot.com/2009/06/world-exclusive-new-info-from-libya.html

  28. Support the Work of Andy Worthington, Author of "The Guantanamo Files" | nFiniteEcho.com says...

    […] the rest of this article. [UPDATE: Andy Worthington has an exclusive story just up at his site — WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. It “reveals new information, from a source in Libya, about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the former US […]

  29. jk says...

    excellent work! here’s another perspective from the american political sentiment and news cycle:
    after barack obama took office, there was public pressure to investigate the previous administration. oddly, pelosi said impeachement was off the table (bargain struck?), others – 911 style commission. cheney was (as limbaugh likes to say “quaking his shoes, rocked back on his heels”) and came out of hiding in attempt to exonerate himself. played up as “detrimental to well serving dutiful cia operatives”. he took out the no cost insurance policy of “if america is attacked it is because barack made us less safe” (just recently security chief panetta said “cheney is hoping for an attack). the email campaign for a hearing and impeachment was still strong. yoo was catching flak in his stint teaching in orange county, Gonzales was worried. it was becoming clear the cia could be brought to court and so as part of a funding bill, they were given a compromise pass (“anyone who followed orders following the ill derived justice orders was exonerated”). now, given that al-libi can completely blow bush’s claim of nukes from africa and discredit his principle speech of deception to the american public, there is a strong impetus to permanently silence al-libi. I would not find it hard to believe that he was killed with very strong cia involvement, more so than just another tragic death at the hands in libyans.
    the american public does have a short memory. we need to relive the past news stories and bush speech to see how deception was involved. I’m sure the story of al-libi’s death flew by many news viewers as the connection to the lies by bush were many years past forgotten. thanks for keeping us honest and setting the truth straight.

  30. Andy Worthington says...

    Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, who has done some excellent work on al-Libi, got in touch. He wrote,

    Just caught your latest posting on al-Libi. Very interesting and good work. But wanted to explain why his death could complicate Obama’s plans to close Gitmo — because, as I thought we mentioned, there are seven other Libyans at Gitmo. Given the problem with returning Gitmo detainees to countries that torture and where returned detainees die under mysterious circumstances, it’s one more instance in which the US has to find other countries (much like the Uighurs) to take them.
    In any case, keep it up.
    Cheers,
    Mike Isikoff

  31. Andy Worthington says...

    My reply:

    Hi Mike,
    Good to hear from you. Thanks for making clear why you mentioned that al-Libi’s death could complicate Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo. I apologize for not realizing that you were referring to the Libyans still held, and of course that does complicate matters.
    Best,
    Andy

  32. Andy Worthington says...

    Michael then replied, pointing out, “I made the exact same point specifically in the piece last month”:
    http://www.newsweek.com/id/197963

    This is from that article:

    Al-Libi’s death highlights a predicament facing Obama officials: returning detainees to countries that practice torture. Seven Libyans remain at Guantánamo, and U.S. officials are loath to send home any more. Last year, President Bush resumed diplomatic relations with Libya and removed it from a list of “state sponsors” of terror. But a State Department human-rights report recently concluded that Libyan security forces “routinely tortured” prisoners by applying electric shocks, breaking fingers, pouring lemon juice on open wounds and burning them with cigarettes. The U.S. official said, “It’s not in the U.S. interest to send people back to countries where they’re going to be abused or end up dead.”

  33. Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo on Democracy Now! « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] Guantánamo’s longest-term hunger striker), and about my world exclusive published last week, “New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi,” in which I presented new information about the CIA’s most notorious “ghost prisoner,” who […]

  34. Andy Worthington says...

    jk,
    Thanks for the explanation. All makes sense to me. Certainly Cheney’s been doing the rounds in an attempt to justify his version of history — which, amazingly, does involve keeping Guantanamo open forever, and only trying “high-value detainees” in kangaroo courts. I’d been looking at this more in isolation (i.e. that he doesn’t want a prosecutor set on him), but it makes sense that he’s also representing other interested (and scared) parties who don’t want the sunlight illuminating their crimes.

  35. In the Guardian: Remember 9/11 and remember Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] also discuss Bagram and the fate of those held in secret prisons or rendered to other countries, but my focus is predominantly on Guantánamo, because, on the eighth anniversary of 9/11, it […]

  36. Emptywheel » Ibn Sheikh al-Libi IDs Others says...

    […] Worthington has some new information on the pre-"suicide" fate of Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, based on second-hand information via […]

  37. The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, The Madness of the Military Commissions by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] perhaps the CIA’s most notorious “ghost prisoner,” was rendered to Egypt, where, under torture, he produced a false confession about connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam […]

  38. Four Men Leave Guantánamo; Two Face Ill-Defined Trials In Italy « freedetainees.org says...

    […] about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Rendered to various other prisons run by or on behalf of the CIA in the four years that followed, he was returned to Libya in 2006, […]

  39. UN Secret Detention Report Asks, “Where Are The CIA Ghost Prisoners?” by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] used to justify the invasion of Iraq. After multiple renditions to other countries (which I exposed last June), al-Libi’s return to Libya came to a dark end last May, when he died under mysterious […]

  40. Abu Zubaydah’s Torture Diary « freedetainees.org says...

    […] Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney’s Iraq Lies Again (And Rumsfeld And The CIA) (all May 2009) and WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (June 2009), The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, The Madness of the Military Commissions (November 2009), […]

  41. Seven Years of War in Iraq: Still Based on Cheney’s Torture and Lies « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] Bleak World, The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Torture Story Is A New Low”: In case anyone has forgotten, when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of the Khaldan military training camp in Afghanistan, was captured at the end of 2001 and […]

  42. Crapaganda.com » Abu Zubaydah: Tortured For Nothing says...

    […] the revival of al-Libi’s story particularly unappealing for the US government is that, after years of detention in secret prisons, he was returned to Libya, where, last May, he conveniently died in prison — reportedly by […]

  43. Andy Worthington: Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantanamo Based Solely on Torture says...

    […] Guantánamo, where habeas judges are not empowered to tread, who knows how many other men were seized because of false confessions made through the use of […]

  44. exotraxx division: discover US Disneyland - a reader dedicated to my US American friends says...

    […] In a world exclusive, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, reveals new information, from a source in Libya, about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the former US “ghost prisoner” who died in […]

  45. Why is a Yemeni Student in Guantánamo, Cleared on Three Occasions, Still Imprisoned? | America 20XY says...

    […] camp that was closed down by the Taliban because its leader, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (another victim of CIA-directed torture), refused to cooperate with […]

  46. What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part One): Torture and the “Black Prison” « Black Cafe Network News says...

    […] odd occasion, through other means — as, for example, in a handful of habeas corpus petitions, in this report on the multiple renditions of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was finally returned to Libya, where he died in a prison last May, and in the leaked report by […]

  47. Giovanni says...

    I think you got some syntax wrong in the following sentence:

    “As with many of the details of al-Libi’s story, it is difficult to know how accurate IS the chronology proposed by the Libyan source.”

    shouldn’t it be:

    “As with many of the details of al-Libi’s story, it is difficult to know how accurate the chronology proposed by the Libyan source IS.”

    ?

  48. Giovanni says...

    Great piece otherwise though. Sorry I forgot to put that in my first post.
    Do you happen to know where he was held when he admitted that his previous testimonies regarding Iraq/al Qaeda connections were false?

  49. Andy Worthington says...

    No problem, Giovanni. Always happy to receive constructive comments. As for your question, I don’t know the answer, because so much of al-Libi’s story is hidden behind a veil of secrecy — although it’s clear that some experts doubted it from the very beginning.

  50. USA: Der Folter-Fall Abu Zubaydah « Ticker says...

    […] It also confirms other accounts about Khaldan, which was actually run by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a former CIA “ghost prisoner,” who died in mysterious circumstances in a Libyan jail last year. Al-Libi, notoriously, was tortured […]

  51. New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania : says...

    […] back to Afghanistan in November 2003, and according to another account, by a Libyan who talked to al-Libi in a prison in Tripoli before his suspicious death last May, he was rendered from Egypt to prisons […]

  52. reboot the republic » New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania says...

    […] back to Afghanistan in November 2003, and according to another account, by a Libyan who talked to al-Libi in a prison in Tripoli before his suspicious death last May, he was rendered from Egypt to prisons […]

  53. New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret C.I.A. Prisons in Poland and Romania « Little Alex in Wonderland says...

    […] back to Afghanistan in November 2003, and according to another account, by a Libyan who talked to al-Libi in a prison in Tripoli before his suspicious death last May, he was rendered from Egypt to prisons […]

  54. On Bush’s Waterboarding Claims, UK Media Loses Its Moral Compass by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] of how torture work in practice — to produce false confessions — is to be found in the story of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, conveniently ignored by George W. Bush and his courtiers in the mainstream media. Seized in […]

  55. All Guantánamo Prisoners Were Subjected to “Pharmacological Waterboarding” by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] can be seen in particular in a false confession extracted from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of an Afghan training camp, who was rendered to Egypt, where he was tortured until he […]

  56. WikiLeaks: Numerous Reasons to Dismiss US Claims that “Ghost Prisoner” Aafia Siddiqui Was Not Held in Bagram + Bring Aafia Home « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] men included Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who ran a training camp in Afghanistan that was closed down by the Taliban because he refused to […]

  57. Revolution in Egypt – and the Hypocrisy of the US and the West « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] visits to other torture prisons run by or on behalf of the CIA, al-Libi was eventually returned to Libya, where he died in prison […]

  58. Revolution in Libya: Protesters Face Gaddafi’s Murderous Backlash as US, UK Ooze Hypocrisy | Amauta says...

    […] tortured lie, it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and after al-Libi had been moved around various other secret prisons, he was returned to Libya, where he conveniently died, reportedly by committing suicide, in May […]

  59. How Abu Salim Prison Massacre In 1996 Inspired Revolution In Libya « Eurasia Review says...

    […] billion a year), and which made Egypt central to the “War on Terror,” its vile torture prisons the first port of call for victims of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” […]

  60. Torture and Terrorism: In the Middle East It’s 2011, In America It’s Still 2001 « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] the Australian Mamdouh Habib, the Pakistani scholar Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, and the Libyan Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of a training camp in Afghanistan. Under torture — almost certainly at Suleiman’s […]

  61. Britneys Video Blog » Blog Archive » Panetta to McCain: Torture not key to finding Bin Laden says...

    […] we do know, and what hasn’t got enough traditional media coverage, is that torture was used to extract a false confession, and the false confession by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi “that two al-Qaeda operatives had been […]

  62. Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Adel Al-Gazzar Returns Home To Egypt And Is Arrested - OpEd says...

    […] have not yet surfaced, but the most celebrated prisoner sent by the US to be tortured in Egypt was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of a training camp in Afghanistan, who, after being picked up crossing into Pakistan form […]

  63. ARTICLE: Andy Worthington on “How the Abu Salim Prison Massacre in 1996 Inspired the Revolution in Libya” ‹ Libyan Council of North America says...

    […] billion a year), and which made Egypt central to the “War on Terror,” its vile torture prisons the first port of call for victims of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” […]

  64. Tyler Cabot’s Important Profile of Guantánamo Prisoner Noor Uthman Muhammed for Esquire « freedetainees.org says...

    […] […]

  65. WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners says...

    […] at some point, probably in 2006, the CIA sent him back to Libya, where he was imprisoned, and where he died, allegedly by committing suicide, in May […]

  66. WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners | Epiky says...

    […] at some point, probably in 2006, the CIA sent him back to Libya, where he was imprisoned, and where he died, allegedly by committing suicide, in May […]

  67. Five Things Rick Santorum Could have Learned in College | Informed Comment says...

    […] his courier. But torture or “enhanced interrogation” is notoriously unreliable. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi under torture told the US government that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had trained al-Qaeda agents in chemical […]

  68. Five Things Rick Santorum Could have Learned in College - War News Radio from Swarthmore College :: War News Radio from Swarthmore College says...

    […] by tracking his courier. But torture or “enhanced interrogation” is notoriously unreliable. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi under torture told the US government that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had trained al-Qaeda agents in chemical […]

  69. Iraq and Afghanistan: Dual Fronts « The Agonist says...

    […] ** WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi […]

  70. Militant Libertarian » Bruce Jessen: The Torturer in the Pulpit says...

    […] Ib al-Shaykh al-Libi, who claimed to have information linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. Al-Libi (who later died of “suicide” in a Libyan jail during that brief period when Khadafy was an “all…) actually knew nothing of the sort, but was understandably eager to give his interrogators what […]

  71. WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies | Dandelion Salad says...

    […] after his capture in December 2001, al-Libi was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where, under torture, he falsely confessed that al-Qaeda operatives had been meeting with Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and […]

  72. Enhanced Cruelty « Speak Without Interruption says...

    […] he told the interrogators that he had lied. Nevertheless that lie was used to justify war on Iraq. (“New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi”. Andy Worthington/6, […]

  73. Conspiracy Theories! | Pretrial Hearings of 5 Suspects in 9/11 Face Challenge of Torture-Obtained … – Truth-Out says...

    […] which US authorities capture suspects and send them to other countries to be interrogated), was rendered by US authorities to Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan. It was in Egypt where al-Libi was […]

  74. GUANTANAMO: GUILTY EVEN AFTER PROVEN INNOCENT | Caravan Daily says...

    […] (Ali Muhammad Abdul Aziz al-Fakhri), the leader of the independent Khaldan training camp, who washeld in a variety of CIA “black sites” before being returned to Libya under Colonel Gaddafi, where he died in prison under suspicious […]

  75. Vridar » The Object of Torture says...

    […] often, for example, to confess to a crime they already “know” you committed or, as in the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, to confirm information they already “know” must be true, such as operational links […]

  76. The Secrecy of Torture: What Happens When Survivors’ Memories Are “Declassified”? | Counter Information says...

    […] person subjected to such exploitation was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was held in a CIA black site in Afghanistan and sent to Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania and Morocco […]

  77. freedetainees.org – WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners says...

    […] at some point, probably in 2006, the CIA sent him back to Libya, where he was imprisoned, and where he died, allegedly by committing suicide, in May […]

  78. Guantanamo and Habeas Corpus says...

    […] Guantánamo, where habeas judges are not empowered to tread, who knows how many other men were seized because of false confessions made through the use of […]

  79. Paul Heckbert says...

    I’m here because Lawrence Wright mentioned al Libi in this interview: https://soundcloud.com/theworld/how-combating-groups-like-isis-is-robbing-americans-of-basic-liberties . I don’t think most Americans know the story of al Libi. I wonder if, 50 years from now, American school students will know that Bush and Cheney used torture to justify war with Iraq, and used the “success” of that war to justify torture.

    Keep up the good work, Andy.

  80. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for the supportive words, Paul, and for the link to the interview with Lawrence Wright. I regard his book The Looming Tower as a persuasive account of how the failure of the US intelligence agencies to communicate wth one another led to 9/11 – and also as the definitive rebuttal of the conspiracy theorists.
    From James Meek’s LRB review:

    As a rule I am sceptical of the ‘they were warned, and yet they did nothing’ school of history … Yet in the case of 9/11, the failures of US intelligence were so grotesque that scepticism is overcome. Some joint work by the NSA, the CIA, and Malaysian and Saudi intelligence surveilled a group of known al-Qaida operatives meeting in Kuala Lumpur as early as 1999. Had the meeting been bugged, not only 9/11 but the plan to blow up the USS Cole in Aden would have been thwarted. As it was, however, the CIA ended up with the names and photographs of the al-Qaida terrorists who would fly one of the hijacked planes on 9/11. Yet inter-agency rivalry and suspicion meant that they did not pass the information on to the FBI or the State Department.

    See: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n03/james-meek/the-original-targets

    As for al-Libi, we will see who ends up writing the history books. I have certainly been making it clear for many years that I believe Cheney – and Bush as his boss – guilty of treason for using information obtained from al-Libi that was produced through the use of torture to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq for two reason – firstly, by getting torturers to seek information that would be useful for the planned invasion of Iraq, rather than to save US lives from any future attack by al-Qaeda, and secondly, for not letting that al-Libi later recanted his false confession – something that, I believe, was kept from Colin Powell as he was sent to the UN a month before the invasion, when he used al-Libi’s false confession as part of the case for war.

  81. Torture produces Fake News and that's how we Got into Iraq says...

    […] these was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan terrorist whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri. Under torture, he “confessed” that that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was training al-Qaeda operatives […]

  82. Torture Produces Fake News—and That’s How We Got Into Iraq - The Miami Valley Progressive Caucus says...

    […] these was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan terrorist whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri. Under torture, he “confessed” that that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was training al-Qaeda operatives in the use […]

  83. Torture Works…to Produce Fake News (And That’s How We Got Into Iraq) | Common Dreams | Leftist Voice says...

    […] these was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan terrorist whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri. Under torture, he “confessed” that that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was training al-Qaeda operatives in the use […]

  84. Torture works . . . to produce Fake News (and that’s how we Got into Iraq) | themcglynn.com says...

    […] these was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan terrorist whose real name was Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri. Under torture, he “confessed” that that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was training al-Qaeda operatives in the use […]

  85. The Object of Torture | says...

    […] often, for example, to confess to a crime they already “know” you committed or, as in the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, to confirm information they already “know” must be true, such as operational links […]

  86. What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part One): Torture and the “Black Prison” – Dandelion Salad says...

    […] odd occasion, through other means — as, for example, in a handful of habeas corpus petitions, in this report on the multiple renditions of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was finally returned to Libya, where he died in a prison last May, and in the leaked report by […]

  87. Assorted Writings Of Julian Assange ~ Mind's Eye says...

    […] at some point, probably in 2006, the CIA sent him back to Libya, where he was imprisoned, and where he died, allegedly by committing suicide, in May […]

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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