The prison never conformed to the Geneva Conventions, which were, essentially, discarded when the Bush administration decided to hold prisoners in its “war on terror” as “illegal enemy combatants,” and have never been reinstated. Moreover, the prisoners remained beyond the law even when the Supreme Court granted habeas corpus rights to the Guantánamo prisoners in June 2004, and again in June 2008, after Congress had tried to remove these rights in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (PDF).

In March 2009, in Washington D.C., District Judge John D. Bates briefly brought this era of secrecy and unaccountability to an end, granting the habeas corpus petitions of three foreign prisoners — Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian seized in Karachi, Pakistan in May 2002; Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni gemstone dealer seized in Bangkok, Thailand in late 2002; and Fadi al-Maqaleh, a Yemeni seized in 2004.

Although Judge Bates ruled that the habeas corpus rights granted by the Supreme Court to the Guantánamo prisoners extended to the foreign prisoners in Bagram, because “the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same,” the Obama administration appealed, and had its appeal granted by the D.C. Circuit Court in May 2010.

This ruling failed to take into account that Judge Bates had not ruled in favor of a fourth man, Pacha Wazir (aka Haji Wazir), an Afghan, deciding that the fate of Afghan prisoners ought to involve negotiations between the US and Afghan governments. Wazir, it turned out, had been seized in the United Arab Emirates, where he ran a chain of hawala banks, in 2003, and rendered to a CIA black site prior to his arrival at Bagram, on suspicion that he was a banker for Osama bin Laden. In June 2011, former CIA interrogator Glenn Carle wrote a book, The Interrogator: An Education, in which he explained that he had established that Wazir was not bin Laden’s banker, but stated that his findings were ignored, and Wazir was not released from Bagram until February 2010.

For the other prisoners, Judge Bates also found that the review process introduced under President Bush at Bagram was both “inadequate” and “more error-prone” than the review process introduced at Guantánamo, and, also found that it “falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo.” In response, the Obama administration introduced a review process modeled on the review process at Guantánamo that the Supreme Court found inadequate, and this is the process that has been used ever since to decide what should happen to the 645 prisoners who were held in September 2009 (according to the first unclassified prisoner list, released in January 2010), and the thousands of prisoners held in the last two and a half years.

By January this year, the Washington Post reported that 2,600 prisoners were held in Bagram — or, more specifically, in the replacement facility, renamed the Parwan Detention Center, which opened in December 2009. In addition, as the Post described it on January 5, President Karzai “called for the United States to hand over its biggest military prison in Afghanistan within a month,” stating that “Afghan government investigators had found violations of the Afghan constitution and international human rights conventions at the prison.” He “did not provide details of the alleged violations, but he said in a statement that they constituted a ‘breach of Afghan sovereignty.’”

President Karzai was drawing on a US memorandum publicly issued two years ago, in which officials stated that they expected the Parwan facility to be transferred to Afghan control in early 2012, although US officials have pointed out that any proposed transfer is subject to “demonstrated capacity,” and the Afghan government does not have a good track record to date.

Nevertheless, in sounding out the possibilities of closing the Parwan facility, the Obama administration is finally addressing the problems presented by the foreign prisoners. A year ago, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First visited Parwan and discovered that 41 prisoners came from outside Afghanistan, and were still held, even though “more than a dozen” had been recommended for release. One story she heard concerned Hamidullah Khan, a Pakistani who was just 16 years old when he was seized in the summer of 2008. When he was allowed to communicate with his family, in 2010, he explained that his case had been reviewed, and he had been recommended for release, but he was still held.

Eviatar added that the foreign prisoners were “from Pakistan, Tunisia, Kuwait, Yemen and even Germany,” but could not find any explanation for why, even when cleared, they were still held. She noted that “one soldier complained about how frustrating it is to be unable to tell innocent prisoners when they’ll be going home, or what’s causing the holdup,” and that US officials in Afghanistan had only been able to state that the problem was “somewhere in Washington.”

In the Washington Post last week, Peter Finn and Julie Tate reported that Washington was finally dealing with the problem. Noting that the foreign prisoners now “number close to 50″ and “were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to US and foreign officials,” they wrote that, with a handover of the prison now on the cards, “American officials believe that Afghan authorities are unlikely to have any interest in either continuing to hold the foreigners or in putting them on trial.”

The officials added that, by starting the process of repatriating foreign prisoners now, they were hoping not only to successfully “negotiate transfers with the detainees’ home countries,” but also to “arrange for post-transfer monitoring, and secure diplomatic assurances that detainees will not be abused when they return home.”

They added that a “small number” of those currently held “may be deemed to pose a terrorist threat, requiring their continued detention or close supervision by their home country if released,” and also explained that some of the men are Yemeni, “complicating their possible repatriation,” because, in response to the failed airline bomb plot in December 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man recruited in Yemen, President Obama issued a moratorium on releasing any Yemenis, “because of concerns about the security situation in Yemen,” which still stands to this day.

As the Post described it, the Parwan prison holds “up to two dozen Arabs of various nationalities, according to administration and foreign officials,” although the rest are Pakistanis, and it was noted that the first to be released may well be one of these men, Yunus Rahmatullah.

Seized in Iraq by British Special Forces in 2004, he was subsequently handed over to US forces and rendered to Bagram by the CIA, where his detention went largely unnoticed until lawyers in the UK — at solicitors Leigh Day & Co. and the legal action charity Reprieve — succeeded in convincing the Court of Appeal to grant him a writ of habeas corpus and to order the British government to take custody of him. As the Post described it, his lawyers “argued in the British courts that the transfer violated a memorandum of understanding between the US and British militaries, and was a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions because it involved the removal of a civilian from the war theater.” The judges added that if foreign secretary William Hague and defense minister Philip Hammond failed to secure his release, the court would “be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ.” A deadline of February 14 was set for Rahmatullah’s release.

The UK government has appealed the ruling, although ministers have asked for the Obama administration to arrange for Rahmatullah to be returned to Pakistan, which, as the Post put it, “would satisfy the court and his lawyers.” The British court also made a point of noting that, back in 2010, a review board at Bagram had cleared Rahmatullah for release.

Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director, said, “It would make no sense for the Obama administration to ratify this Bush-era war crime. Under the Geneva Convention, Yunus Rahmatullah is Britain’s responsibility and should never have been sent to Bagram in the first place. The man is cleared, his family are waiting, and Pakistan is apparently happy to have him — it’s high time to send him home.”

The Post noted that another Pakistani, Amanatullah Ali, who was also picked up by British forces in Iraq, is seeking his release through the US courts, and that seven Pakistanis in total, including Yunus Rahmatullah and Hamidullah Khan, are suing the Pakistani government “either for its alleged role in their capture or for failing to secure their release.”

US officials, stating that they were prepared to release Rahmatullah, nevertheless played down the role of the British court, and also “said that any transfer home has been complicated by the deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan.” One official said, “We will do this on our timetable.”

However, it appears that this is not entirely true, and that the days of holding prisoners at Bagram whether or not they have been cleared for release — as at Guantánamo, where 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners have been cleared, but are still held — are coming to an end. For the foreign prisoners held at Bagram without rights for up to ten years, the potential end of this long-running saga of injustice is to be welcomed.

POSTSCRIPT: At the time of publication, an Internet search revealed to me that I had missed an Associated Press story from last April in which it was reported that Amin al-Bakri, Redha al-Najar and Fadi al-Maqaleh had all been cleared for release from the Parwan prison.

The AP noted that al-Bakri, who was 42 years old, had a review board hearing in August 2010, and, in October, “was handed a paper saying he was going to be released to his home country,” but in April 2011 he was still seeking his release via the US courts. Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York who filed the appeal, said, ”Amin has been there for almost a decade of his life,” adding that he “should never have been there in the first place. He has never been a threat to the United States.”

The AP also reported that Redha al-Najar, who was 45 years old, had been cleared for release to Tunisia. His lawyer, Tina Foster of the International Justice Network, “said she learned through al-Najar’s family that the military planned to release him and send him to Tunisia, his country of birth, instead of Pakistan where he was picked up,” but added that he did not want to go to Tunisia. Foster also explained that Fadi al-Maqaleh had also been cleared for release but was still being held.

In addition, the AP report noted: “Also waiting to walk free is Jan Sher Khan, who has been detained for six years. He was 15 when he disappeared from his village near Kohat, Pakistan, in the spring of 2005. He never came home from classes at his high school and ended up at Bagram. According to court papers filed seeking his release, his family believes he was seized by someone seeking thousands of dollars in reward money advertised for the capture of suspected members of al-Qaida or the Taliban. On Jan. 10 [2011], the US government confirmed that Khan had been cleared for release.”

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

At the time, seven Tunisians had left Guantánamo, to face a variety of fates. Two had been repatriated in 2007, although both had then been imprisoned following show trials, two others were in Italy, where they had been delivered from Guantánamo to face trials in November 2009, and three others had been resettled in early 2010 in three other countries — namely, Slovakia, Albania and Georgia.

Soon after the fall of Ben Ali, the interim Tunisian government announced an amnesty for all political prisoners, paving the way for the return of exiled members of the Islamist party Ennahdha, and also the release of 55-year old Abdallah Hajji (also identified as Abdullah bin Amor), the former Guantánamo prisoner who was still imprisoned after a show trial. It also transpired that the other returned and imprisoned ex-Guantánamo prisoner, Lotfi Lagha, had actually been freed under President Ben Ali in June 2010.

Around the same time, one of the Tunisians sent to Italy, Mohammed Tahir Riyadh Nasseri, was convicted of criminal association with the aim of terrorism and sentenced to six years in prison, which seems harsh, especially as, just days later, on February 7, another judge delivered a completely different ruling in the case of Adel Ben Mabrouk (also identified as Adel Ben Mabrouk Bin Hamida Boughanmi), the other Tunisian sent to Italy from Guantánamo in November 2009. Although he too was convicted of criminal association with the aim of terrorism, the judge gave him a two-year suspended sentence and ordered his immediate release from jail, after taking into account “the eight years Mabrouk spent in Guantánamo in ‘inhumane conditions,’ plus a year and a half in Italian prison,” as his lawyer described it, even though he did not, at that point, have a passport or any kind of travel or identity papers.

On April 20, he returned to Tunisia, and after his return an Italian journalist traveled to Tunis to interview him, as I reported here.

On the third anniversary of President Obama’s failed promise to close Guantánamo, and the first anniversary of the fall of President Ben Ali, another Tunisian who returned home — Rafiq al-Hami, also identified as Rafik Hammi and Rafik al-Hammi — who had been released in Slovakia in January 2010, and had returned to his home country last March, appeared in a report on Guantánamo’s Tunisians on Al-Jazeera, and also in a longer video on the Guardian‘s website, both of which are posted below.

Al-Hami had spoken at a press conference in October last year, called by the interim government to campaign for the release of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, when he said, “The years I spent in detention were unimaginable. I never knew if I would be able to return to my family and my homeland, and I was never informed of why I was being held, or given a chance to defend myself at trial. Since my return to Tunisia, I have finally been reunited with my family and have been able to experience normal life again. I have very high hopes for my future here.”

However, I had never seen what he looked like until these films were released. A quiet, bookish man with an almost secret smile that his long years of torture could not erase, he was clearly never a threat to anyone, and it is salutary to recall that he was actually brutalized not only in Guantánamo, but also in three “black sites” run by the CIA, where, as he explained in a lawsuit 2009, “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.”

Many years before, he had told his tribunal in Guantánamo that he was tortured for three months in the “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan, where, he said, “I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold … I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray … These things are documented. You have them.”

In the two and a half minute feature on Al-Jazeera, al-Hami spoke briefly about his experiences, and the report also noted the story of Adel Hakeemy, still held in Guantánamo, who was “accused of training al-Qaeda members, but all charges against him were dropped last year,” as Al-Jazeera explained. His brother Imad also spoke, as did Polly Rossdale of Reprieve, the legal action charity whose lawyers represent most of the Tunisians at Guantánamo.

In the seven minute video for the Guardian, in which Rafiq al-Hami spoke about his abuse, Adel Hakeemy’s brother appeared again, as did his mother. Most poignantly, his brother showed a photo of the daughter he has never met. Also included were the sister and mother of Hisham Sliti, also still held, and Cortney Busch of Reprieve was on hand to provide a good explanation of the circumstances surrounding the men’s ongoing detention, and the need for pressure to secure their release.

Ten years after Guantánamo opened, it is sad to see these stories of men still held, even though they were cleared for release by military review boards under President Bush, and even though the reason they fled Tunisia in the first place — because of their opposition to, and persecution by President Ben Ali — has come to an end, and they could be safely repatriated without any problems.

POSTSCRIPT: Below, via Tunisia Live, which reported on a press conference in Tunis on January 11 to call for the return of the prisoners, is another interview with Rafiq al-Hami, in which he described the forms of torture used by the US authorities, and also explained that he spent five years in solitary confinement:

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

The first report, “Faces of Guantánamo: Resettlement,” focuses on the 89 prisoners still held who were cleared for release by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, but who are still held either because they cannot be safely repatriated, and no country has volunteered to offer them a new home, or because they are Yemenis, and both the President and Congress have acted to prevent the release of any cleared Yemeni prisoners, even though this constitutes guilt by nationality, which is an indefensible generalization, and ought to be regarded as a profound shame.

The article explains in detail President Obama’s failures, including his refusal to allow any innocent prisoners (the Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) to be settled in the US, and also describes how Congress has intervened to prevent the release of prisoners for nakedly political reasons. Included are recommendations for the Obama administration, and calls for other countries to help with the resettlement of those who cannot be safely repatriated.

There are also profiles of the following prisoners in need of new homes: Ahmed Ajam (a Syrian), Djamel Ameziane (an Algerian), Ahmed Belbacha (another Algerian), Ali Hussein al-Shaaban (another Syrian), Mohammed Tahamuttan (a Palestinian), Ravil Mingazov (a Russian), and Umar Abdulayev (a Tajik).

The second report, “Faces of Guantánamo: Indefinite Detention,” condemns President Obama for his decision to endorse indefinite detention without charge or trial for 46 of the remaining prisoners, on the spurious basis that they are too dangerous to release, even though there is insufficient evidence for them to be put on trial. As the report notes, “accepting indefinite detention crosses America over a dangerous Rubicon: permitting government officials to predict an individual’s future dangerousness through secret, untestable and potentially illegitimate criteria is incompatible with the most elementary principles permeating this country’s constitutional tradition.”

This second report also focuses on the unacceptable interference by the judges of the D.C. Circuit Court, who have been responsible for gutting habeas corpus of all meaning when it comes to the Guantánamo prisoners, by whittling away, for purely ideological reasons, at the detention standards agreed by the lower court judges making reasoned decisions about the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions.

Also included is further criticism of Congress and, in particular, the provisions included in the National Defense Authorization Act, making it mandatory for terror suspects to be held in military custody without charge or trial, and also reiterating the restrictions on the release of Guantánamo prisoners that have actually been a feature of Congressional legislation for the last year, and have been largely responsible for the fact that no living prisoner has been released from Guantánamo since January 2011.

The report also features profiles of the following prisoners: Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, Abdul Rahman al-Qyati, Ghaleb al-Bihani, Mohammed al-Adahi, Musa’ab al-Madhwani and Saeed Hatim (all Yemenis).

The third report, “Faces of Guantánamo: Torture,” examines how President Bush came to bypass the UN Convention Against Torture, and the US torture statute, even though the UN Convention, ratified by the US in 1987, explicitly states, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war, or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

The article covers the notorious military order of November 2001, establishing the military commissions, the internal memos dealing with the Geneva Conventions, which led to President Bush depriving the prisoners in his “war on terror” of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, including Common Article 3, which protects prisoners from torture or ill-treatment, and the subsequent establishment of an official torture program, with a justification provided by lawyers, close to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who cynically attempted to redefine torture.

The article also examines how former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld introduced torture at Guantánamo, and how the open-ended detention to which those still held are subjected is itself a form of torture.

Also included are profiles of the following prisoners: Abu Zubaydah — and other “high-value detainees,” Ahmed al-Darbi (a Saudi), Mohamedou Ould Slahi (a Mauritanian), Mohammed al-Qahtani (another Saudi), Sanad al-Kazimi (a Yemeni), Shaker Aamer (the last British resident in Guantánamo) and Sharqawi Ali al-Hajj (another Yemeni).

Note: Please visit the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and sign up to join a growing body of people demanding that President Obama fulfill his unfulfilled promise to close the prison. Please also sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Mr. Belhadj, also identified as Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, has instructed solicitors at Leigh Day & Co. to take legal action, and the legal action charity Reprieve are acting as US counsel and are also providing investigative support.

In 2004, when Mr. Belhadj’s ordeal at the hands of the British, the Americans and the Gaddafi regime began, he was living in Beijing, China, having previously led the resistance to the Gaddafi regime, and having, for a while, lived in Afghanistan. In early 2004, when Ms. Bouchar began to fear they were under surveillance, they decided to try to seek asylum in the UK. At the airport, however, they were detained and deported to Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, their previous destination before China.

On arrival they were seized and held for several weeks, and then told that they would be allowed to travel to the UK, via Bangkok. They were then “forced to board an aircraft” bound for Bangkok, as Reprieve explained in a press release, and then “separated, handed over to US authorities and taken to what they believe was a US secret prison,” where “they were subjected to a barrage of barbaric treatment.” If this was in Thailand, then it may contradict claims that the secret prison used to hold “high-value detainees” in 2002 closed at the end of that year, as a new facility opened in Poland.

Mr. Belhadj has explained that, when he was not being interrogated, he “was hung by his wrists from hooks in his cell for prolonged periods, while hooded, blindfolded and viciously beaten.” Fatima Bouchar has said that she was “mistreated so severely that she finds it difficult to discuss even today.”

Still isolated from each other, they were then rendered to Libya from Bangkok by the US authorities, and, as was normal for US rendition fights, Mr. Belhadj “was hooded and shackled to the floor of the plane in a stress position, unable to sit or lie during the entire 17-hour flight.” Adding to British woes, the flight stopped to re-fuel in Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean Territory leased to the US, where, for many years, there have been rumors of the existence of another secret prison.

In Libya, Mr. Belhadj was imprisoned for six years in some of the country’s most brutal jails, including Abu Salim in Tripoli, where 1200 prisoners were killed in a massacre by Gaddafi’s forces in 1996. In Libya’s prisons, he “was savagely beaten, hung from walls and cut off from human contact and daylight,” and has stated that he was interrogated by “foreign” agents, including agents from the UK. In 2008, he was sentenced to death after a 15-minute trial. For two more years, his abuse continued, and then, in 2010, he was released as part of negotiations between the Gaddafi regime and former members of the LIFG.

Alarmingly, Fatima Bouchar was also imprisoned on her return to Libya, and was subjected to aggressive interrogations,. In total, she was held for four months, and was released just three weeks before her baby was born. As Reprieve noted, by this time “her health, and that of her baby, was in a precarious state.”

Speaking of the case, Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director, said, “Mr. Belhaj was totally willing to come to an agreement with the British government. He made it absolutely plain that what he cared about was an open apology and for those who tortured him and his wife to be brought to justice. It is only after those requests were ignored for a month that he has decided to make his grievance public.”

Sapna Malik of Leigh Day & Co. added, “[T]he barbaric treatment which our clients describe, both at the hands of the Americans and the Libyans is beyond comprehension and yet it appears that the UK was responsible for setting off this torturous chain of events … [O]ur clients want those responsible for the wrongs done to them, and other Libyans, in the past be held to account and the truth to come out, so that the new Libya can finally turn the page.”

Disgracefully, evidence of the UK’s role in the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Fatima Bouchar was revealed in a number of fawning, and previously classified documents that came to light in Tripoli, in September, as the Gaddafi regime fell, and which were discovered by Human Rights Watch. These documents reveal that the British government told the Libyan government that the couple were in Malaysia in early March 2004, and Sir Mark Allen, who was then the director of counter-terrorism at MI6, wrote to the notorious torturer Moussa Koussa, the head of  Libyan intelligence, who, earlier this year, fled Libya as the regime began tumbling and was briefly welcomed in the UK.

In a letter dated March 18, 2004, just a week before British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Gaddafi in Libya to welcome him on board as an ally in the “war on terror,” Allen wrote an embarrassing and self-incriminating letter, in which he stated, “Most importantly, I congratulate you on the safe arrival of Abu Abd Allah Sadiq [Abdel Hakim Belhadj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years. I am so glad. I was grateful to you for helping the officer we sent out last week.”

He added, “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from Abu Abd Allah through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing. The intelligence on Abu Abd Allah was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful for the help you are giving us.”

Abdel Hakim Belhaj is not the first former opponent of Gaddafi to sue the British government. In October, Sami al-Saadi (also known as Abu Munthir), another prominent figure in the LIFG, launched an action to claim damages from the British government after the documents discovered in Tripoli revealed the key role played by MI6 in his rendition as well. The Tripoli documents revealed a fax the CIA sent to Moussa Koussa, just two days before Tony Blair’s visit to Gaddafi, which, as the Guardian put it, “shows that the agency was eager to join in the Saadi rendition operation after learning that MI6 and Gaddafi’s government were about to embark upon it.”

As the Guardian was also keen to point out, after Blair’s visit, Gaddafi announced that he “had signed a £550m gas exploration deal with Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant.” Three days later, part of thew human cargo that helped to buy this deal — Sami al-Saadi — who had been seized by British agents in Hong Kong with his wife, two sons aged 12 and nine, and two daughters aged 14 and six, was forced onto a plane with his family and flown to Tripoli, where, on arrival, “he and his wife were handcuffed and hooded, and their legs were bound together with lengths of wire,” and “[t]he entire family was then thrown in jail.” Al-Saadi’s wife and children were released after two months of what he described as “psychological torture,” while he, like Belhaj, was held for six years and, as he explained, “repeatedly beaten, subjected to electric shocks and threatened with death.”

In a claim that also explains how British cynicism spread beyond Libya, he also said that “he was interrogated about Libyans living in the UK, shown photographs of a number of them, and on one occasion questioned by two British intelligence officers while one of his Libyan interrogators was present,” and what is clear from the experience of Libyan dissidents in the UK, who had claimed asylum, is that, after Gaddafi’s miraculous volte-face, his enemies were subjected to arbitrary imprisonment in the UK (in prisons, and also under house arrest) and shameful attempts to repatriate them, in contravention of the UN Convention Against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Reinforcing this assessment, the Guardian explained that al-Saadi “had lived in north London for several years in the 90s, having claimed asylum in the UK, and a number of his associates suspect he was handed over to Gaddafi as a ‘gift,’ rather than as an individual who threatened British national security,” much as those other individuals became playthings in a depressingly immoral game.

The Guardian also noted that the CIA fax made it clear that “the plan was to render not just Saadi but also his family,” even though what awaited them in Gaddafi’s Libya was obvious. Foreign Office representatives refused to comment, but solicitors at Leigh Day & Co. and lawyers at Reprieve pointed out that they had identified other documents in the Tripoli cache relating to al-Saadi, including one showing MI6 “preparing the ground for his rendition five months before it happened,” in a fax sent in November 2003, in which an MI6 officer “tells one of Koussa’s aides that the agency is talking to the Chinese intelligence services about ‘the Islamic extremist target in China.’”

Back in October, Cori Crider said of al-Saadi’s claim, “The British security services have let slip that Sami al-Saadi’s illegal kidnap was ‘ministerially authorised.’ So who signed the torture warrant? Was it [former foreign secretary] Jack Straw? The Metropolitan Police must launch an immediate criminal investigation, focusing on the highest echelons of British government. The British public, to say nothing of Sami, his wife and his family, have a right to know.”

With Abdel Hakim Belhaj joining Sami al-Saadi in suing the British government, these are difficult times for Prime Minister David Cameron, who now finds Libyans joining a queue of torture victims seeking a thorough inquiry into Britain’s use of torture, and not the whitewash envisaged by Cameron, who, in July 2009, initiated a largely secretive judge-led inquiry, which has yet to begin its deliberations, but which has been boycotted by all the major NGOs.

Sadly, the Obama administration, as is typical, is studiously avoiding having to answer any questions about the Bush administration’s involvement in the rendition and torture not only of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, but also of several other Libyans, some of whom I profiled for the United Nations, and also wrote about in an article in September 2010, entitled, “Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Freed in Libya After Three Years’ Detention – And Information About ‘Ghost Prisoners.’”

Most significant, however, is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the former emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan. Seized by the US crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan, he was sent to Egypt to be tortured, where he came up with a false confession that al-Qaeda operatives had met with Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi recanted his claim, but it was, nevertheless, used to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq, and al-Libi himself, after a tour of US torture prisons, was also returned to Libya, where he too was imprisoned and tortured, Unlike Balhaj, al-Saadi and others, however, al-Libi never survived. In May 2009, it was reported that he had committed suicide in his cell at Abu Salim prison, a story that no one with knowledge of Gaddafi — or, for that matter, the CIA — believed, especially as ming, the US embassy in Tripoli reopened just three days after his death.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Despite being held for nearly eight years, Yunus, also known as “Saleh Huddin,” was held incommunicado, unable even to contact his family, for six years, and has only recently been allowed to establish telephone contact with his relatives. Reprieve noted its lawyers and investigators had been “told by multiple sources that, as a result of his abuse in UK and US custody, he is in catastrophic mental and physical shape, and now spends most of his time in the mental health cells at Bagram.”

As Reprieve explained, this “historic decision” also “marks the first time any civilian legal system has penetrated Bagram, a legal black hole where nearly three thousand prisoners — many rendered from all over the world — have been unlawfully held by the US military for up to a decade.” Unlike at Guantánamo, itself an opaque and unjust facility, but one where civilian lawyers have had access since the Supreme Court granted the prisoners habeas corpus rights in June 2004, no civilian lawyer has ever been allowed into Bagram, which, as Reprieve described it, “is notorious for torture and homicides and has been called ‘Guantánamo’s Evil Twin.’”

This is indeed a remarkable development, as the Bagram prisoners have been abandoned by the US courts, despite winning a remarkable — and entirely appropriate — victory in April 2009, when, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge John D. Bates granted habeas corpus rights to three foreigners rendered to Bagram from other countries, and held for many years, asserting that the circumstances in which they were held were essentially the same as those in Guantánamo. However, in May 2010, that ruling was reversed on appeal, leaving the prisoners still stranded by the Obama administration, in what Judge Bates described as “a ‘black hole’ for detainees in a ‘law-free zone.’”

The UK Court of Appeal’s ruling — by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Lord Justice Sullivan — came in response to a habeas corpus application by Reprieve, in which it was noted that the British government had “repeatedly refused to help Yunus,” even though the Abu Ghraib scandal was made public just weeks after his detention.

Reprieve noted that British officials “failed to get him back and said nothing when they learned he had been sent illegally to Bagram,” even though the British government “has always had the clear power to get Yunus back, under the Geneva Conventions and under the relevant ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ which grants control over the prisoner to the UK and explicitly requires Yunus to be returned to UK custody on request.”

Describing the history of Britain’s shameful role in Yunus’ long years of abuse, Reprieve explained:

In February 2009, after years of government denials that the UK had been involved in any rendition operations, then-Secretary of State for Defence John Hutton announced to Parliament that UK forces had captured two men in Iraq in February 2004, and handed them to US forces. In subsequent statements to Parliament, the government revealed that in March 2004, British officials had become aware of the US intention to transfer the men from Iraq to Afghanistan.

The British government admitted its complicity in crime (kidnapping, otherwise called rendition), admitted it was wrong, and appeared to apologize. Yet it did not and refused to identify the men — a crucial step if they are to be reunited with their basic human rights. Indeed, the government has apparently done nothing over the past seven years to ensure that they receive legal assistance.

Reprieve led a complicated and expensive search for the identity of these men, which covered three continents over ten months. One of the men has been identified as Amanatullah Ali and the other as Yunus Rahmatullah.

A spokesperson for Leigh Day also explained how difficult it was to actually represent Yunus Rahmatullah, because of the Obama adminstration’s refusal to allow any lawyer to visit Bgaram. Yunus, the spokesperson said, was “prevented from speaking with or instructing lawyers,” so instructions to act on his behalf “were received through his cousin, who has intermittent communication with the client through the International Committee of the Red Cross.”

In the ruling, Lord Neuberger said there was “a substantial case for saying that the UK government is under an international legal obligation to demand the return of the applicant, and the US government is bound to accede to such an request,” leading Reprieve to state that there was, therefore, “no reason” to think that the US government will not comply with the court’s request.

Reprieve also noted that the US government has already acknowledged that it no longer wishes to hold Yunus. At Bagram, his case was assessed by a Detainee Review Board on June 5, 2010, in which it was concluded that his continued imprisonment was “not necessary.” The review process at Bagram was established by President Obama — and was copied from the system introduced by the Bush administration at Guantánamo, which was described as “inadequate” by the Supreme Court — but, instead of being released, he continues to be held.

As Reprieve noted, “There is therefore no lawful basis for his imprisonment, as the UK government has admitted to the court. The UK therefore has the right — and the duty — to send Yunus home.” Reprieve also stated that, although the British government “has repeatedly declined to state on what legal basis Yunus was rendered, the Geneva Conventions define his rendition as a “grave breach” — that is, a war crime — about which the UK appears to have known in advance,” adding, “The Court of Appeal acknowledges this, and has said the UK may be required under international law to get Yunus out of Bagram — or face being in grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.”

The Court gave the British government just seven days to secure Yunus’s release, or to explain to the court why they cannot do so, and Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s director, said, “Yunus Rahmatullah’s mother cries herself to sleep at night because the United Kingdom wrongfully arrested her son and has refused to facilitate his release. The legal black hole of Bagram is antithetical to the rule of law, and Guantánamo’s evil twin. The Court of Appeals is right to recognize this injustice and the British government must now do the decent thing, which it has so far repeatedly refused to do — help Yunus return home.”

In addition, Yunus’ solicitor at Leigh Day, Jamie Beagent, said, “This judgment affirms that our client remains the responsibility of the UK under international law. The government must now accept its responsibilities and seek the return of Mr. Rahmatullah from US detention, under the terms of its agreements with the United States.” He added, “We hope that the writ of habeas corpus will finally bring to an end our client’s nightmare of indefinite detention without charge in appalling conditions at Bagram.”

Back in May 2010, Yunus’s mother, Fatima Rahmatullah, issued the following statement:

Yunus is the youngest and closest son to my heart. I lost my other son, his only brother, in a tragic accident. Now, Yunus is my only hope in life. I see him in my dreams; I pray daily that I will see him in my waking hours again. Our family was shocked when we learned that the British government might have been behind Yunus’ disappearance. I am told the British government has refused even to confirm that Yunus was the person they seized six years ago. As a mother, this is a position that I struggle to understand.

As well as tackling the British government’s responsibility for Yunus Rahmatullah, Reprieve is also involved, in Pakistan, with the organization Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), fighting what it describes as “a ground-breaking case filed on behalf of seven Pakistanis imprisoned in Bagram Air Base, which challenges the Pakistan government over their role in renditions.”

In addition to Yunus Rahmatullah, the case also involves Awwal Khan, Hamidullah Khan, Abdul Haleem Saifullah, Fazal Karim, Amal Khan and Iftikhar Ahmad, who were “abducted from Pakistan and taken to Bagram, where they have been kept without charge or trial since 2003.” Reprieve added, “One prisoner is merely 16 years of age and was seized two years ago at the age of 14. Another was not permitted to speak to his family for six years, and is believed to be in a grievous physical and psychological condition.”

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

This is a time of grim anniversaries. The 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in September was followed, in October, by the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, and, as the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo approaches, on January 11, 2012, we have now reached the point where we can begin to mark the 10th anniversary of the dates on which the 171 men still held there were first seized, and to reflect on what it says about America’s notions of justice and fairness that they are, for the most part, still held without charge or trial.

On his visit to Guantánamo, Stafford Smith was visiting Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, whose case has long been of concern to British citizens and to opponents of Guantánamo in the US and elsewhere in the world. I have written about his case extensively over the years, and his story also features in the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which I co-directed with the filmmaker Polly Nash.

A British resident with a British wife and four British children, Shaker Aamer has never been charged or tried, and yet, as Clive Stafford Smith reports, in an article, a press release and a letter to the British foreign secretary William Hague, all cross-posted below, he remains held, exactly ten years since he was first seized, even though he was notified that he had been cleared for release in 2007, and even though successive British governments have requested his return to the UK.

Those closest to his case have been obliged to conclude, for many years, that he is still held because, as an eloquent, charismatic man, and the foremost advocate of the prisoners’ rights, he knows too much, and these fears are further confirmed with the knowledge that he stated that, on the night of June 9, 2006, when three other prisoners died in Guantánamo in disputed circumstances (the authorities claimed that it was suicide, while soldiers who were present have suggested that the men may have been killed), he was tortured to within an inch of his life.

In addition, although the Labour government under Gordon Brown and the current Tory-led coalition government have requested the release of Shaker Aamer, his continued detention appears to be inexplicable unless, like their US counterparts, the British authorities do not really want him released either. Shaker Aamer embarrassed the British government in 2009, when he won a court case to secure the release of information regarding his claims that he was tortured by US forces in Afghanistan while UK agents were in the room, and this might explain the government’s reluctance to secure his return, were it not for three additional facts: firstly, that the Metropolitan Police are investigating his torture claims, and that he is surely needed as a witness; secondly, that the British government reached a financial settlement with him a year ago, which cannot be concluded while he is still in Guantánamo; and thirdly, that David Cameron’s much-criticised torture inquiry, into British complicity in torture abroad, cannot realistically begin while Shaker Aamer is still detained.

To shed further light on the current situation at Guantánamo, on Shaker Aamer’s case, on his array of physical and mental ailments, as a result of his ill-treatment over the years, and on the inexcusable inaction by both the British and the American governments, I refer you to Clive Stafford Smith’s commentaries below, and, if you would like to add your voice to those pressing for Shaker Aamer’s return,  you can email William Hague here or you can write to him at the following address: The Foreign Secretary, William Hague MP, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AH.

Guantánamo Bay: An Unpalatable Visit
By Clive Stafford Smith, Huffington Post UK, November 23, 2011

This week I visited Shaker Aamer, the last remaining British resident being held in Guantánamo Bay.

He was originally detained on 24 November 2001, so he is marking ten years in prison without any charge. I cannot disclose what he said to me because, as ever, complaints he might have about his mistreatment, or his chronic health problems, are deemed classified until the United States sees fit to allow me to discuss them. However, Guantánamo is more depressed than ever, as perhaps illustrated by my own experiences on the gastronomic front.

I was looking forward to dining in the best restaurant on the Leeward Side of the infamous navy based, the Clipper Club, which qualifies because it is the only place that is normally open by the time our ferry gets back from the Windward side of the bay. The Club normally boasts a microwave pizza, which is putrid, but also a gin and tonic, which I find more nutritious.

So I walked down there on my first evening, past a couple of million dollars’ worth of new, wholly unused, now abandoned and overgrown, military housing units that some civilian Pentagon contractor got paid to put up two years ago. Arriving eagerly at my destination, I was aghast to discover that military economies meant that the Club now opens only on weekends. There was only one remaining dining alternative, the vending machine at the motel.

Therefore, after an appetiser of Planters Peanuts (not quite past their expiration date yet, but tasting rather stale), the main course was a bright green bag of Kars’ All Energy Trail Mix. I could only swallow half of my dessert, as my memory deceived me, and the Reese’s Peanut Butter cups were not up to par.

The nice lady from Jamaica at the front desk (who is, if my earlier visits hold true, being paid substantially under minimum wage by another civilian contractor) confirmed that the satellite dish had been broken for a while, so there was no chance of much after-dinner diversion. I asked when it might be fixed; she laughed rather charmingly, and said she knew of no plan to do anything about it. Tomorrow night’s entertainment will, then, be rather similar to this evening’s: tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Indeed, on my second evening on the island, things had not improved. One of the silly new rules dictated that I must choose between cutting off my visit with Shaker Aamer 50 minutes early, and being refused a visit to the main shop on the Windward side.

I chose the latter, hoping against hope that the little shop on the Leeward side would still be open when my ferry got there. Alas, while the lights were still on, I was fifteen minutes late.

So I repaired to the vending machine again; even the remaining Reese’s cup seemed appetising tonight.

Guantánamo is, increasingly, torture for all those concerned. The soldiers have long since forsaken the notion that by holding prisoners without trial they are preserving the rule of law; the prisoners have lost all hope, ten years into their endless detention; and, as the Gitmo Diet takes hold, even the lawyers are finding their visits unpalatable.

Shaker Aamer, last British resident in Guantánamo Bay, ‘celebrates’ his tenth year imprisoned without charge or trial
Reprieve press release, November 24, 2011

Ten years ago today Shaker Aamer was detained in Afghanistan. He was subsequently sold for a bounty to US forces, tortured in Bagram Air Force Base and Kandahar (with British agents as witnesses), before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay for additional abuse.

He has never been charged with any offence, and published reports indicate that he is one of 88 among the 171 prisoners remaining in Guantánamo Bay who has long been cleared for release from the prison. However, the law in the US as it currently stands requires that the US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta must certify that Britain is a safe place for him to return to, and that he will commit no future crimes there — something that apparently Panetta has been unwilling to do.

Immediately upon visiting Shaker last week, Reprieve’s director wrote to Foreign Secretary William Hague concerning the laundry list of physical ailments that Shaker suffers — a list that had just been cleared through the US censorship process. That disturbing letter has now been made public [and is cross-posted below].

Reprieve’s director Clive Stafford Smith said: “I saw Shaker last Thursday and he tries to put a brave face on ten years of horrible abuse, but it is enough to wear any human being down almost to the point of death. Why does Britain pretend it has a Special Relationship if someone from London can be held for a decade without any due process, leaving his British wife without a husband and his British children without a father?

“Notwithstanding the fact that Britain has the best record of any country with former Guantánamo prisoners (nobody released has committed any offence), and that Shaker Aamer has anyway never committed a crime of any kind, the US Secretary of Defense is apparently not willing to certify that it would be safe for him to return here. It’s time someone in the British government told Leon Panetta what time of day it is.”

Clive Stafford Smith’s letter to William Hague regarding Shaker Aamer, November 18, 2011

Rt. Hon. William Hague
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street London

Re: Shaker Aamer & Guantánamo Bay

Dear Mr Hague:

I am writing to you urgently from Miami International Airport. I have just flown in from Guantánamo Bay where I visited Shaker Aamer yesterday. While there are aspects of that visit that I may not divulge due to US classification rules, I am permitted to relay my impressions, as well as detail the materials that were unclassified yesterday.

These give great cause for concern. Mr Aamer has suffered abuse that is unfathomable in the twenty-first century. One of the many areas of concern is his physical health.

Mr Aamer has now been held in isolation for more than two years. The US authorities may quibble about the term “isolation” (they have been known to do so in the past), but nothing can change the fact that Mr Aamer has been held in a solitary cell for that time, and much more over the past ten years. He has been thus punished because he continues to insist on the most basic elements of justice: that he be given a fair trial.

He has listed for counsel the following physical ailments that currently afflict him:

• Arthritis in the knees and fingers, stemming from his abuse in custody;
• Serious asthma problems (exacerbated, almost to the point of asphyxiation, when the US military sprays him with pepper spray during their periodic forcible cell extractions, or FCEs);
• Heartburn and acid reflux exacerbated by the diet;
• Prostate pain, with serious problems with urination;
• Problems with his ears, including the loss of balance and dizziness;
• Neck, shoulder and back pain resulting from the beatings that he has suffered;
• Serious infection of his nails;
• Ring worm and itchiness between his legs;
• Constant haemorrhoids and rectal pain;
• Extreme Kidney pain.

He also complains of E-N-T problems, serious insomnia, nerve problems in his right leg, and so forth. I can directly attest to various of these problems. For example, if the US insists that his food is of good quality, I can tell you that I tasted the lunch that he was given yesterday and it was revolting. I observed the infection of his left thumb, his right thumb, and his right index and middle finger nails, and it is like nothing I have seen before, rendering the nail soft and crumbling off the digit.

I do not think it is stretching matters to say that he is gradually dying in Guantánamo Bay.

This makes it all the more urgent that we get an independent medical assessment of him. However, ultimately there is only one solution, which is to get him out of Guantánamo Bay, home to his family in London. I should note that on February 14th he will have been in Guantánamo Bay for ten years; the anniversary coincides with the tenth birthday of his youngest child, who he has never met.

I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Clive A. Stafford Smith, Director

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Please support my work!

Freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington continues his 70-part, million-word series telling, for the first time, the stories of 776 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Adding information released by WikiLeaks in April 2011 to the existing documentation about the prisoners, much of which was already covered in Andy’s book The Guantánamo Files and in the archive of articles on his website, the project will be completed in spring 2012.

This is Part 31 of the 70-part series. 386 stories have now been told. See the entire archive here.

In late April, I worked with WikiLeaks as a media partner for the publication of thousands of pages of classified military documents — the Detainee Assessment Briefs — relating to almost all of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. These documents drew heavily on the testimony of the prisoners themselves, and also on the testimony of their fellow inmates (either in Guantánamo, or in secret prisons run by or on behalf of the CIA), whose statements are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion, or because they provided false statements in the hope of securing better treatment in Guantánamo.

The documents were compiled by the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo (JTF GTMO), which operates the prison, and were based on assessments and reports made by interrogators and analysts whose primary concern was to “exploit” the prisoners for their intelligence value. They also include input from the Criminal Investigative Task Force, created by the DoD in 2002 to conduct interrogations on a law enforcement basis, rather than for “actionable intelligence.”

My ongoing analysis of the documents began in May, with a five-part series, “WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo,” telling the stories of 84 prisoners, released between 2002 and 2004, whose stories had never been told before. This was followed by a ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004,” in which I revisited the stories of 114 other prisoners released in this period, adding information from the Detainee Assessment Briefs to what was already known about these men and boys from press reports and other sources. This was followed by another five-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released After the Tribunals, 2004 to 2005,” dealing with the period from September 2004 to the end of 2005, when 62 prisoners were released.

This, as I explained, was the period in which, after the prisoners won a spectacular victory in the Supreme Court in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, when the Supreme Court granted them habeas corpus rights (in other words, the right to ask an impartial judge why they were being held), lawyers were allowed to meet the prisoners for the first time, and the secrecy that was required for Guantánamo to function as an interrogation center beyond the law was finally broken.

However, although the Bush administration allowed habeas petitions to proceed, Congress attempted to strip the prisoners of their habeas rights in the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005, and the administration also responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling with its own inferior version of habeas, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, a sham process designed to rubber-stamp their designation as “enemy combatants” who could be held indefinitely.

With just 38 prisoners cleared for release after the CSRTs, another review process — the annual Administrative Review Boards — took over, reviewing whether prisoners still had ongoing intelligence value, and whether they still posed a threat to the US. These were essentially the decisions being taken by JTF GTMO and CITF, and they reveal how, in the “War on Terror,” prosecuting criminals (the few genuine terror suspects in Guantánamo) and holding soldiers off the battlefield until the end of hostilities had largely given way to the strange mixture of threat assessments and intelligence assessments that fill the Detainee Assessment Briefs.

With 260 prisoners profiled in the first 20 parts of this project, the next ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantanamo Prisoners Released in 2006,” covered the stories of the 111 prisoners released in 2006 (and the three who died at the prison in June 2006), almost all of whom were freed because of political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice, as is the case with this latest ten-part series, dealing with the 124 prisoners released in 2007, including two more who died without ever having been charged or tried.

I also hope that readers will reflect on the problems of over-classification that have been thoroughly chronicled in the preceding series analyzing the Detainee Assessment Briefs. My analysis to date has established repeatedly that even patently innocent prisoners seized by mistake were regarded as a “low risk,” rather than as no risk at all, and it is important for readers to bear in mind that the entire process of detaining and processing prisoners and exploiting them for their supposed intelligence was shot through with a drive to conclude that they were all a threat, and to overlook the distressing fact that most of them were seized in a largely random manner, mostly by America’s Afghan and Pakistan allies, at a time when substantial bounty payments were widespread, and were never subjected to anything that resembled an adequate screening process.

And then, of course, as I have outlined above, and as is revealed extensively in the files, they were trapped in a prison where officials, in their ill-conceived desire for “actionable intelligence,” ended up attempting to justifying their detention either by coercing or bribing the prisoners themselves or coercing or bribing their fellow prisoners, while showing them the photo albums of prisoners known as the “family albums,” to come up with allegations that could be passed off as plausible, whether or not there was any substance to them at all.

The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2007 (Part One of Ten)

David Hicks (ISN 2, Australia) Released May 2007

As I explained in Chapter 9 of my book The Guantánamo Files, David Hicks, one of the most well-known prisoners at Guantánamo, who was 26 years old at the time of his capture in Afghanistan in November 2001, was a former horse trainer from Adelaide, who converted to Islam after traveling to Europe and training with the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999, and then traveled to Pakistan to study in a madrassa, subsequently crossing into Afghanistan to continue his studies — at what he described as a “center for Islamic revolution” — and to fight with the Taliban, as was reported in an article in the Australian in December 2006.

On November 10, 2001, he rang his father on a satellite phone from a ditch outside Kandahar, telling him he was going to help the Taliban defend Kabul from the Northern Alliance. He then made his way to Kunduz, and on November 24, as the last bastion of Taliban power in northern Afghanistan fell to the Northern Alliance, he decided to make his escape. Climbing on board a taxi-van with dozens of Afghans, he tried to hide his blond hair and blue eyes, but was unsuccessful. As the van made its way through the streets of Pul-i-Khumri, south of Kunduz, the driver noticed his pale skin and called the local Northern Alliance commanders. Heavily armed soldiers stopped the van at a checkpoint, seized Hicks and took him to a cell in the local garrison, where, he said, he was sold for $15,000 to the Americans, who took him to the Northern Alliance prison at Sheberghan, under the control of the warlord General Rashid Dostum.

Because of his color and his nationality, Hicks, like John Walker Lindh, was singled out for particular attention by the US military. According to Shah Mohammed (ISN 19, released in May 2003), who was held with him in Guantánamo, he was treated differently from the majority of the prisoners from the moment he arrived in Sheberghan. “He was asked a lot of questions [by the Americans], more than us,” he said. Hicks himself said, in court documents discussed in the New York Times, that US soldiers “tied his hands and feet and beat him with bare fists during two-hour sessions,” and forced him to sit on a window ledge, while six soldiers pointed their weapons at him. He also explained that one interrogator, “obviously agitated, took out his pistol and aimed it at me, with his hand shaking violently with rage,” adding, “I realized that if I did not cooperate with US interrogators, I might be shot.”

His treatment at Sheberghan was, however, just the start of his misery. While the majority of those around him were transferred to Kandahar or released through deals made by General Dostum, Hicks was one of a handful of prisoners (including Lindh) who were flown to the USS Peleliu for interrogation, where his American interrogators were joined by unsympathetic representatives of his home country, and where he heard other prisoners “screaming in pain” while being interrogated. He was then moved to the USS Bataan, where conditions became “drastically” worse, and it was while he was on this second ship that he and other prisoners were taken by helicopter to some vast, barn-like buildings in an undisclosed location, where they were forced to kneel for ten hours, and where, Hicks said, “I was hit in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle several times (hard enough to knock me over), slapped in the back of the head, kicked, stepped on, and spat on.” It was only after these avenues of abuse had been exhausted that he was finally transferred to the US prison at Kandahar airport.

There, he said, he and other prisoners “were forced to lie face down in the mud while solders walked across our backs,” and he “was stripped, his body hair shaved,” and, he said, a piece of “white plastic was forcibly inserted in my rectum for no apparent purpose,” about which soldiers “made crude comments.”

In Guantánamo, Hicks said, he was repeatedly beaten, once for eight hours, and frequently while he was restrained and blindfolded. “I have been beaten before, after and during investigations,” he said, adding that he had also been “menaced and threatened, directly and indirectly, with firearms and other weapons before and during investigations.” He also said that he was subjected to sleep deprivation “as a matter of policy,” and according to Ruhal Ahmed, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal (the “Tipton Three”), he was one of numerous prisoners refused medical treatment — in his case, treatment for a hernia at a time when they recalled that he had “gone downhill” and appeared willing to make any number of false confessions to alleviate his plight. Revealing he extent to which very little information regarding the prisoners’ ill-treatment is available in their publicly available files, the Pentagon’s own brief allegations against Hicks contain no reference whatsoever to any of the above.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Hicks was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated September 17, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in August 1975, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, after being introduced to Islam by members of Jamaat al-Tablighi (the worldwide missionary organization that was nevertheless regarded by US authorities as “a Tier 2 NGO target”; in other words, an organization that had “demonstrated the intent and willingness to support terrorist organizations willing to attack US persons or interests”), he ”became aware of the situation and struggles occurring in Kosovo, as well as the role of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), while working as a horse trainer in Japan in 1998 and 1999.

He “claimed it was the plight of the people in Kosovo that urged him to seek the KLA,” and then traveled to Kosovo, where he trained for three months, but never saw combat, as the conflict ended. After a thwarted attempt to fight in East Timor, he flew to Pakistan in the fall of 1999, where, in December 1999, “while performing missionary work for the JT [he] met with representatives of the Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT),” described as “a Tier 1 target”; in other words, one of a number of terrorist groups, “especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests,” even though LeT’s main preoccupation was the India-Pakistan conflict regarding Kashmir, and even though Hicks’ sole preoccupation was with Kashmir, and did not involve US interests at all.

After traveling to Lahore and Quetta for discussions, and to join LeT, Hicks traveled to Muzzafarabad, the capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, for training, although again he never saw combat, as Pakistan’s largest and most influential intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, was “controlling the number of troops in Kashmir,” and did not let hi in, even though he apparently “stated he would have waited several months or longer for an attempted insertion into Kashmir.” Thwarted again, he managed to enter Afghanistan instead, and traveled to Kandahar “in search of military training, based on information from a contact with the Taliban in Pakistan.’ He then returned to Pakistan, and studied the Koran at a madrassa in Karachi for four months.

In December 2000, he returned to Kandahar, and, on this occasion, was apparently “introduced to the Al-Qaida organisation,” and reportedly undertook military training at the Al-Farouq training camp, described as “Al-Qaida’s Al-Farouq terrorist camp,” even though its main purpose was basic military training. It was stated that he “trained with Al-Qaida at multiple locations in Afghanistan, including the Abu Obeida terrorist camp for urban warfare training,” and met with Mohammed Atef and Abu Hafs, two senior figures in Al-Qaida. He also visited the front lines, but again missed out on combat.

In describing his capture, it was noted that, “[a]s the Taliban lines fell, and just prior to the capture of Mazar-e-Sharif by the Northern Alliance, [he] fled the area to Kunduz, AF, by riding in a truck,” and “then traveled to Bagram, AF, where Northern Alliance national soldiers arrested him,” and “was turned over to US Forces and incarcerated on the USS Pettiloo (actually, as noted above, the USS Peleliu). He was sent to Guantánamo on the day the prison opened, January 11, 2002, allegedly because it was assessed that he “may provide knowledge of Al-Qaida Training Camps in Afghanistan.”

However, as I explained in my article, “How to Read WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files” (originally published on WikiLeaks’ website when the Guantánamo files were first published, as part of my work liaising between WikiLeaks and its media partners):

[T]he “Reasons for Transfer” included in the documents, which have been repeatedly cited by media outlets as an explanation of why the prisoners were transferred to Guantánamo, are, in fact, lies that were grafted onto the prisoners’ files after their arrival at Guantánamo. This is because, contrary to the impression given in the files, no significant screening process took place before the prisoners’ transfer. As Chris Mackey, a senior interrogator who worked in Afghanistan, explained in a book that he wrote about his experiences (The Interrogators), every prisoner who ended up in US custody had to be sent to Guantánamo, even though the majority were not even seized by US forces, but were seized by their Afghan and Pakistani allies at a time when substantial bounty payments for “Al-Qaida and Taliban suspects” were widespread.

In assessing Hicks’ story, the Task Force described him as having had “direct involvement with senior Al-Qaida leadership, including Osama Bin Laden,” even though there was no indication that he had met bin Laden. It was also claimed that he “actively sought out extremist organisations throughout the world in order to train, operate, and fight with them” (even though he always missed out on combat), and that his “involvement and extensive training with the KLA, LeT, Al-Qaida, Taliban, and Jamaat al-Tablighi [made] him a highly skilled and advanced combatant, as well as a valuable asset and possible leader for extremist organisations” (which, again, was a huge exaggeration considering that Hicks had never fought anyone).

It was also claimed that he was “an admitted/sworn fighter for Al-Qaida and [had] written a statement affirming such,” even though this statement obviously contained what the US authorities wanted to hear, and not what actually happened. It was also stated that he had been assessed as being “of high intelligence value,” and that he still possesse[d] intelligence value,” although “due to his current trial by Military Commission,” for which he had been “formally charged with conspiracy, attempted murder by an unpriviledged [sic] belligerent, and aiding the enemy,” JTF GTMO stated that it would “not continue exploitation efforts.”

The Task Force also noted that Hicks’ “overall behavior” in Guantánamo had been  “compliant,” although he was assessed as being “deceptive.” It was also assessed that he posed “a high risk, and pose[d] a significant threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and, as a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “retained under DoD control.”

As the Task Force noted, however, its appraisal was not especially relevant, because, in July 2003, Hicks was one of the first six prisoners to be put forward for a trial by Military Commission, along with Salim Hamdan, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, Ibrahim al-Qosi, and, initially, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi (although they were subsequently released). The Commissions were declared illegal by the Supreme Court in June 2006, but were then revived by Congress, and the first trial of the revived system was Hicks’, in March 2007.

As I explained in Chapter 20 of The Guantánamo Files, on March 26, 2007, a weary David Hicks accepted a plea bargain and declared that he was guilty of the only charge that was eventually raised against him: providing “material support for terrorism.” For his cooperation, he was sentenced on March 30 to nine months’ imprisonment, rather than the seven years that the prosecution had been seeking, and was told that he would be returning home in May 2007 to serve his sentence in Australia.

This was some comfort for Hicks, but observers noted that the process was still fundamentally flawed. Australian lawyer Lex Lasry told the Sydney Morning Herald that the court looked “pretty dysfunctional.” He was not impressed when the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, eliminated two of Hicks’ three lawyers, excluding one, Joshua Dratel, after he refused to agree in advance to court procedures that had not been drawn up, and he complained that when Hicks’ remaining lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori, objected that Kohlmann was not sufficiently impartial, he “sat in judgment of himself” and “solemnly found that there were no grounds to find he was not impartial.”

For further information about how Hicks’ release came about as part of a deal arranged between Vice President Dick Cheney and Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard, see “The politics of David Hicks’ release from Guantánamo confirmed: plea bargain arranged between Cheney and Howard,” and for further information about the corrupt political maneuvering in the Military Commissions, see, ““The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials.”

After his release, Hicks told his story in depth in his book, Guantánamo: My Journey, published in October 2010. For an excerpt, see “Former Guantánamo Prisoner David Hicks Describes His First Two Weeks at Camp X-Ray,: and also see “Empathy and Self-Reflection: An Extraordinary Article by Jason Leopold About His Friendship with Former Guantánamo Prisoner David Hicks,” and “Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner David Hicks Gives His First Interview — To Jason Leopold of Truthout.”

Gholam Ruhani (ISN 3, Afghanistan) Released December 2007

Gholam Ruhani, who was 26 years old at the time of his capture, was seized in December 2001 with Abdul-Haq Wasiq (ISN 4, still held), the Taliban’s deputy minister of intelligence, and one of the few senior Taliban figures captured by the Americans, in a potentially perilous Special Forces operation in Ghazni, south of Kabul, as I explained at the time of his release, also drawing on an account I gave in Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files. At the time, Ghazni was a Taliban stronghold, but when the Special Forces received a tip-off that a local warlord had arranged a meeting with Qari Amadullah, the Taliban’s minister of intelligence, in which, it was suggested, Amadullah might provide information that would lead to the capture of Osama bin Laden, their commander, Gary Berntsen approved the mission.

In the end, Amadullah did not turn up, and clearly had no intention of doing so. Safely ensconced in Pakistan, after escaping from Afghanistan, he spoke to a journalist in late December, interrupting the interview to take a phone call, and then declaring, “I am personally requested by Mullah Omar and Sheikh Osama to go to Uruzgan and take the command of new guerrilla war preparations, which will start as soon as possible, and you will hear the news in papers and on BBC.”

Unsurprisingly, having effectively given US forces his itinerary as a result of this loose talk, he was killed in a US air strike a few days later. In the same interview, however, he also spoke about Abdul-Haq Wasiq. He said that Mullah Omar, who, he claimed, was living in a safe place in the mountains north of Kandahar, had asked him to visit, but he had been unable to do so, “because a lot of people know me, and I am frightened they will capture me somewhere on the road. So I sent my assistant Mullah Abdul-Haq Wasiq to Kandahar. Unfortunately he was captured by American agents in Ghazni.”

This suggests that Wasiq either made his own negotiations with the Americans in Ghazni, or was invited and then betrayed by the local warlord, because after the meeting he was duly arrested, along with Gholam Ruhani, by the Special Forces operatives, who duly declared that they were “the number two and three in Taliban intel.”

In Guantánamo, Wasiq has been coy about his role, claiming that he was forced to join the Taliban, and that he sometimes acted as the deputy minister of intelligence, but only to combat “thieves and bribes.” This did not convince his tribunal, who greeted him with the words, “Good afternoon, Mr. Minister. Seldom before have we had someone of such prestige and responsibility.” Ruhani, however, was adamant that he was not the “number three in Taliban intel.” He said that he was a Taliban conscript, who fulfilled his duties in a clerical capacity to avoid being sent to the front lines, and explained that he was asked to attend the meeting between the Taliban and the Americans because he had learned a little English while studying electronics manuals in a store run by his elderly father. “I turned over my pistol and ammunition to the American, as an act of faith, because it was a friendly meeting,” he said. “I expected to leave the meeting and return to my life, my shop and my family. Instead, I was arrested.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Ruhani was a “Recommendation for Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),” dated January 14, 2007, in which it was noted that he was born in 1975 and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that, according to his own account, his family owned an electrical store in Ghazni, where he attended school until, fearing that he would be drafted by the Communist government, his parents sent him, via a family friend, to Iran, where he worked in a textile factory for two and a half years, and only returned to Afghanistan “sometime after 1992, while President Burhanuddin Rabbani was in office.” He then “worked in his father’s store stocking shelves and cleaning” until 1996, when the Taliban “gained control of Kabul” and “began conscripting people.”

He then “took a job with the Ministry of Intelligence because he did not want to go to war,” and “spent approximately two years working with a thirteen or fourteen-man security detail in Kabul,” and also “served as a driver for the group leader, Muhammad Nabi Majrooh,” described as “the Director of the Operations Department who helped [him] get the job.” Majrooh later sacked him (for unspecified reasons), and was then dismissed himself, “because the Taliban suspected he was collaborating.with the Northern Alliance,” but Ruhani “maintained employment at the security office,” when a man named Asim took over. Throughout this period, he added, “he did not receive any formal weapons training, but did carry a pistol for work.”

In describing the circumstances of his capture, it was noted that, the day before the Northern Alliance captured Kabul in November 2001, he “left Kabul for Ghazni, where he continued working at his father’s store.” It was then, he said, that an acquaintance named Nanwai “contacted [him] stating he needed an English translator for a meeting.” Ruhani “agreed to accompany Nanwai to the meeting, which occurred at Haji Ghulan Muhammad Hotak’s house in Ghazni.” In a footnote, the Task Force explained that Hotak was “assessed to be a high-level Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) commander in the Wardak province, and a major narcotics trafficker and weapons facilitator,” who was seized and held in Bagram, where he was designated ISN 1674, and was released on October 14, 2006.

At the meeting, Hotak made a phone call and told Ruhani to ask the unidentified person who answered when he was coming to Ghazni. He was told that it would be in two or three days, and so, three days later, on December 10, 2001, “Nanwai and Hotak requested [Ruhani] attend another meeting at a school,” at which Abdul-Haq Wasiq was present, and Hotak “requested [Ruhani] to act as an interpreter between [Wasiq], Hotak, and the ‘Americans.’” They then drove from the school “to where the ‘Americans’ were waiting,” but Ruhani “claimed he could not understand them because they spoke ‘British English,’” and another translator took over. “The purpose of this meeting,” Ruhani stated, “was to identify the location of Mullah Muhammad Omar,” the leader of the Taliban.

Despite this, at some point during the meeting, “one of the ‘Americans’ exited the house, reentered with American soldiers,and arrested all of the Afghans,” who were then taken to the US prison at Bagram airbase. Ruhani was on the first flight into Guantánamo on January 11, 2002 (the day the prison opened), on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Four members of a thirteen or fourteen-man Taliban unit who were his superiors in Kabul [and] Weapons security and duties of the Taliban team in Kabul.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he “downplay[ed] his position and authority in the Taliban Intelligence organisation,” alleging that Qari Ahmadullah, the Taliban Chief of Intelligence, was his brother-in-law, and that Muhammad Nabi Majrooh was Qari Ahmadullah’s brother.” Even if true, this would not preclude the possibility that he played only a minor role in the Taliban’s intelligence operations in Kabul, and although an unidentified “sensitive contact” identified him “as Majrooh’s deputy in 2001,” there is no way of knowing if there was any truth to this allegation.

Primarily, the Task Force seemed to regard him with some wariness because of his alleged family associations, claiming that Qari Ahmadullah did not die in December 2001, and, on June 7, 2003, “led a group of 36 extremists in a fatal bomb attack against a bus carrying German Intemational Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Kabul,” and that, in September 2006, Muhammad Nabi Majrooh, “along with two Taliban military commanders, planned to conduct suicide attacks throughout Afghanistan.” Again, although there were footnotes referring to specific reports that dealt with these claims, they have not been independently verified, and, in any case, they serve only to suggest that Ruhani was suspicious because his sister married Qari Ahmadullah.

In assessing him, the Task Force concluded that he was “of medium intelligence value,” and posed “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” because he “ha[d] familial ties to active Anti-Coalition Militia (ACM) entities, and would probably join ACM groups dedicated to attacking US and coalition forces in Afghanistan if released.” He was also “assessed as a medium threat from a detention perspective,” whose “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile toward the guard force and staff,” although, on September 1, 2005, he “damaged government property by stuffing pieces of his flip flops into his sink.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of Guantánamo, updating a previous recommendation for his continued detention (dated January 21, 2006), recommended him for transfer to ongoing custody in Afghanistan, in a wing of the main prison in Kabul, Pol-i-Charki, that was refurbished by the Americans, and was used to hold prisoners returned from Guantánamo from April 2007 onwards.

Abdallah Al Matrafi (ISN 5, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2007

A father of three, Abdallah al-Matrafi (also identified as Abdul Aziz 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 the charity Al-Wafa, as I explained at the time of his release, also drawing on an account in Chapter 16 of The Guantánamo Files. At the time of his release, he was presumably aware that most of the dozens of other prisoners 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 more significant prisoner, against whom was stacked an array of allegations of his involvement with both the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

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-Qaida 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-Qaida.”

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-Qaida, “explaining that Al-Qaida 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-Qaida.”

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 prisoners in Guantánamo who had worked for Al-Wafa backed up his statements. Ayman Batarfi (ISN 627, released December 2009), 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 (ISN 705, released in July 2008), reinforced al-Matrafi’s claim that the organization was regarded with suspicion by Al-Qaida because of its Saudi links.

Batarfi may, in fact, be the alleged “Al-Qaida 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 [the main training camp for Arabs in Afghanistan] and try to send them back to Saudi Arabia.”

None of this helped him, however, and what probably counted against him more than anything else was the apparent 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-Qaida. “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.”

Nothing more has been heard of al-Matrafi since his release, but as I explained when he was repatriated, “Time alone will tell what the Saudi government makes of [Abdul Aziz] 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.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Matrafi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated October 25, 2007, in which it was noted that he was born in July 1964, and was “in overall good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, between 1982 and 1984, “he served as a tank mechanic in the Saudi Arabian Army, achieving the rank of sergeant,” and then traveled to Afghanistan to participate in the resistance to the Soviet occupation, described as “the Soviet Jihad.” He was apparently there for 18 months,  and met Osama bin Laden and other mujahideen who were later involved in Al-Qaida.

From 1993 until 1997, he served as “the local director in Mecca for the High Commission for Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” identified as “probably” referring to the Saudi High Commission for Relief, and further identified as “an NIPF Priority 2B TSE,” defined as “having available resources and being in a position to provide financial support to terrorist organizations willing to attack US persons or interests, or provide witting operational support to Priority 2B terrorist groups.”

It was also noted that he “returned to Afghanistan sometime between April 2000 and March 2001,” after meeting with “the founder of Al-Wafa, Shaykh Abdallah al-Rayis,” who asked him to “set up offices and religious institutes in Afghanistan.” Al-Matrafi subsequently “met with the Afghan Minister of Education, Emir Khan Motaqi, who advised [him] on appropriate locations for the religious institutes,” and “then returned to Saudi Arabia to discuss his findings with Shaykh al-Rayis.” On returning to Afghanistan, he established Al-Wafa offices in Kandahar, Kabul, Herat, and Karachi.

So far, there were no claims that Al-Wafa had any connection with Al-Qaida, although the Task Force also alleged that, during Ramadan in 2000, he met with Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, a religious scholar (who, later, was ferociously opposed to the 9/11 attacks), who apparently took him to meet Osama bin Laden “to discuss the Al-Wafa offices in Afghanistan, and the differences between the ideologies of Al-Qaida and Al-Wafa.” According to the Task Force, at the end of the meeting, bin Laden gave him a letter authorizing Abu Hafs to assist him in establishing additional al-Wafa offices in Afghanistan. As a result, it was claimed, he “submitted the appropriate papers through the office of the Taliban Supreme Commander, Mullah Omar,” and, “[i]n the spring of 2001, an Al-Wafa office opened in Kabul,” although, in the account above, it seemed that al-Matrafi managed to open offices without any assistance whatsoever from bin Laden.

A this point, the allegations take a darker turn. After claiming that, in “late spring of 2001,” al-Matrafi was approached “regarding providing funding for Taliban Ministry of Communication and Electricity projects in Afghanistan” by the Pakistani nuclear scientist and Islamic scholar Dr. Bashir Ud-Din Mahmud (aka Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood), a co-founder of the Pakistani charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (“Reconstruction for the Islamic Community”), and Shaykh al-Farouq (aka Suheil al-Farouq), the head of the UTN office in Kabul, it was claimed that, in approximately July 2001, he “again met with UBL to discuss Al-Qaida and Al-Wafa issues, and, just before September 11, 2001, “met with Al-Qaida biological and chemical expert Yazid Sufaat and directed him to the Al-Wafa office in Pakistan.”

These are severe allegations, but it has never been established that there was actually any truth to them, given the doubts expressed in the accounts related before the WikiLeaks files were released, and nor has it been established that there is any truth to an additional claim that, after 9/11, he “facilitated the movement of Al-Qaida operatives into Afghanistan.” What is clear is that, in early December 2001, he “crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan with the help of his translator Muhammad Ajmal,” who “convinced Pakistani customs officials that [he] was ill and needed immediate medical attention,” and who then took him to a Lashkar-e-Tayyiba office in Lahore. There, he “provided [him] with an escort in order to obtain a visa and the necessary exit paperwork before taking [him] to the airport.”

However, Pakistani police arrested al-Matrafi at Lahore airport on December 11, 2001, and he was transferred to US custody on December 29, 2001. He apparently reported that, when he was seized, he had various items in his possession, including $1,000, although the Task Force noted that none of the items were held by JTF-GTMO. He was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002 to “provide information on the following: The financing of Al-Qaida operations in Bosnia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan using Al-Wafa as a front operation [and] Key Al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he had been “truthful about many of his activities as a director of Al-Wafa,” but claimed that “he omit[ted] other details and attempt[ed] to downplay his associations with and support to Al-Qaida by stating that all of his support went to the Taliban or for the betterment of the Afghan people.” It was also noted, as he said repeatedly and was noted elsewhere, that he “claimed that he did not agree with [Osama bin Laden] and Al-Qaida’s goals and that Al-Qaida did not trust Al-Wafa.”

In a detailed analysis, it was claimed, with reference to the chemical weapons claims mentioned above, that “he attempted to procure chemical warfare weapons for use against US and Coalition forces and was involved in Al-Qaida’s attempts to develop or procure Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and that he “authorized Al-Wafa to spend $5000 US to assist Al-Qaida anthrax researcher, Yazid Sufaat, purchase laboratory equipment.” It is not certain where these claims came from, but it is alarming to realize that one source, mentioned here, may have been Jamal Mar’i (ISN 577, released December 2009), a Yemeni who worked for Al-Wafa in Karachi, who was kidnapped from his home on September 23, 2001 and rendered to a secret prison in Jordan before ending up in Guantánamo, or, even more worryingly, Jamil Qasim, who was never even sent to Guantánamo.

Ayman Batarfi (ISN 627, also released in December 2009) was a Yemeni doctor,  identified by Mar’i as “Sufaat’s associate,” although that may not have been a reliable claim, given the circumstances of Mari’s detention. Mar’i also said that Batarfi “gave Sufaat the telephone number for Jamil Qasim who Sufaat was to contact for funding assistance,” and who “was a micro-biology student and served as a junior medical advisor for Al-Wafa in the Karachi office along with [Mar'i] and Abu Ahmad (aka Imran Uways).” Qasim, also identified as Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, was reportedly flown to Amman, to the same secret prison that Jamal Mar’i was sent to, but he never resurfaced. In 2007, Amnesty International told the Washington Post it had “asked the Jordanian government for information on his whereabouts but ha[d] not received an answer.”

Other unsubstantiated claims about al-Matrafi were that he “attempted to purchase a computerized laser-guided missile system costing $500,000 US,” in which the missiles “would contain a chemical substance, have a range of 1,500 kilometers, and have a destruction radius of 1,500 square meters” (which sounds like a paranoid fantasy, rather than anything real), and there were also suspicions that, because he “admitted he met with Dr. Bashir Ud-Din Mahmud,” it was possible he “was involved in attempting to procure a nuclear weapon for Al-Qaida.”

This was in spite of the fact that, although he was “assessed to be a supporter” of the Al-Qaida network, he was “not assessed to be a member of Al-Qaida,” and, more importantly, it contradicted a statement by the “high-value detainee” Walid bin Attash (ISN 10014, still held), who “commented that the Al-Wafa NGO disagreed with Al-Qaida’s opposition to the Saudi government and actively attempted to undermine Al-Qaida’s recruiting and training programs in Afghanistan prior to 11 September 2001,” and another statement by Humud al-Jadani (ISN 230, released July 2007), who “reported that [al-Matrafi] disagreed with the message [Osama bin Laden] was preaching to the mujahideen concerning martyrdom.” Al-Jadani said that al-Matrafi “felt that martyrdom was attained by fighting to the last breath, whereas [bin Laden] was preaching suicide missions.” He added that bin Laden “became upset and threatened [al-Matrafi]’s life, ordering [him] never to go near any of the Al-Qaida guesthouses again and never talk again to the mujahideen about martyrdom.”

Whle the US allegations against al-Matrafi were, then, largely full of holes, it was of interest that the Mabahith (the Saudi intelligence service) “provided information on 37 detainees, in order of precedence, whom they designated as being of high priority interest,” and that al-Matrafi “was the 13th name on that list,” because the Mabahith had previously had him “under surveillance for recruiting activities.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of high intelligence value,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies,” and it was also claimed that he was “a high threat from a detention perspective,” even though his “overall behavior ha[d] been mostly compliant and rarely hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended his continued detention, updating a similar recommendation on September 9, 2006. Nevertheless, he was released just two months after this updated recommendation, for reasons that have never been explained, and, on his return, was presumably put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul (ISN 8, Afghanistan) Released December 2007

As I explained in a footnote to Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, Rasoul, who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, was seized in a car with two Taliban commanders, Mullah Norullah Noori (ISN 6, still held) and Mullah Mohammed Fazil (ISN 7, still held) after the fall of the city of Kunduz, the last Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan, in November 2001. In Guantánamo, he claimed that he was a Taliban recruit, who was seriously wounded in 1997, and added that he rejoined the Taliban in 1999 “to gain better medical attention,” and went to Kunduz to fight the Northern Alliance in September 2001.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Rasoul was a “Recommendation for Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),” dated December 25, 2006, in which he was identified as Abdullah Gulam Rasoul, and it was noted that he was born in 1973, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that he was from a village in Helmand province, that he claimed “he only attended two years of school during his adolescence,” and that he also claimed “he never received any formal military training.” He also claimed, as he later did in his tribunal at Guantánamo, that he “answered the call to jihad twice, once in 1997 and the second time in 1999.”

He further explained that, on the first occasion, he “decided to travel to Kabul, AF, to join the Taliban,” when he “was issued an AK-47 while staying at a compound that housed 15 to 20 people,” but, after just a month, “was seriously wounded after a bombing raid by Massoud” (Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated two days before the 9/11 attacks), and was then held in hospital “for approximately seven or eight months.”

In 1999, when he rejoined the Taliban in Kandahar, he claimed “he reacquired an AK-47 for his personal use,” and said he stayed in a compound known as Kuli Urdo, which “housed military personnel and several tanks,” although he added that he “would spend a few days at the compound and a few days at home.” He also said that, while there, he “recalled seeing” Mullah Norullah Noori (identified as Sham Ul-Haq Noorullah), and another unidentified man named Allah Uddin.

After traveling to Kunduz in September 2001 “to join Taliban soldiers in the fight against the NA” (although he claimed “he never saw combat”), he said he “recalled seeing his friends from Kuli Urdo, Mullah Mohammed Fazil (identified as Mohammed Fazl), and two other men, Dadi Allah, and Mullah Beradar.” He also pointed out that, of the 5,000 Taliban in Kunduz, all “were under the command of [Fazil], Allah, and Beradar.”

Describing the circumstances of his capture, the Task Force claimed that, on November 28, 2001, he and Noori and Fazil (both described as “Taliban leaders”) and two other unidentified men “turned themselves over to General Dostum,” although it seems more likely that, as he explained on other occasions, they were all seized while traveling together in a car. Dostum then “moved the group to Mazar-e-Sharif,” and, in early December 2001, took Rasoul, Noori and Fazil to his prison at Sheberghan. After being transferred to US custody, they were held on two US ships — the USS Peleliu and the USS Bataan — and were then taken to Bagram. Rasoul was on the first flight into Guantánamo, when the prison opened on January 11, 2002, and the spurious reason given for his transfer was to “provide information on the following: Extensive information on Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Fazl.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that his “true position and standing within the Taliban ranks ha[d] not been clearly determined,” because he “continue[d] to identify himself as being a mere foot soldier,” even though he “identified [Fazil, Noori], Mullah Beradar, Mullah Dadullah-Lang, and Mullah Quyem (NFI) as friends and associates.” Providing a variation on his capture story, the Task Force noted that it was “highly doubtful that the detainee, who was allegedly standing with other Taliban soldiers along a roadside, would be singularly selected by General Dostum’s soldiers to join [Noori] and [Fazil] in the vehicle they were secured in, unless [he] was as significant as his fellow captives.”

The Task Force also picked up on the fact that Fazil was the “Taliban Army Chief of Staff,” and that Noori was the “Governor of Balkh Province,” and noted that Rasoul “was placed in a house with the high-ranking government officials, while the other two foot soldiers were sent to Qala-i-Janghi prison,” where hundreds of Taliban soldiers were sent after surrendering, and where a notorious massacre took place. An analyst noted that, although Rasoul claimed it was “normal that low ranking people ride in cars with high-ranking commanders,” he “stayed with the high-ranking officials at a separate facility” while “about 500 of [Fazil's] troops went to the Qala-i-Janghi prison.”

There were other, idiotic claims — that Rasoul “carried three Casio watches on his person at the time of capture,” and that two were the model F-91W, which was “a type of watch used in improvised explosive devices (IEDs)” — but when it came to understanding Rasoul’s significance, the fact that he “admitted being a bodyguard to [Fazil],” and that Fazil said that he “performed duties as a bodyguard, driver, and administrative assistant” (even though he also described his duties as being “more like a foot soldier”) ought to have made it clear that he was of some significance, although instead the decision was made to release him.

The Task Force concluded that he was “of medium intelligence value,” and that he posed “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was also “assessed to be a low threat from a detention perspective,” whose “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and rarely hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, as a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation for “Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD) with Transfer Language” (dated December 24, 2005), recommended him for transfer out of DoD control, although he was not released for another year.

After his release, as I explained in an article for the Guardian, “Who are ‘the worst of the worst’?,” he apparently resurfaced as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a Taliban leader responsible for roadside bomb attacks against British forces, and, by March 2010, had apparently risen through the ranks to become Mullah Omar’s top deputy, after the capture of Mullah Berader (aka Barader). Also known as Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, a detailed profile of him was published in the Christian Science Monitor in April 2010. He was also profiled in Newsweek in May 2011.

Fahed Mohamed Al Qahtani (ISN 13, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2007

Fahed al-Qahtani, who was just 19 at the time of his capture, had been recruited for jihad in his home country, as I explained in an article at the time of his release, drawing on an account in a footnote to Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files. In Guantánamo, he explained that he had also been aided in his travel by a facilitator, but also said, “I went for jihad to Afghanistan, but when I got there I changed my mind. I saw some things there that were against my religion … Things like worshipping a cemetery where people have died. That has nothing to do with our religion, worshipping graves.” Refuting allegations that he attended Al-Farouq, the main camp for Arab recruits, and that Osama bin Laden visited while he was there, he insisted that he spent most of his time in a house in Kabul that was “a cooking facility for the [Taliban] front line,” and then fled with others to Kunduz, the last Taliban bastion in the north, “until we were surrounded and there was an agreement to have all the Arabs delivered to Mazar-e-Sharif.”

Delivered, with several hundred others, to Qala-i-Janghi, a nearby fort, he survived a US-led massacre, which took place after some of the prisoners started an uprising, by somehow escaping from the fort without being killed. “I was present but did not participate in the fighting,” he explained. “I escaped during the fighting and turned myself in one day after. I went to the market to turn myself in. I met people in the market who were in the army of [General] Dostum [one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance]. That is where I was when I was recaptured … Dostum sold me to the Americans … They put me in jail and I was tortured by Afghans and made to say things. I was moved to Kandahar. When I got to Cuba I told the interrogators the real story.” Despite apparently telling the truth, the most extraordinary piece of “evidence” against al-Qahtani emerged in Guantánamo, when it was shamelessly alleged that he “admitted under duress that he was an Al-Qaida [sic] and had met Osama bin Laden.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Qahtani was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated May 26, 2006, in which he was identified as Fahd Nasir Muhammad al-Oahtani, and it was noted that he was born in January 1982, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he dropped out of high school, and, on a trip to Mecca, “met a Yemeni named Abu al-Maali (variant: Ma’ali) who discussed with him the uprising in Palestine,” and told him “he should travel to Afghanistan (AF) for training and then return to Saudi Arabia for subsequent missions in Palestine.” Al-Maali told al-Qahtani “he would arrange for passports, visas and travel arrangements,” and promised he would meet him in Afghanistan “at a later date.” Al-Qahtani then asked three friends to accompany him, and, although they were reportedly unwilling, al-Maali persuaded them as well.

Traveling to Kandahar via Karachi and Quetta, al-Qahtani and his friends “were taken to the Arab guesthouse near the Hajji Habash Mosque.” He said he “spent approximately one week in the guesthouse and was told to hand over his documents for safekeeping while he was training,” although he “fell ill just prior to departing for the Al-Farouq training camp,” and “spent three months in a clinic recovering from malaria.”

When he recovered, he was sent to Al-Farouq, and “after he completed basic training, he returned to the guesthouse in Kandahar and was told he could return to Saudi Arabia or stay at the house.” He “opted to stay at the house, wait for Abu [al-]Maali to arrive, and obtain money for his return trip,” but al-Maali obviously didn’t arrive, because, in approximately April 2001, al-Qahtani left the Kandahar guesthouse and traveled to Kabul, and then Kunduz, staying in Taliban guesthouses, and in Kunduz, where the house was a staging area for Taliban fighters traveling to the front lines and for weaponry,” he apparently “made several trips to Takhar province,” and “continued to travel between the two locations until approximately mid-November 2001, when fighters on the front lines, led by [a man named] Gharib, retreated to the Kunduz guesthouse.”

When General Dostum’s Northern Alliance forces surrounded Kunduz, a deal was arranged whereby fighters were told that, if they surrendered, they would be transported to Kandahar. Al-Qahtani and others and were loaded onto trucks, but, instead of being disarmed, taken to Kandahar and freed, as they expected, they were taken to Mazar-e-Sharif, and imprisoned in the Qala-i-Janghi fort. There, his  group “was put in the fortress basement,” and the next day he “was taken out, beaten, and robbed.” Then, when he “was being moved to the courtyard, he heard an explosion and fighting broke out.” This, as noted above, was an uprising by some of the prisoners, who feared they were about to be shot, but it was savagely put down in what has become known as the Qala-i-Janghi massacre.

Al-Qahtani, however, was fortunate not be killed, as he later explained in his tribunal at Guantánamo. As he said, he “took cover behind some trees and remained there until nightfall when he escaped the fortress with fifteen other fighters.” They then split up and he traveled with two of the men to a market near Mazar-e-Sharif, where he “was shot and captured by Northern Alliance forces,” and claimed “to have been taken to a house and tortured for two days before being taken to another house where he was tortured into admitting he was Al-Qaida,” and then “taken to a third house for one day” until he was “transferred to a hospital where he was briefly treated.”

After being treated, he “was taken to a fourth house where he was detained with the others he had escaped Qala-i-Janghi with and held until the end of Ramadan,” and was then turned over to US forces. He recalled “being one of the first to arrive at the Kandahar Detention Facility,” which opened on December 28, 2001, and he was also on the first flight into Guantánamo on January 11 2002, when the spurious reason given for his transfer was to “provide information on the following: Al-Farouq training camp.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that, although he “initially admitted attending Al-Farouq,” he had “since retracted this claim stating he received training while in a guesthouse on the front lines.” Nevertheless, the Task Force insisted on assessing him as “a probable member of Al-Qaida who traveled to Afghanistan to receive basic, and possibly advanced, militant training,” who “resided in numerous Al-Qaida and Taliban guesthouses and attended at least one Al-Qaida training camp.”

This was a reference to Al-Farouq, but it was noticeable that, beyond his own single confession, later retracted, the only witness who placed him at Al-Farouq was Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held), the most notorious torture victim at Guantánamo, whose testimony is therefore extremely unreliable. Al-Qahtani, identified as “Al-Qaida member Maad al-Qahtani,” apparently “stated that he attended basic training at Al-Farouq with detainee and graduated in mid-February 2001,” and added that “[t]hey also attended advanced training together at Tarnak Farms, from March to mid-April 2001.”

It was also noted that Mohammed al-Qahtani “later stated he had not attended advanced training with detainee and only went to basic training with [him],” but although an analyst noted that, “[s]tarting in winter 2002/2003, [he] began retracting statements,” it was also noted that, “based on corroborating information it is believed that [his] initial admissions were the truth,” and that, as a result, it was “assessed that his identification of detainee as an advanced training classmate is factual, not the mistake [he] would like us to believe.”

Another unreliable claim made by Mohammed al-Qahtani, mentioned in Fahed al-Qahtani’s file, was that, “when questioned whether any of his training camp classmates volunteered for or were asked about their willingness to participate in martyrdom missions,” he stated,”they all were; otherwise they would not have traveled to Afghanistan for jihad,” even though there is no indication that there is any truth to this claim, as many of those who traveled for jihad — the majority, I believe — traveled to take part in the military conflict with the Northern Alliance, and not to take part in martyrdom missions.

In conclusion, the Task Force concluded that he was “of medium intelligence value,” and that he posed “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “assessed as a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been non-compliant and hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated June 11, 2004), recommended him for continued detention, but added, crucially, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to [al-Qahtani] and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO),” although it took another 14 months for that agreement to be negotiated, and he was then put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Majid Al Joudi (ISN 25, Saudi Arabia) Released February 2007

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (8) – Captured in Afghanistan,” in which I drew partly on a brief account in Chapter 19 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Majid al-Joudi, who was 34 years old at the time of his capture, was a long-term hunger striker. In my book, I explained that the lawyer Julia Tarver Mason, who represented ten Saudi prisoners, visited Guantánamo in October 2005 and noted that three of her clients — Majid al-Joudi, as well as Abdul Rahman Shalabi and Yousef al-Shehri — reported to her the brutal manner in which they were being force-fed, because they were taking part in the prison-wide hunger strike that began that summer.

They said that the feeding tubes, which were “the thickness of a finger,” were regarded as objects of torture. She reported that they were forcibly shoved up the prisoners’ noses without anaesthetic or sedatives being provided, and that this resulted in prisoners “vomiting up substantial amounts of blood,” but added that when they did so, “the soldiers mocked and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like ‘look what your religion has brought you.’” She also noted the prisoners’ claims that they “were verbally abused and insulted and were restrained from head to toe” while the feeding took place, with “shackles or other restraints on their arms, legs, waist, chest, knees, and head,” that attempts to give them intravenous medication were “often quite painful … as inexperienced medical professionals seemed incapable of locating appropriate veins,” and, most shockingly, that, while doctors, including the head of the hospital, were watching, “the guards took tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization whatsoever, reinserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were reinserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees remaining on the tubes.”

However, at the time I wrote The Guantánamo Files, I knew nothing else about al-Joudi’s story, as the documents relating to his case were not released by the Pentagon until September 2007. In his one and only appearance at any of the hearings, in November 2006, al-Joudi said that, in October 2001, he was invited to join the humanitarian aid effort in Afghanistan that followed the US-led invasion of October 2001, and that he subsequently took a break from his work — in two family-run fabric stores — and traveled to Afghanistan in mid-November to work for a month for the charity Al-Wafa. He added that, over a two-week period, he distributed food and clothing to villages near Kandahar until he was wounded in the leg. According to the allegation in his last Unclassified Summary of Evidence, he “stated he was hit by a car and taken to a hospital that was taken over by Al-Qaida,” and that he told the men, who “initially thought he was mujahideen and was in Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban,” that “he was volunteering with Al-Wafa.”

As I explained in relation to Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi (ISN 5, above), working for Al-Wafa was enough to be regarded as a terrorist in Guantánamo, where its legitimate humanitarian aid work was ignored. In al-Joudi’s case, the US authorities insisted, despite his protests to the contrary, that documents in his possession when he was captured suggested “he was closely involved with Al-Qaida and that he was either a trainer or a trainee on an anti-surveillance course” — even though this was highly improbable, if not impossible, if he had arrived in Afghanistan just a month before he was seized.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Joudi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated September 28, 2006, in which he was identified as Majid Abdallah al-Judi and Majeed Abdallah, and it was noted that he was born in 1967, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, according to his own account (largely mirroring what I wrote in my online chapter), he was “a distant cousin of King Abdullah Hussein, the current ruler of Jordan,” although in Mecca, where his family lived, he began working in the family’s clothing store, run by his brother, after leaving school, until, one day in approximately October 2001, “the director of the Al-Wafa branch office in Mecca, Muhammad Abdallah Hasan, visited [his] store on several occasions to discuss volunteering in Afghanistan.”

On November 2, 2001, al-Joudi said, he “went to the Al-Wafa office in Mecca and entered into an agreement to volunteer to work for Al-Wafa in Afghanistan (AF) only during Ramadan 2001.” He was provided with “an airline ticket and $2,000 USD,” and left Saudi Arabia soon afterwards, traveling to Kandahar, where the local office manager met him, and he was provided with a room in a house. Two days after his arrival, he said, he and two other Saudi nationals “started delivering food to surrounding villages,” but, around December 1, 2001, when he was returning to the office, after calling his family from a phone booth, “a car struck him as he was crossing a street,” and he “was rendered unconscious and taken to a nearby hospital,” the Mirwais Hospital (aka the Chinese Hospital), where he was taken in “with a broken leg and facial injuries.”

He stated that, “when he awoke, he learned that the hospital had been taken over by members of Al-Qaida,” and that there were “eight armed individuals, using the hospital as a safe haven and barricading themselves on the second floor.” He added that some of them “strapped explosives to their bodies, threatening to blow themselves up if attacked,” although they were killed after a siege, and it was noted that al-Joudi’s file listed his date of capture as December 15, 2001, “when coalition forces removed [him] from the hospital.” He was sent to Guantánamo on January 21, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: The Al-Wafa office in Kandahar.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force stated bluntly that his account was “assessed to be false,” because he had “provided fictitious names for Al-Wafa employees, and detained Al-Wafa employees [did] not recognize [him],” and also because his “claimed arrival date at the Kandahar Al- Wafa office [was] at least a month later than the period Al-Wafa reportedly closed the office.” It was therefore claimed that his “associations with Al-Wafa [were] assessed to be a cover story to mask his true activities and associations including his membership in Al-Qaida.”

It was claimed that, due to his “evasiveness, non-cooperation, false cover story … pocket litter, and circumstances of capture,” he was “assessed to be a member of Al-Qaida defending Kandahar who was injured during coalition attacks and hospitalized where he was subsequently captured.” His pocket litter, which he denied belonged to him, apparently included “a handwritten page on which he vowed to remain a jihadist as long as he was alive,” and “two after-action reports detailing the results of surveillance exercises,” which were assessed as having been conducted at the Kandahar Airport Training Camp, and there were also claims that his name was found on incriminating documents recovered from computers seized in house raids involving Al-Qaida members, although there was no direct testimony from any other prisoner to incriminate him.

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “assessed to be a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and often hostile to the guard force and staff,” although there was no mention whatsoever of him being a long-term hunger striker. As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a previous recommendation for his continued detention (dated November 1, 2005), repeated that recommendation, but added, crucially, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to [al-Joudi] and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).”

After his release, and after he had been put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program, the Pentagon claimed that al-Joudi became involved in unspecified terrorist activities. In May 2009, the Pentagon produced a fact sheet, “Former Guantánamo Detainee Terrorism Trends” (PDF), in which it was claimed that he had been involved in “Terrorist facilitation,” and, moreover, that his involvement was “confirmed” rather than “suspected.” However, no further information has been provided to justify this claim.

Zayd Al Husayn Al Ghamdi (ISN 50, Saudi Arabia) Released November 2007

Zayd al-Husayn al-Ghamdi, as I explained at the time of his release (and also in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (9) – Seized in Pakistan (Part One)“), who was 27 years old at the time of his capture, was seized in Afghanistan in December 2001, although his family did not even know he was in Guantánamo until 2006, because the US authorities had described him as a Jordanian. In Guantánamo, it was noted that he traveled to Afghanistan in July 2001, and he was declared an “enemy combatant” after his tribunal in October 2004 on the basis of three particularly thin allegations: that he was a member of the Saudi charity Al-Wafa, that he “carried a weapon in Afghanistan,” and that he was “present and wounded during military operations at Khost” in December 2001.

These allegations were augmented in the years that followed, but nothing about these additional claims suggests that they were reliable. The authorities alleged that he “was identified” as the “occasional leader” of a group of fighters in the northern city of Taloqan, but ignored another narrative that could be pieced together from other statements: that al-Ghamdi reported that he left home “to provide help for the refugees in Afghanistan,” that he worked for Al-Wafa as a laborer in Kabul, and that he traveled to Taloqan because, after approaching Taliban representatives in Kabul to find out “places needing assistance with orphans,” he had been told that Taloqan was a suitable area.

The additional information compiled by the authorities also provided an explanation of the circumstances of his capture, which contradicted the claim that he was “wounded during military operations.” After fleeing to Khost, al-Ghamdi said that he “stopped in the first Taliban center he came to,” which was subsequently bombed. Injured and “rendered unconscious,” he awoke in a hospital in Miram Shah, in Pakistan, where he was arrested and transferred to US custody.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Ghamdi was a “Recommendation for Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),” dated December 5, 2005, in which he was also identified as Zayed M. al-Hussain, Zaid Muhammad Sa’ad al-Husayn, Zayed Mohammed Saad al-Hussain, and Zayid al-Ghamzi, and it was noted that he was born in 1974, and was “in good health,” although he had “a history of right tibia fracture with surgical intervention prior to detention.” It was also noted that he “went on hunger strike in August 2005,” and had been “evaluated by behavioral health for cluster personality traits.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force failed to resolve the confusion about his nationality, noting that, although he “stated he was born in Amman, JO, because his Saudi parents were visiting Jordan at the time his mother went into labor,” and that the family “returned to Saudi Arabia within a month of [his] birth,” an analyst noted that a “visiting Saudi delegation did not identify him as a citizen during a July 2002 visit” (although the Jordanian authorities, who met with him, “did not identify him as a citizen” either).

According to al-Ghamdi’s account, he left university in Jeddah after one semester in order to work as an auto mechanic, and “was inspired to go to Afghanistan (AF) to help destitute immigrants” after reading a flyer issued by the Al-Haramain Intemational Foundation.” After obtaining a visa for Pakistan, he flew to Karachi, and then traveled to Kabul via Quetta, where, he said, “he spent three weeks at a religious institution, the Center for the Preservation of Islamic Virtue in Kabul.” There, Taliban representatives told him “where in Afghanistan he could assist orphans.”

He then “traveled to the first of these places,” the Bamiyan region, “where he remained for three months at Taliban centers,” and “reportedly spent two to three months teaching Shia orphans the Koran and attempting to convert them to Sunni Islam.” In addition, “he claimed to have bought the children food and clothing and helped the community at large by digging wells and helping to repair walls.” From Bamiyan, he said, he traveled to the Pul-e-Khumri region in northern Afghanistan, around the capital of Baghlan province, “where he reportedly spent one month. ”

He also said that he was then “escorted by the Taliban to Kunduz and then traveled by taxi to Taloqan, where he “reportedly spent two months teaching the Koran to children and distributing bread and rice to the poor.” He “claimed he resisted Taliban pressure to fight against the Northern Alliance, as he felt it was contrary to his missionary work to pick sides and fight fellow Muslims.” He also “admitted carrying a sidearm for protection while in Afghanistan, but denie[d] firing it or ever receiving military training.”

Describing the circumstances of his capture, he said that, after the US-led invasion began, “he decided to return to Saudi Arabia,” and “first went to Kabul before proceeding to Khost.” However, on or about December 5, 2001, while leaving Khost, he “was reportedly wounded during an air raid, rendered unconscious, and placed in a taxi,” and, when “he regained consciousness, he was in Miram Shah.” After explaining that “he did not know when or how he crossed the Afghanistan/Pakistan border,” he said that he was then transferred to US custody and held in the US prison at Kandahar airport. He was sent to Guantánamo on June 8, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: The Wafa Humanitarian Organization [and] Taliban student centers in Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he was “assessed to be deceptive,” and had given “very generic and innocuous descriptions of his activities while in Afghanistan, consistent with a cover story to hide possible participation in Al-Qaida terrorist training and combat against coalition forces,” and had “provided conflicting accounts of several details of his background.” It was noted, for example, that only on one occasion, during an interview in February 2002, had he “claimed to have worked as a laborer for the Al-Wafa organization, but ha[d] not mentioned his personal involvement in the organization during further questioning.” It was also claimed that his “frequently observed physical and martial arts training [was] inconsistent with his purported story as a simple missionary,” although it is difficult to see how that conclusion could be defended.

However, although it was assessed that al-Ghamdi was “a possible Al-Qaida member who fought alongside Al-Qaida and Taliban mujahideen against US/Coalition forces under the auspices of [Osama bin Laden]‘s former 55th Arab Brigade,” there was no actual evidence. The only witness was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), widely known as the most prolific and unreliable witness in Guantánamo, who lied about dozens of his fellow prisoners.

Basardah — and Basardah alone — “reported that detainee was a fighter and occasional leader of approximately 30 men in the Taloqan region,” and also “claimed he saw detainee at Taloqan with a Libyan named Omar, a military leader at Taloqan and at Tora Bora,” who “had been in Taloqan for approximately five years fighting against the Northern Alliance.” Basardah also “reported” that al-Ghamdi was “a fellow Yemeni” (even though he was not), who “fought with him in the Taloqan region of northern Afghanistan prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks,” and who, following the attacks, “went to Kabul and stayed in the same guesthouse” as him, and then “reportedly traveled to Kandahar, the last time [Basardah] saw [him] until they were reunited at JTF-GTMO.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed al-Ghamdi as being “of low intelligence value,” and, despite only having Basardah’s unreliable testimony to go on, as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was also “assessed as a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been non-compliant and hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, updated a recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in another country (dated April 22, 2005), and recommended him for transfer out of DoD control” instead, although he was not released for almost two years, and was then put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Majid Al Barayan (ISN 51, Saudi Arabia) Released September 2007

Majid al-Barayan, who was 29 years old at the time of his capture, was captured on the Pakistani border, as I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (3) – ‘Osama’s Bodyguards.’” In Guantánamo, he was subjected to a number of dubious allegations produced by his fellow prisoners — or even by “high-value” detainees, held in secret prisons run by the CIA, where the use of torture was widespread. For example, he was apparently identified, by unnamed sources and “an al-Qaeda member,” as “being on the front lines near Taloqan,” in northern Afghanistan, in April 2001, when he apparently “was assigned to an anti-aircraft artillery weapon,” and he was also accused of attending Al-Farouq, of being in Tora Bora, and, most bluntly, of being “a member of Al-Qaida.” Another prisoner — who I thought may have been Yasim Basardah, the most notorious liar in Guantánamo — said that he “saw the detainee at Osama bin Laden’s private airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan in early 2001,” which also appeared to be an unreliable claim.

For his part, al-Barayan had attempted to portray himself as a missionary, although his interrogators were unconvinced, noting that, although he claimed that he taught children in an orphanage, he did not know the name of the orphanage or any of the children’s names, and could not remember how many children were at the establishment. In addition, a hint that he may indeed have been at Tora Bora came in the following passage: “When the detainee was asked if things were confusing during the fighting, with people running up the hills and back down again, and many people dying, he replied, yes. When the detainee was asked if he fired at the Americans, he replied, no, not at the Americans. We could not see them.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Barayan was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated September 28, 2006, in which he was also identified as Majid Abdallah Said Barayan, and it was noted that he was born in September 1972, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that al-Barayan’s family was originally from the Hadramout region of Yemen, but evidently moved to Saudi Arabia (although this was not mentioned). According to his own account, it was noted that, between 1992 and 1994, he “worked as an accountant for the al-Aziziya Water Company in Saudi Arabia,” and, in 1995, traveled to the UK to attend a college in Salisbury, when he also visited the Finsbury Park Mosque in London. Four months later, he returned to Saudi Arabia, and, in 1998, he traveled to Seattle for 30 days, and “enrolled in an English language course.” On his return to Saudi Arabia, he “enrolled in Career Craft, a three-month employment placement program,” and then “found a job as an accounting clerk and was later promoted to warehouse supervisor.”

It was also noted that, in January 2001, he took a vacation in Malaysia, and also stopped in Pakistan, where he visited Karachi and Lahore, and, after returning home, during July 2001, “began contemplating dawa,” and “decided to travel to Afghanistan because he had heard it was in dire need of assistance.” In Quetta, he said, he went to a guesthouse, where he “told the guesthouse operator that he wanted to go to Afghanistan,” and “left the following morning for Kandahar, AF in a taxi,” adding that, “[s]ince he did not have to pay for the ride, he assumed that it had been paid for by the guesthouse operator.”

In Kandahar, he said, he was taken to a Taliban guesthouse, where he “was asked why he was in Afghanistan, and he replied that he was there for dawa.” He stated that “the guesthouse operator asked [him] if he would train to be a fighter, but [he] declined.” Approximately seven to ten days later, he said, “he was driven to a guesthouse in Kabul, where he was encouraged to join the struggle against the Northern Alliance, but again he declined,” and he was “then transported to a small town between Kabul and Ghazni, AF where he spent approximately six weeks teaching children at an orphanage how to properly clean themselves before prayer.”

He also stated that, approximately two to three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, he “fled the Kabul area to seek refuge in Khost,” where he “was provided refuge by an Afghan named Noor Muhammad,” who, approximately one month later, told him that “there was a group of Arabs getting ready to flee to Pakistan.” Muhammad “subsequently drove [him] to a safehouse where he joined approximately 30-40 Arab males who were traveling to the Pakistani border.” There they were seized by border guards, and “transported to Peshawar, PK where they were held for approximately two weeks.” He was transferred to the Kandahar Detention Facility on December 27, 2001, and was sent to Guantánamo on February 9, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Finsbury Park Mosque in London.”

In assessing his story, his brief stay in the UK six years before his capture was certainly regarded as significant by the Task Force. The Finsbury Park Mosque, for example, with input from British intelligence, was described, rather hysterically, as “a key transit facility in London for the movement of North African and other extremists to and from Al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan,” and it was also noted that al-Ghamdi attended the mosque with Muhammad al-Shabibi, a friend from Saudi Arabia, and another man named Sadeh, one of al-Shabibi’s friends, who he stayed with while on London, and who, without evidence, was described as “possibly” being Mossem Sadeh, allegedly “an Armenian facilitator connected to [Osama bin Laden] and associated with such poisons as Anthrax and Botulinum Toxin,” even though there was nothing to suggest that this was the case.

The Task Force also stated that he had “not been forthright about the time he spent in the United States and other countries,” which I regard as a hugely predictable analysis, with no evidential basis, and also noted that he was “assessed as acquiring fake Malaysian passport stamps to cover his true activity, which was to receive militant training at Al-Farouq Training Camp,” even though he “continue[d] to adhere to his cover story of teaching the Koran at an orphanage in Afghanistan.”

In attempting to justify its claim that he was “assessed to have participated in armed hostilities against US and coalition forces in Taloqan, Tora Bora and near Kabul under [Osama bin Laden]‘s former 55th Arab Brigade,” the Task Force drew on a handful of witnesses, although none of them were necessarily reliable. One, Hamud Dakhil Hamud (ISN 230, released in July 2007, and also identified as Humud al-Jadani), stated that al-Ghamdi “lived in Saudi Arabia, went to Afghanistan and fought in Tora Bora with Al-Qaida.” He also “claimed that he first saw [him] in Tora Bora and then later at a guesthouse in Kandahar in 2001,” and that al-Ghamdi “told him that his participation in hostilities at Tora Bora was his first jihad and that he had studied in America and Europe.”

I have no idea if these statements were accurate, but four other witnesses were certainly unreliable. One was Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held, and identified as Maad al-Qahtani), who was the most notorious torture victim at Guantánamo, making all his claims unreliable. He apparently “photo identified detainee as a mujahid from Saudi Arabia who was at Tora Bora.”

The second notoriously unreliable witness, as I guessed, was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), who, just to reiterate, is known as the most prolific and unreliable witness at Guantánamo. Basardah identified al-Ghamdi as “an Al-Qaida trained Arab fighter who holds both Saudi and Yemeni citizenship, but is a native Yemeni,” and said that he saw him in Tora Bora. He also “claimed that he knew [him] quite well, having lived with him for over a month in Taloqan and having fought together against the Northern Alliance at the front,” and “added that detainee was in charge of an anti-aircraft missile launcher on top of a Toyota truck.” He also said that he “saw detainee at a safehouse in Kabul,” and “remarked that [he] received training at al-Farouq.”

The last two unreliable witnesses, also well known in Guantánamo as liars, were: Abdul [Hakim] Bukhary (ISN 493, released September 2007), a Saudi who “identified detainee as an individual who was very close to [Osama bin Laden], visited the US, and issued fatwas at JTF-GTMO,” and Ali A. Motaieb (ISN 111, released in January 2009, and also identified as Ali al-Tayeea), an Iraqi who “remarked that the detainee had tried to organize a fatwa in JTF-GTMO.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been compliant but sometimes hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, as a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation for his continued detention (dated September 19, 2005) repeated that recommendation. Given this, it is not known why, 13 months later, he was released, although on his release, he was, of course, put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Isa Al Murbati (ISN 52, Bahrain) Released August 2007

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Isa al-Murbati, who was 36 years old at the time of his capture, was a grocer, married with five children, who had previously served in the army. Accused of traveling to Afghanistan in November 2001 with the intention of fighting, and of training to use an AK-47 in Kabul, he said in Guantánamo that he had never been in Afghanistan and had traveled to Pakistan for medical treatment. He pointed out that he was issued with a medical visa — dated 28 October 2001 and valid for one month, it was included in his passport, which was held by the US authorities — and was arrested by the police on arrival in Pakistan.

In Chapter 8, drawing on “Guantánamo Bay Detainee Statements,” compiled in May 2005 by his attorneys Mark Sullivan and Joshua Colangelo-Bryan of Dorsey & Whitney (PDF), I explained how al-Murbati said that, in the US prison at Kandahar, where he was transferred after his capture, he was “shackled to a pole outside in very cold weather,” and, “every hour, US military personnel threw cold water on [him] while he was shackled to the pole.” He said that this took place every night for a week, and added that on one occasion he was taken to an area away from the other prisoners, because Red Cross representatives were visiting the camp, and the authorities did not want them to see him.

Speaking of the abusive conditions at Guantánamo, particularly under Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, Isa al-Murbati said that, on one occasion, after an interrogation, the guards dragged him back to his cell by his shackles, causing his ankles to bleed, and then forced his head into the toilet and flushed it, and described another occasion when the lights in his block were suddenly turned off at night, and a group of guards, accompanied by a dog, entered his cell and sprayed mace in his eyes.

When al-Murbati’s lawyers first met him in October 2004, he was wearing a cast on his arm as the result of a series of incidents of escalating brutality that had been provoked when he asked one of his guards — a young, white sergeant with “a reputation for being difficult” — for a spoon. A few days later, when he was returned to his cell after an interrogation session and, as usual, put his shackled hands through the slot in the door so that the shackles could be removed, the sergeant grabbed the belt attached to the shackles and “pulled it violently, even putting his foot against the cell door to create greater leverage,” which caused him “significant injury.”

Al-Murbati also said that he was subjected to a package of abusive measures that was implemented in a widespread manner, and that involved, in his case, the air conditioning being turned off so that his cell became almost unbearably hot,  In addition, on several occasions, according to his account, the floor was “treated with a mixture of water and a powerful cleaning agent,” which was then thrown on his face and body, “causing great irritation’ and making it difficult to breathe.” He was also subjected to loud music and noise, and explained that he was played songs “that had Arabic language lyrics praising Jesus Christ,” and on other occasions “very loud music and white noise was played through six speakers arranged close to [his] head” for twelve hours, and “multiple flashing strobe lights were used as well,” which were so strong that he “had to keep his eyes closed.” He also reported that he was subjected to sleep deprivation, as part of the program known euphemistically as the “frequent flier program,” whereby he was “moved from cell to cell in the Tango and Oscar [isolation] blocks, typically on an hourly basis,” and, as a result, was “never able to sleep for more than short periods.” He did not specify how long he had been subjected to this, but it is known from other accounts that prisoners were moved in this manner — every few hours — for day, weeks and even months, and that this is clearly torture.

Just before his release, he told Joshua Colangelo-Bryan that he was “held in almost total isolation,” and was “regularly prevented from sleeping and from communicating with his fellow detainees,” as I explained in an article based on a report by Geoffrey Bew in Gulf Daily News. Al-Murbati had been held for over six months in Camp 6, the newest of the prison blocks at Guantánamo, where prisoners, including dozens cleared for release, were kept in isolation for at least 22 hours a day. Colangelo-Bryan reported that the guards in Camp 6 “run large fans,” which “sound like jet engines and prevent captives from communicating and deprive them of sleep,” and explained, “In his cell, Isa cannot see other detainees and he can barely communicate with them. He told me that it is possible to speak with his brothers through an air conditioning vent in his cell. However, to reach the vent, Isa has to stand on his cement bunk. Most often if he tries to talk to others this way, guards tell him to get off his bunk. They also threaten to take away the few items that Isa has in his cell if he does not follow their directions,” which, as Bew described it, “forces him to crouch to talk under the door, for which he is also berated if caught.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Murbati was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated July 15, 2006, in which he was identified as Issa Ali Abdullah al-Murbati, and it was noted that he was born in 1965, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, from 1984 to 1998, he “was a member of the Bahraini Air Force (BAF) as an F-5 mechanic,” and, in approximately 1993, “traveled to Lowery AFB in Denver, Colorado and attended electronics training.” It was also noted that, while he was a member of the BAF, he “attempted to open a bar in a hotel” with a friend, but the business failed and “resulted in [his] release from the Air Force for unspecified reasons.” He was apparently reinstated in 1997 but “released permanently in 1998 after being deemed unproductive.”

He then “opened a vegetable stand with his brother,” but, in approximately 2000, he quit “because of the long hours and obtained a job as a plumber,” which he stayed in for approximately eight months before injuring himself. At this point, as “a result of his failed business ventures, [he] had accrued a debt of 15,000 Bahraini Dinars (approximately $39,855 USD) for which he had been jailed five times for non-payment.”

At this obvious low point in his fortunes, Shaykh Mustafa, a missionary with the vast missionary organization Jamaat al-Tablighi, who was speaking at a mosque in Manama, told him “Allah would take care of his debts if he traveled to Afghanistan (AF) to fight jihad.” Mustafa asked him “if he would hand-carry an envelope of donations to Shaykh Mansur at the al-Makki Mosque in Karachi, Pakistan (PK),” and showed him an envelope “which contained $3000 USD in $100 USD denominations, and sealed it in front of him.” Al-Murbati then “obtained a one month visa for Pakistan,” and, on approximately November 2, 2001, flew to Karachi.

In Karachi, he delivered the envelope to Shaykh Mansur, spent twelve days at the mosque and then traveled to Afghanistan, where, with the assistance a man from the Karachi mosque, he and three others were taken to Kandahar. There, four unidentified Arabs apparently informed them that “there was not training available at that location.” The group then traveled to Kabul, and “resided in an unidentified house with twenty other individuals for four days,” until al-Murbati “heard that the Taliban was pulling out of the north, and decided to return to Kandahar,” where he apparently checked into the Chinese Hospital (aka the Mirwais Hospital), despite having no injuries.

There he apparently decided to return to Pakistan, and “departed the hospital with an unidentified group of individuals and headed towards Khost,” but after pulling over to the side of the road, with others, in order to break the Ramadan fast, he “was washing his hands after eating, [when] one of the jihadists from the group of fasters accidentally discharged a hand grenade,” and he “was injured by shrapnel in his neck, left wrist and portions of his right back,” and “was taken to a nearby clinic where the metal was removed.” Afterwards, “he was given an injection of painkiller, and placed on a bus headed towards Pakistan.” This bus “stopped at another clinic in the tribal lands to have the wounded passengers’ bandages removed,” and, the next morning, set off for Peshawar.

However, “approximately a half-hour from Peshawar, the bus was stopped at a Pakistani checkpoint, all occupants (except a single Pakistani) were arrested and detainee’s money (approximately $1000 USD) was taken.” He added that the Pakistani authorities “placed him in a hospital for two weeks and then transferred him to a Pakistani prison for two or three additional weeks.” The Task Force added that “Pakistani reporting” identified his date of capture as December 12, 2001, and he was transferred to US custody on December 27, 2001. The Task Force also noted that it was “probable, based on similarities in their accounts,” that al-Murbati, Asim al-Aasmi (ISN 49, released in February 2010), and Zayed al-Hussain (ISN 50, see above), who were all traveling from Khost, and were all injured, were captured together outside Peshawar.

Al-Murbati was sent to Guantánamo on June 8, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Possible Al-Qaida or Taliban recruiter, travel facilitator, and JT member, Shaykh Mustafa, Safehouse on Ansari Street in Kabul [and] Upper level Al-Qaida and Taliban personnel.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that his brother, Abd al-Rahim al-Murbati, was “a known financier who helped move funds for an Al-Qaida financial facilitator,” and was imprisoned by the Saudi authorities in June 2003. This led to Isa al-Murbati being “assessed to be a probable courier for the Al-Qaida network, using the JT as a cover,” although there was an absence of evidence. The Task Force suspected that his visit to Afghanistan in 2001 was not his first visit, but was unable to prove its suspicions, and, instead, relied on its innuendo regarding his brother, and claims from two dubious witnesses.

The first was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), a Yemeni known as the most prolific and unreliable witness in Guantánamo, who “photo-identified detainee stating he recognized [him] from the US prison in Afghanistan” — which, of course, has no significance as identification. Basardah “said he had very little information on detainee, other than the fact that he was a merchant working in the milk trade,” and “stated detainee would ship milk from Afghanistan to Bahrain.” Instead of recognizing that Basardah knew nothing about al-Murbati, an analyst noted that he had “never mentioned being involved in the milk trade,” and it was “interesting” that Basarfdah “would identify him as such.” Ridiculously, the analyst added, “The word ‘milk’ is often used by extremists as a cover word for the PK machine gun. It is possible that  detainee was couriering money under the guise of dawa (charitable) donations to acquire weaponry.” It is not known if this is the same analyst who, noting that, in a September 2003 letter to his niece, al-Murbati “cryptically, and out of context, inquire[d], “What is the news surrounding ‘Oranges’?” stated that the word “oranges” was “used by extremists as a cover word for hand grenades.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” Elsewhere, it was noted that he was “considered a high risk as he will probably engage in nefarious activity if released.” He was also “assessed as a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been non-compliant and hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated May 6, 2005), recommended him for continued dentition. It is not known what changed in the next 13 months to lead to his release.

As I explained in an article after his release, drawing on a report in Gulf Daily News, Geoffrey Bew explained that, on arrival, al-Murbati “was whisked straight to the Public Prosecution in Manama for a roughly three-hour debriefing, where he was greeted by family members, including his eldest and youngest sons, MPs, supporters and friends.” His youngest son, seven-year old Ebrahim, who was just a baby when he last saw his father, held a bouquet of flowers for him, and said, “It is the first time I will to speak to my father. I am very happy.” Al-Murbati’s eldest son, 17-year old Ali, was “trembling with emotion as he declared the family’s delight,” and said, “I am so happy. I feel so good. I cannot believe it. We heard he was coming home, but could not believe it.” After the debriefing, al-Murbati returned to his home, where he was reunited with his wife and his two daughters.

Bew also reported that MP Mohammed Khalid, who helped campaign for the release of all the Bahraini prisoners, said that it was “a great day,” but added that “the next push would be for compensation.” “I am very happy with today’s event,” he said. “This is the last page in the Guantánamo Bay chapter. Now we want compensation for all the Bahrainis who have come home.”

Saud Dakhil Al Mahayawi (ISN 53, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2007

The story of Saud al-Mahayawi, who was 25 years old at the time of his capture, was completely unknown until two months after his release, when the allegations against him were released as part of a package of documents made publicly available by the Pentagon. As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (3) – ‘Osama’s Bodyguards,’” according to the US authorities, he had not even traveled to Afghanistan until “the latter part of 2001,” when his “religious pilgrimage” began, following a meeting at a prayer session with an Afghan, who “explained that the people of his country needed to be instructed concerning the Koran.”

Revealing their cultural ignorance, those who compiled the Summary of Evidence against al-Mahayawi noted that he “later contacted the Afghan and expressed interest in going to Afghanistan to teach the Koran, despite [his] inability to speak the language,” an observation which indicates that the authors had clearly failed to comprehend that, as the literal word of God transmitted to the Prophet Mohammed in Arabic, the Koran is always learned and recited in Arabic, even if those learning it speak other languages.

Al-Mahayawi said that he sold his business and his car to raise the money to travel to Peshawar in Pakistan, where he was met by the Afghan, who took him to Khost to teach the Koran. He explained that he believed that, after about a month, his Afghan friend stole about 5,000 Saudi Riyals from him (about $1,300), which made him “very depressed and angry,” so that he “thought about going home.” When the US-led invasion began, he stated that he “feared for his life,” and asked the owner of the house he was staying in to arrange for a guide to take him to the Pakistani border, where, he said, he “surrendered himself to the Pakistani border patrol,” who “subsequently turned [him] over to the American authorities.”

In contrast to al-Mahayawi’s story, the US authorities alleged that he “was captured with an individual who stated he first met the detainee in Tora Bora,” and that he “was identified as an Al-Qaida fighter at a guard post in the valley” between Jalalabad and Tora Bora, where he “was armed with a Kalashnikov (AK-47) and fired his weapon after coming under fire from Afghans in the valley.” Another mysterious individual “stated that although the detainee claimed affiliation with Jamaat al-Tablighi [a vast apolitical proselytizing organization, with millions of members worldwide], he was actually a fighter at Tora Bora.”

In addition, it was claimed that “[s]everal of the individuals in the group with whom the detainee was captured are believed to have been bodyguards of Osama bin Laden,” indicating that he was part of a group identified as “the Dirty Thirty,” who were mostly accused of being bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, even though there has been no way of verifying if those claims are reliable, as they may have been produced by Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held), who was the most notorious torture victim in Guantánamo, and whose statements are therefore unreliable, or by others seized at the time whose statements were produced in unknown circumstances that may have involved torture or other forms of coercion. There was also one more unspecified, and very vague allegation attributed to a “senior Al-Qaida operative,” who apparently “identified the detainee and believed he saw him in Afghanistan.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Mahayawi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated April 15, 2007, in which he was also identified as Saud Dakhilallah al-Jihni and Saud Dakheel al-Hareth, and it was noted that he was born in August 1976, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, according to his own account, which largely corresponded with the one he later told his tribunal, he “dropped out of high school in 1998 after one year and began selling dates at a local market in Jeddah until 2001,” and, while visiting Mecca in 2000, “met a Pakistani named Abdul Rahman,” who told him “about the incorrect method many Afghans were using to practice Islam and suggested [he] travel to Afghanistan to help teach them correctly.”

In early September 2001, he said, he flew to Karachi, where he contacted Abdul Rahman. He then traveled to Peshawar, where Abdul Rahman met him and took him to a village outside Khost (mistakenly identified, I believe, as Torkham, which is a border town some distance from Khost). He added that he “was carrying 8,000 to 10,000 Saudi riyals (SAR) at the time,” and said that, in Afghanistan, while staying with Abdul Rahman in a house owned by a man named Abdullah, he “would teach poor and disadvantaged Muslims to read the Koran in Arabic and how to properly perform Islamic rituals.” After approximately one month, he said, Abdul Rahman “stole approximately 5,000 SAR from [him] and disappeared.”

Al-Mahayawi said he “used his remaining money to purchase cold weather clothes for himself and the children,” but after three months, “the violence in Afghanistan increased and [he] decided to leave Afghanistan to avoid death or injury.” He said that he “traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistani border with 30 other Arabs and surrendered to the Pakistani border patrol on 15 December 2001.” Taken to a prison in Peshawar, he was transferred to US custody on December 27, 2001, and was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Recruitment of clergy from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he “was captured with the ‘Dirty 30,’” and explained that they had been “identified as being a mix of [Osama bin Laden] bodyguards, Al-Qaida members, and Taliban fighters who attempted to flee Afghanistan during the Al-Qaida withdrawal from Tora Bora.” It was also noted that al-Dahayawi “had no identification, documents, weapons, or equipment in his possession at the time of his capture.”

The Task Force also claimed that he was “a member of Al-Qaida who was active in Kandahar and engaged US and Coalition forces in combat action at Tora Bora,” although the two sources for this claim were both notoriously unreliable. One was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), well known as the most prolific and unreliable witness at Guantánamo, who identified al-Mahayawi as Saud al-Juhuni, or Shakir, and said he was “an Al-Qaida trained fighter at a guard post in the valley between Tora Bora and Jalalabad, AF during the Al-Qaida defense of Tora Bora against US and Coalition forces in early to mid-December 2001.” He also said that he “was armed with an AK-47 and fired his weapon when [he] came under fire from Afghans in the valley.” In another interrogation, Basardah said that he “claimed an affiliation with Jamaat al-Tablighi (JT), was a fighter at Tora Bora, and had unidentified problems with the Saudi authorities.”

The other unreliable witness was Mohammed al-Qahtani, who said he “met detainee in Kandahar and Tora Bora,” and “knew him as Shakir, a mujahid from Jeddah.” The references to the name Shakir look convincing, but they may have been prompted, and, in addition, an analyst noted that al-Mahayawi denied staying in Kandahar.

In further attempts to justify regarding al-Mahayawi as a threat, the Task Force referred to his “name and aliases” being found on a list in the pocket litter of an alleged Saudi fighter, which indicated to an analyst that he “probably stayed at an Al-Qaida-affiliated guesthouse and possibly attended an Al-Qaida training camp,” and “variations of [his] name and aliases” being “found on numerous associated Al-Qaida documents and computer files that were discovered during raids of safehouses in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2001 and 2003,” although these references are not necessarily reliable as there are significant doubts about the names and especially the alleged aliases involved.

As if to confirm this, the Task Force also claimed that al-Mahayawi “possibly arranged travel for mujahideen seeking personal visits to [Osama bin Laden],” which is, of course, in a different league from claims that he was a foot soldier who pretended to be a teacher. This convoluted claim came about because Abu Zubaydah, the supposed “high-value detainee” for whom the Bush administration’s torture program in secret CIA prisons was specifically invented, “stated that he saw detainee in Afghanistan.” This means that Zubaydah was the “senior Al-Qaida operative,” mentioned above, who apparently “identified the detainee and believed he saw him in Afghanistan,” and what was also noteworthy was the fact that the US authorities had picked up on another claim made by Zubaydah in unknown circumstances — that “an individual by the name of Abu al-Hareth” was “the facilitator for mujahideen traveling to visit [Osama bin Laden],” and decided that this was “a variant” of al-Mahayawi’s alias.

Despite the raft of dubious allegations above, it was clear that none of the witnesses had identified him as a bodyguard for bin Laden, as it was noted only that he “was captured as part of a group of 30 Al-Qaida fighters, including 18 who have been identified as UBL [bin Laden] bodyguards.” As was specifically noted, ”Contrary to a previous assessment, JTF-GTMO assesses that detainee was almost certainly not a UBL bodyguard. Despite detainee’s presence among a group of confirmed UBL bodyguards during the retreat from Tora Bora, statements by multiple Al-Qaida members, including senior Al-Qaida leaders and UBL bodyguards currently in custody at JTF-GTMO, indicate that detainee was not part of UBL’s security detail, but only joined the group of bodyguards during the withdrawal.”

Elsewhere, however, there were allegations from the Saudi authorities that also troubled the Task Force. It was noted that, “Prior to the Saudi delegation visit in 2002, Mabahith [Saudi intelligence] provided information on 37 detainees whom they designated as high priority targets,” and it was stated that he “was number 21 on that list, having been watchlisted by the Saudi government for his travels to Chechnya and jihadist activities in Ethiopia.” By way of further explanation, it was noted that, according to Mabahith, he “was listed on two Saudi government watch lists. The first was a list of individuals forbidden to travel for five years, per decree dated 23 February 1998. The second was a Watch and Arrest listing for detainee’s trip to Chechnya (NFI), per ministerial decree dated 21 February 2002.” It was also noted, “Mabahith arrested detainee in Mecca for attempting to create a new jihad organization (NFI) in A’Wkadin, Ethiopia.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies.” It was also noted that he was “assessed to be a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour has been semi-compliant and occasionally hostile toward the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation for “Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD) with Transfer Language,” dated February 27, 2006, recommended him for continued detention, although he was released just three months later, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Sultan Al Uwaydha (ISN 59, Saudi Arabia) Released November 2007

In Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Sultan al-Uwaydha, who was 26 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of having been in Tora Bora, of visiting one of bin Laden’s houses, and of having experience of assembling and sighting anti-aircraft weapons. I then looked at his story in more detail at the time of his release (and also in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (3) – “Osama’s Bodyguards‘”), when, as I noted, his explanation for being in Afghanistan — that he traveled to “teach the Koran to poor and disadvantaged Muslims,” and that he duly taught the Koran to children in various locations, before hooking up with his uncle in Khost and escaping to Pakistan, where he was arrested — was severely at odds with the authorities’ version.

The authorities claimed that he was “arrested after crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan with 30 other persons suspected of being Osama bin Laden bodyguards,” and was, therefore, suspected of being one of the so-called “Dirty Thirty.” Other allegations, from an unidentified “source,” from “an Al-Qaida operative,” and from “a senior Al-Qaida operative,” purported to reinforce this notion that he was one of 30 bodyguards for bin Laden. One of these “sources,” for example, stated that “he knew the detainee and that he was probably an Osama bin Laden bodyguard because the detainee was always with Osama bin Laden,” although this sounded distinctly dubious, even before the release of the military files by WikiLeaks promised to shed light on the identities of those making the allegations.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Uwaydha was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated August 1, 2007, in which he was also identified as Sultan Ahmad al-Dardir Musa Uwaydha and Sultan Asman al-Uwaydah, and it was noted that he was born in 1974, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted, based on his own account, that, after graduating from high school, he “lived at home and worked for his older brother as a carpenter,” and also “participated in religious studies” at a mosque in Medina. He also said that, in 2000, after Muhammad Ghulam, a Pakistani visitor to his mosque, invited him to visit Pakistan, he “accepted the invitation and flew to Karachi, PK, where he stayed in a hotel for about a week before heading to Afghanistan (AF) to teach the Koran,” traveling with Ghulam via Quetta to Kandahar, where they stayed “as tourists before going to Ghazni.”

Al-Uwaydha said that he “taught the Koran to children at a mosque in Ghazni,” and, in approximately August 2001, left for Kabul, but, because he did not know any Arabs in Kabul, then “traveled to Khost to find his uncle, who was assessed to be Abd al-Rahman Shalabi Isa Uwaydha (ISN 42, still held, and also identified as Abdul Rahman Shalabi), but ended up traveling “to a nearby village where he taught at the local mosque for two to three months.” At the end of this period, when “the Northern Alliance had advanced south and entered Kabul,” he “returned to Khost, found his uncle, and they then decided to go to Pakistan.”

He added that he and his uncle “traveled to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with 30 other Arabs and surrendered to the Pakistani border patrol on 15 December 2001,” after an eight-day journey. The Task Force claimed that he “was captured with a group known as the ‘Dirty 30,’ which reportedly “consisted of a mix of [Osama bin Laden] bodyguards, Al-Qaida members, and Taliban fighters who attempted to flee Afghanistan during the Al-Qaida withdrawal from Tora Bora.” It was also noted that al-Uwaydha “claimed he lost his passport, money, and other important documents during his travel from Afghanistan,” and that, after his capture, the Pakistani authorities held him in a prison in Peshawar, and transferred him to US custody on December 27, 2001. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Hideouts of UBL [Osama bin Laden] in Afghanistan, Travel history of UBL [and] Recruitment of clergy from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he “fail[ed] to provide an accurate account of his reasons for traveling to, and activities while in Afghanistan,” and noted, as they did with all the prisoners captured at this time, that another prisoner had told them that “a Pakistani prison warden advised detainee’s group to say they were in Afghanistan to teach the Koran or for religious studies.” He was, instead, “assessed to be a member of al-Qaida” and a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, although the witnesses who purportedly confirmed this — and who were referred to anonymously above — were not necessarily reliable.

Two were “high-value detainees” held and tortured in secret CIA prisons. The first, Walid bin Attash,(ISN 10014, still held), described as a “[s]enior Al-Qaida operative,” apparently “photo-identified detainee as Hamza Sharif, one of UBL’s bodyguards, who arrived in Afghanistan at the end of 2000, trained at al-Farouq and then joined the security detail,” and the second, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (ISN 10012, convicted in federal court in New York in January 2011), also described as a “[s]enior Al-Qaida operative,” even though he was no more than a minor player, reportedly “photo-identified detainee as Hamza al-Sharif, who served as one of UBL’s bodyguards in late 2000 and early 2001.” Ghailani also “stated detainee was with UBL in Kandahar and Kabul and heard that detainee later fled with UBL to Tora Bora.”

Two other witnesses were also the victims of torture in the CIA’s network of secret prisons. The first, Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj (ISN 1457, still held), described as a “[s]enior Al-Qaida facilitator,” said he “recognized detainee as a Saudi from Medina who traveled to Afghanistan in 1998 and was a UBL bodyguard from that time forward” (even though al-Uwaydha reportedly arrived in Afghanistan in 2000), and also “stated detainee’s alias was Hamza al-Sharif and that detainee was close to UBL,” and the second, Sanad Ali Yislam al-Kazmi (ISN 1453, still held), described as an “admitted Al-Qaida member,” reportedly “identified detainee as Hamza Sharif, a bodyguard from Saudi Arabia.”

In addition, Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held), the most notorious victim of torture at Guantánamo, identified detainee as a probable UBL bodyguard because detainee was always with UBL,” and Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), well known as the most prolific and unreliable witness at Guantánamo, apparently “photo-identified detainee as a UBL bodyguard.” Basardah also said he “saw detainee four times in Afghanistan with UBL,” and “stated detainee traveled to Tora Bora to prepare the location three weeks before UBL’s arrival.” He also “emphasized detainee had close ties to al-Qaida.” In further interrogations, Basardah led the authorities to believe that al-Uwaydha “reportedly directed fire against US forces, was known for his skills with weaponry, and attended al-Farouq Training Camp.” Basardah told his interrogators that “he personally observed detainee arrange anti-aircraft fire against US forces in Tora Bora and that detainee was good at driving tanks,” and also claimed that he “was able to repair many different types of weapons.”

A further allegation from a torture victim came from Abu Faraj al-Libi (ISN 10017, still held), another “high-value detainee” held and tortured in secret CIA prisons, and described as a “[s]enior al-Qaida operative,” who said he “recognised detainee as Hamza, a driver for a guesthouse in Kandahar whom he had seen in 2000.”

It may be, of course, that all of the allegations above were true, but if that is the case then it is difficult to see why al-Uwaydha was released. He was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” although he was only “assessed as a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour” had only been sometimes “hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Buzby updated a previous recommendation for his continued detention (dated August 3, 2006) with a similar recommendation, although he was released just three months later, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Muhammad Al Jihani (ISN 62, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2007

As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (3) – “Osama’s Bodyguards,’” Muhammad al-Jihani, who was 34 years old at the time of his capture, was a former taxi driver, who was so unforthcoming in his tribunal at Guantánamo that it was impossible to ascertain anything other than the fact that he claimed that he had been teaching the Koran in Afghanistan. When asked, “Did you have a place to do that? Did you already contact the mosque or something where you were going to teach?” he responded by saying, grumpily, “All these questions are in my files. Go back to the file and read the file.” The Summary of Evidence against him, released after he was freed, adds a little to the picture, but not very much.

Al-Jihani said that he had traveled to Afghanistan in June 2000, using his own money to pay for his travel, in order “to perform Islamic missionary work after hearing several fatwas issued by Imams in Jeddah,” and clearly refuted all claims that he had traveled for other reasons, including those made by an unidentified “source” who identified him “as one of 30 men who were Osama bin Laden bodyguards and drivers,” and another unidentified source who identified him as “one who visited Kabul, Afghanistan for approximately two weeks between fighting on the front lines.” In addition, a “senior al-Qaeda operative” allegedly claimed that al-Jihani “might have stayed at the Hamza al-Ghamdi guest house in Kabul,” and an “admitted jihadist” described him as a mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan, who “taught the Koran, fought at Tora Bora, Afghanistan and was one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards.” As with other prisoners, it was to be hoped that the military files released by WikiLeaks would shed light on the identities of those making these allegations.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Jihani was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated July 13, 2006, in which he was identified as Mohammed N. al-Juhani and Muhammad Naji Subhi al-Mahayawi al-Juhani, and it was noted that he was born in October 1967, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force, drawing on his own account, noted that he “worked as a self-employed taxi driver for approximately 15 years,” and that, as was discussed in the information presented to his tribunal, he said that he “traveled to Afghanistan (AF) to perform missionary work after hearing several fatwas (religious edicts) issued by imams (prayer leaders) in Jeddah.” He added that he left Saudi Arabia in June 2000 “without speaking to anyone about his trip,” and “did not receive any assistance from outside parties regarding his travel plans,” and explained that he traveled to Kabul via Karachi and Quetta, using “money that he had saved, between 7,000 and 10,000 Saudi Riyals (approximately $1,866 and $2,666USD), to fund his travel and personal expenses.”

Al-Jihani said that, in Kabul, he stayed with a man named Abdul Hadi, the imam of a mosque, and “turned over his passport and half of his money” to him. Then, for the next year and half, “he taught the Koran to young men between the ages of seven and seventeen,” and stated that he “never participated in any type of military training or combat.” At the end of November 2001, he said that “he left Kabul as it was no longer safe and traveled to Khost,” where he met up with with “a group of 30 men traveling to Pakistan.” On arrival in Pakistan, however, they were seized by Pakistani border guards, who, as the Task Force described it, “arrested detainee with a group of confirmed [Osama bin Laden] bodyguards, al-Qaida members and Taliban fighters,” otherwise known as the “Dirty 30.” He was then held in a prison in Peshawar, and transferred to US custody on December 27. 2001. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, although the Task Force conceded that his file “does not indicate why he was sent to JTF-GTMO; however, his transfer was likely due to his perceived associations with the 30 UBL bodyguards, Al-Qaida members, and Taliban fighters with whom he was arrested.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that al-Jihani “was unable to provide any details of his associate[s] or locations” for the 17 months that he said he was teaching in Afghanistan,” and noted that “reporting from other sources possibly identified [him] as a UBL bodyguard and a fighter in Kabul since 1999, as well as in Tora Bora.” These sources, however, were not necessarily reliable.

Two were “high-value detainees” held and tortured in secret CIA prisons. The first, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (ISN 10012, convicted in federal court in New York in January 2011), described as an “Al-Qaida operative,” said that al-Jihani “fought on the front lines under Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi” (ISN 10026, still held), who was described as “one of UBL’s most senior commanders and the person in charge of non-Afghan Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters (Al-Qaida’s 55th Arab Brigade) in the Afghanistan northern front,” and added that he “visited Kabul for two weeks prior to returning to the fight.” The second, Abu Zubaydah, the supposed “high-value detainee” for whom the Bush administration’s torture program was specifically invented, reportedly “believed detainee to be a Yemeni national who possibly stayed at the Al-Qaida affiliated Hamza al-Ghamdi guesthouse in Kabul and was seen on the front line in Kabul.” This was particularly worthless testimony, of course, as al-Jihani was not a Yemeni, and the allegations regarding Kabul mean nothing, and what it summons up, therefore, is a desperate Abu Zubaydah being shown photos while held in some torture dungeon, and trying to come up with something that would please his captors.

Another witness was also a victim of torture in the CIA’s network of secret prisons. Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj (ISN 1457, still held), described as an “Al-Qaida member and facilitator,” apparently “reported that detainee fought on the front lines north of Kabul in a place called Suraca El San’ani (NFI),” which was also a rather empty claim.

In addition, Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held), the most notorious victim of torture at Guantánamo, apparently “stated detainee was a mujahid at Tora Bora,” and “added he and the detainee were on a ‘Jihad mission’ there.” In another interrogation, al-Qahtani “identified detainee as an associate in Kandahar.” Another witness was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), well known as the most prolific and unreliable witness at Guantánamo, who “claimed detainee fought in the Ktal region of the Tora Bora Mountains.”

Furthermore, when it came to the claim that al-Jihani was a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, it was revealed, crucially, that Basardah was “the only one to specifically name [him] as a bodyguard.” In a fascinating section, in which it was claimed that it was “possible the bodyguards may have information on [bin Laden]‘s intended movements which can provide clues to his current whereabouts” (and which is now no longer necessary, of course), the Task Force explained that “[s]ome of the significant reports which identify the bodyguards, but do not include detainee, are from debriefings of [Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj]; senior Al-Qaida facilitator Abu Zubayduh; senior Al-Qaida operational planner and former UBL bodyguard Walid Muhammad Salih bin Attash (aka Khallad); and UBL’s driver [Salim Hamdan, ISN 149, released in December 2008]” — in other words, not Mohammed al-Qahtani, as was widely thought before the files were released (although al-Qahtani certainly was also responsible for “identifying” bodyguards).

In another significant passage, there was a reference to Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (ISN 212, but never held at Guantánamo), a particularly important “high-value detainee,” whose torture in Egypt in 2002 led to a false confession that Al-Qaida operatives had been meeting with Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and biological weapons, which was then used to justify the invasion of Iraq, even though al-Libi retracted it. Sent back to Libya after several years in secret CIA prisons, al-Libi died in Gaddafi’s Abu Salim prison in May 2009, reportedly by committing suicide, although observers believed that he had been killed. In al-Jihani’s case, it was noted that “Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s inability to identify detainee from al-Libi’s time at the Yaqub Mosque and the detainee’s inability to provide information about personalities and descriptive features of the Yaqub Mosque casts additional doubt on his cover story.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed al-Jihani as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” because his “placement within Al-Qaida and his lack of cooperation indicate continued support to Islamic extremism and increases the potential of him rejoining these elements if released.” It was also noted that he was “a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been mostly compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated June 3, 2005), recommended him for continued detention, although it was noted, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to [al-Jihani] and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO),” although that agreement was evidently not reached for another year, when he was finally released, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Appearing publicly for the first time in nine years, al-Nashiri, a millionaire and a merchant before his capture, who is now 46 years old, was clean-shaven, and responded politely when asked by the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, whether he understood the proceedings, and whether “he accepted the services of his Pentagon-paid defense team.” As the Miami Herald described it, he replied, “At this moment these lawyers are doing the right job.”

For those who support George W. Bush’s attempts to twist the law out of shape in an attempt to claim that torture was not torture, and then to use it on “high-value detainees” in a series of despicable torture dungeons located in other countries, the trial of al-Nashiri at Guantánamo is something of a triumph, although it is difficult to see how the torture apologists reach this conclusion.

In fact, al-Nashiri’s arraignment, nine years after he was first seized in the United Arab Emirates, is a disgrace. He was held in torture prisons in Thailand and Poland (where prosecutors are investigating his torture claims), and possibly also in Romania, Lithuania and Morocco — and what distinguishes these locations from other prisons is how the Bush administration had to undergo devious, underhand negotiations to site its prisons on foreign soil. This rather tends to prove that torture was still torture, however much John Yoo, a compliant lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said it wasn’t in a series of notorious memos that will forever be known as the “torture memos,” because if it was legal, then why was all the dirty subterfuge needed?

For the supporters of Guantánamo and torture, the sordid details of his treatment are not generally discussed, perhaps because it might be revealed how he was only held in a prison in Thailand until the Thai government got fed up with harboring American torturers, and was then sent to Poland, where, eventually, the same thing happened. His torture, according to the apologists, was supposed to show robustness and resolve on the part of the Bush administration, and not the fairly desperate maneuverings of abusers who knew that their activities were illegal.

The apologists also shrug off the alarming truth that al-Nashiri was waterboarded, and also shrug off the findings of the CIA Inspector General, who concluded, in a report in 2004, that CIA operatives had gone too far when they threatened him with a gun and a power drill while he was hooded, and also made threats against his family. Another way of expressing this would be to note that the use of the gun and the drill constituted “mock executions.”

To the best of our knowledge, the torture of al-Nashiri yielded no useful intelligence. However, because of the way he was treated, and because of the Bush administration’s foolish insistence that terror suspects were not criminals, but “warriors” in a possibly endless “war on terror,” the federal court trial that should have taken place shortly after his capture in 2002, if there was any evidence that he masterminded the bombing of the USS Cole, never took place.

Nine years on, supporters of military trials for terror suspects may be celebrating because al-Nashiri’s trial by Military Commission is finally going ahead, although, in the meantime, numerous other terror suspects have been successfully prosecuted in federal courts. Supporters of Guantánamo and torture tend to ignore the many successful federal court trials of the last decade, choosing instead to believe that being tortured in secret CIA prisons and then held in Guantánamo somehow makes prisoners like al-Nashiri much more significant than these other terror suspects.

How else do we explain the uproar over the trial of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the only prisoner held in secret CIA torture prisons and then Guantánamo to be transferred to the US mainland to face a federal court trial? Ghailani was transferred in May 2009 (before Congress imposed a ban on the transfer of any more prisoners for trials on the US mainland), and was tried last fall, convicted and given a life sentence in January this year.

Even so, the supporters of the Military Commissions tried to portray his trial as a failure, and continue to rail against federal court trials for terror suspects, even going so far, in passages included in the National Defense Authoization Act, which is currently being examined by Congress, as to demand mandatory military custody for all terror suspects in future, even though that will cripple the ability of law enforcement officials to effectively investigate their crimes, and even though the military has shown no willingness to become a misplaced policeman for deranged ideologues in Congress.

President Obama is also to blame for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri’s presence in a courtroom in Guantánamo, because his administration revived the Commissions in the summer of 2009, deciding that federal court trials were appropriate for some Guantánamo prisoners, and Military Commissions for others. That allowed the opponents of federal court trials to campaign against them, pushing the administration to drop its plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks in New York, and obliging senior officials (and specifically Attorney General Eric Holder) to undertake a humiliating climbdown, and to announce that federal court trials were off the agenda, and the Military Commissions were the only game in town.

That led directly to the notion that mandatory military custody for terror suspects is somehow acceptable, when it is clearly not, and left the administration, like an unconvincing puppeteer, holding Military Commission trials at Guantánamo which they have so far failed to endorse confidently, reaching plea deals in all three cases dealt with to date — those of Ibrahim al-Qosi, Noor Uthman Muhammed and Omar Khadr.

As a capital case and one involving such well-publicized torture, al-Nashiri’s case is much more of a test for the Obama administration, which cannot, for once, shirk its responsibilities through a plea deal. There is no way of knowing, as yet, if al-Nashiri will find a way to fundamentally challenge the administration, or if his trial will, in spite of the precedents established throughout the Commissions’ inglorious history, somehow proceed smoothly, but it seems unlikely.

At the arraignment, Richard Kammen, one of al-Nashiri’s defense attorneys, made it clear that questions about his client’s treatment would form part of the defense’s case. “Is torture a mitigating factor?” he asked Col. Pohl, to which the judge replied that the question would be appropriate when — if — al-Nashiri came to be sentenced. As the Miami Herald also explained, “Kammen also asked Pohl if he would fulfill his obligation under international treaty to report to ‘outside authorities’ evidence that Nashiri’s ‘torture’ was arranged by high public officials, doctors, psychiatrists and lawyers,” to which the judge replied, “I will comply with the law.”

That sounds promising, but as the media focus drifts away from Guantánamo once more with the realization that al-Nashiri’s trial will not begin for at least a year, it is also worth recalling that, fundamentally, this is not the right venue for the trial of anyone accused of terrorism, or, indeed, of war crimes that are not real, and were only invented by Congress in 2006 and revived, fundamentally unaltered, in 2009.

Instead, the courtroom at Guantánamo, where the world is supposed to see justice being delivered, is composed in equal parts of an ideological fixation, on the part of Republicans, and an unconvincing capitulation, on the part of the administration, and these are not the correct ingredients for a fair trial, especially as the Obama administration has refused to confirm that, should al-Nashiri somehow not be convicted, there is no guarantee that he will be released, which, of course, makes a mockery of the entire process.

Note: The courtroom sketch above is by Janet Hamlin, and is courtesy of Janet Hamlin Illustration.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

This situation has been complicated by the fact that, under President Obama, the Justice Department has continued to deal with habeas corpus claims as though the Bush administration was still in office, and has not cross-referenced its cases with the findings of the President’s own Guantánamo Review Task Force, a sober collection of career officials, lawyers and representatives of the intelligence services, who concluded, after a year-long review of the prisoners’ cases, that only 36 of those still held should be tried, and that 89 should be released.

Add to that the President’s systematic aversion to confrontation on “national security” issues, and it becomes more comprehensible why we have reached a situation whereby the only prisoners to have left Guantánamo in the last nine months left in coffins, and why only three living prisoners have been released in the last 15 months.

To cite just the major examples of capitulation on the part of the administration, it is clear that the President has refused to contemplate any attempt to secure accountability for those who approved and introduced the Bush administration’s torture program, that he backed down on a plan to release cleared prisoners (the Uighurs) to live in the US in 2009, that he backed down on repatriating any cleared Yemenis (even though 58 cleared Yemenis are being held) in January 2010, after the failed underwear bomber was captured on Christmas Day 2009 and there was a outburst of general hysteria, and also that he backed down on plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men in federal court in New York for their alleged connection to the 9/11 attacks, despite having announced it to the world in November 2009.

In this seemingly hopeless situation, it is important that journalists continue to shine a light on Guantánamo past, resent and future, and to that end I’m delighted to cross-post below a feature by Jenifer Fenton of CNN dealing with the Kuwaitis held in Guantánamo. Jenifer wrote another excellent article about the Kuwaitis in August, which I suggested at the time ought to serve as a spur to to break the deadlock by securing the release of the two remaining Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantánamo, Fayiz al-Kandari and Fawzi al-Odah.

Fenton has followed up with a devastating analysis (cross-posted below) of the manner in which false confessions were extracted at Guantánamo using threats or coercion, based on interviews conducted in Kuwait, and the extraction of false confessions is particularly apparent through her discussions with Fouad al-Rabiah, the Kuwait Airways employee and philanthropist who was portrayed in Guantánamo as an al-Qaeda supporter and a significant player in the conflict in Afghanistan until his habeas corpus petition was reviewed by a US judge in September 2009, and it was revealed that this entire narrative was constructed by the US authorities through the use of threats and abuse, and was dutifully repeated by al-Rabiah, who was afraid that he would otherwise be sent to another country for torture, and would never see his family again.

I discussed al-Rabiah’s successful habeas corpus petition in an article entitled, A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions, and I regard it still as one of the most devastating insights into how the supposed intelligence obtained in Guantánamo, which purports to support official claims that those held there are dangerous, is, for the most part, a mirage, composed of lies, dubious confessions and unverifiable hearsay extracted through the use of torture, coercion, bribery, threats and abuse.

Moreover, the failures of the intelligence are systematic, as I have constantly been trying to demonstrate through my work, and as I have been explaining in detail in my ongoing 70-part, million-word series, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” in which I am analyzing all the prisoners’ stories in depth, and including the information contained in the classified military assessments released by WikiLeaks in April. These demonstrate a shocking lack of intelligence when it came to rounding up Afghan prisoners, and also reveal the extent of this web of false confessions made by prisoners about their fellow prisoners.

For her article, Jenifer Fenton also spoke with Abd al-Aziz al-Shammeri, whose story I discussed here, and who also has some important recollections about his experiences, but it is Fouad al-Rabiah’s story that remains supremely important, and that should be known about as widely as possible. If there will ever be a time when we can look back on Guantánamo as a vile aberration, never to be repeated, the story of Fouad al-Rabiah, and his successful habeas corpus petition, will figure prominently. However, we have not yet reached that time, and for now the stories told to Jenifer Fenton by the former prisoners still need to be used as part of the argument for why Guantánamo must be closed, and why the remaining Kuwaitis must be released. I hope you have time to read it, and also to share it as widely as possible.

Former Guantánamo inmates tell of confessions under ‘torture’
By Jenifer Fenton, CNN, October 28, 2011

“You know what this is?” Fouad Al-Rabiah asked as he held up a photograph of a cell in Guantánamo. “This is my house for eight years.” The cell is small, sterile and resembles a cage. It has a hole in the floor where the toilet is.

Al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti father of four, then held up another piece of paper. “This is the first evidence that the United States government had given to the court to tell them that I am the worst of the worst in Guantánamo.”

The evidence is a two-page letter in Arabic, which Al-Rabiah was accused of writing. It was found in Tora Bora and was presented as evidence Al-Rabiah and his son Abdullah were the leaders of an attack in Afghanistan in 1991. His oldest son was only one year old in 1991. “This was not me.”

He showed more of the evidence used against him. The US government had accused Al-Rabiah of providing material support to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Al-Rabiah was interrogated, by his own count, more than 200 times. He says he was tortured: “Lots and lots of torture.” He confessed to any and everything his interrogators said about him.

But in 2009 US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered that Al-Rabiah, an aviation engineer who had studied in Scotland and America, be released, citing a lack of credible evidence that he was associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The evidence presented by the government to the court was “surprisingly bare,” and interrogators used “abusive techniques,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a 65-page opinion [PDF]. The court said that Al-Rabiah’s confessions were so inconsistent or implausible even his interrogators did not believe them.

“It is also undisputed that Al-Rabiah confessed to information that his interrogators obtained from either alleged eyewitnesses who are not credible and as to whom the Government has now largely withdrawn any reliance, or from sources that never even existed,” the opinion stated.

The court concluded, “If there exists a basis for Al-Rabiah’s indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this court.” Al-Rabiah’s petition for habeas corpus was granted.

Al-Rabiah returned to Kuwait in December 2009. He had lost eight years of his life. “I lost so many things, but I know that I was right,” he said. “I know that they were wrong.” Al-Rabiah is one of 12 Kuwaiti detainees taken to Guantánamo.

Nine other Kuwaitis have been released, including Abd Al-Aziz Sayer Uwain Al-Shammeri. Al-Shammeri had been detained without charge and transferred to Kuwait in 2005 for reasons that remain unclear. Al-Shammeri and many of the freed detainees were charged in Kuwaiti courts following their release from Guantánamo but were acquitted of any wrongdoing.

One of those acquitted — Abdallah Saleh Ali Al-Ajmi — blew himself up in Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.

Al-Ajmi was one of two Kuwaitis who took part in a suicide attack in Mosul in April 2008, the officials said. Records show an attack that day targeted an Iraqi police patrol and left six people dead, including two police officers.

Two people who knew Al-Ajmi described him as unstable when he returned from Guantánamo.

Two Kuwaiti detainees, Fawzi Al-Odah and Fayiz Al-Kandari, remain in custody and their families and others fear they may be indefinitely detained.

I met with Al-Rabiah, Al-Shammeri and Khalid Al-Odah, Fawzi Al-Odah’s father, in Kuwait 10 years after America’s war on terror began.

Life before Guantánamo

Al-Rabiah, now 52, had a documented history of doing charitable work with reputable organizations in Kosovo, Bosnia and Bangladesh. Before leaving for humanitarian trips, Al-Rabiah routinely requested leave from his employer Kuwait Airlines, where he had worked since 1981.

For the first 30 minutes of our meeting Al-Rabiah, a serious and intense man, enthusiastically told me about his previous missions and expressed his view that as a wealthy Muslim country, Kuwait should help those less fortunate. “We are well off in comparison to other countries … We cannot see famine and natural disasters and do nothing about it.”

Al-Rabiah traveled to Afghanistan twice in 2001, July and October, for charitable reasons. He was on a fact-finding mission related to Afghanistan’s refugee problems and lack of medical infrastructure, he said. The government said that Al- Rabiah was a “devotee of Osama bin Laden who ran to bin Laden’s side after September 11.” The US court ruled that the evidence strongly supported Al-Rabiah’s story.

Al-Shammeri, 37, also said he traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 for charitable reasons — to teach Islamic law in Afghanistan. His life was “normal” before Guantánamo. He was married and had two children, who in 2001 were six and two years old.

He was an Islamic scholar and worked at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Kuwait. He was planning to get a master’s degree in Egypt, where he had paid registration dues. He was accepted, he later learned, the same day he was captured in Afghanistan. He was 28 years old at the time.

I met Al-Shammeri at Khaled Al-Odah’s house, where the former detainees meet on a regular basis for support. He is a tall, relaxed and very funny man who smiles without interruption. He understands basic English. He is far from fluent, but he said with time he understood all the jargon related to Guantánamo.

“Terrorists,” he said and laughs. “Guilty,” that word too he added. “They never used the word innocent.”

The US said Al-Shammeri was a member of al-Qaeda and one of his known aliases was on a list of hard drives associated with al-Qaeda.

Road to Guantánamo

In October Al-Rabiah entered Afghanistan through Iran, where he had been looking at the situation of Afghan refugees. “The day that I went into Afghanistan is the day the [American] bombing started. Of course this is all documented because I had the stamp,” he said. The US authorities later took possession of his passport and they saw the stamp, he added.

But when the bombing started, the Iranians closed the border. He decided he would try to leave Afghanistan through Pakistan and wrote a letter to his family about the situation.

Al-Rabiah said at the time he weighed 108 kilograms (240 pounds) and could not see at night, which made him ill-suited physically for the Afghan terrain. On December 25, he was captured in a village outside of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

The villagers took him to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, who he alleged tortured him. Al-Rabiah was in their custody he believes for about a month, and then, he alleges, the Northern Alliance sold him to the Americans for $5,000, the same price as his watch.

He was then sent to Bagram Air Base, a US military-controlled facility north of Kabul, where he said he was treated well. According to legal documents, at this point he told his family he was “detained by the American troops and thanks to God they are good example of humanitarian behavior.”

Al-Rabiah said he was told at Bagram that they were preparing for his transfer back to Kuwait, but that he would first need to move to Kandahar, Afghanistan. Al-Rabiah spent two and half months in Kandahar, where he alleges he was tortured.

“There are more ways of torturing a person than you can imagine,” he said.

A report by Human Rights Watch in 2004 [PDF] called attention to what it said was systemic abuse of detainees by US military and intelligence personnel.

Abuse of detainees in Afghanistan included being stripped, kicked and punched, being forced to endure freezing temperatures, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation and forcing detainees to sit or stand in painful positions for extended periods of time, according to HRW.

“Abuse of detainees was an established part of the interrogation process,” the report said.

If the US Department of Defense “receives specific, credible information of mistreatment by its personnel, those allegations are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated,” according to Lt. Col. Joseph Todd Breasseale, a defense spokesperson.

He added, the “DoD does not tolerate the mistreatment of detainees and will continue to ensure proper training and accountability measures.”

Al-Shammeri was also sent to Kandahar. Before he was captured he said he realized the situation in Afghanistan was becoming increasingly more dangerous. He heard that every Arab was wanted dead or alive and Arabs were being bought and sold. So he said decided to leave via Pakistan, where he was arrested trying to cross the border.

He said he turned himself in to the Pakistanis thinking they would contact Kuwait and send him back home. “What first comes to anyone’s mind is that once a citizen of any particular nation travels abroad … when a problem takes place, the logic dictates that he should be handed to his native country of origin and not to be extradited to a third party nation. That’s what anyone in their sane mind would think,” he said.

“If I only knew that this would have been the way, I’d have just gone in hiding.”

The Pakistani government told him that they were going to send him back home, Al- Shammeri said. But according to Al-Shammeri, US forces took him by plane to a military camp in Kandahar. Al-Shammeri said he had no recollection of time or place. He too alleges he was tortured in Kandahar.

He was interrogated and beaten. He says he did not know what was happening because he did not understand all of the English, his eyes were covered, his hands and feet were tied and all he heard was the voice of an Arab interrogator.

When he was leaving Kandahar, Al-Shammeri said he had no idea where he was going.

“They just recited my number … and they took me, shaved my head and then they tied me up and blindfolded me,” he said.

“While I was walking toward the plane, there was a female military personnel who took the mufflers off my ears and told me that I am going home, in English, she said, ‘you are going back to your home,’ then she put them back on and, for a second, I thought they are taking me back to Kuwait.”

However Al-Rabiah, who speaks fluent English, knew that none of the detainees would be going home. Everybody would be going to Guantánamo.

Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo

Al-Rabiah arrived in Cuba on May 1, 2002. His first impression of the place was “heaven,” he said compared to his detention in Afghanistan. The camp was clean. It was not blistering hot during the day and freezing at night like Afghanistan. There were no sandstorms and no planes taking off around the clock. They were allowed to shower.

He was told that they would not be held at Guantánamo for more than six months, which he thinks now was a tactic to keep them from rioting. “The first year in Cuba, I left my cell … for recreation only 24 hours for the whole year,” Al-Rabiah said. He passed his time by reading the Koran. He spent a lot of time in isolation.

He said early on he was told by a woman working at the camp, “We have nothing against you. We know nothing about you, but the president said there is no innocent [person] in Cuba.”

Al-Rabiah said she continued advising him: “You cannot leave here so confess to something so we can charge you, sentence you and you go home. But if we don’t charge you, sentence you, you are not leaving.”

Al-Rabiah said he thought it was crazy and that he was not going to play that game. “I said this is absurd … that was way in the beginning and then they changed the tactics and started the torture.”

The US court opinion — parts of which are redacted — which freed Al-Rabiah reads: “The following day marked a turning point in Al-Rabiah’s interrogations … After using a [redacted] … featuring … for approximately [redacted]. From that point forward, Al-Rabiah confessed to the allegations that interrogators described to him.”

I asked Al-Rabiah what changed and why he started to “confess.”

“I was threatened by two major things. First, they asked: ‘Would you like to go home a drug addict,’” Al-Rabiah said. Then they threatened to send him to a place where he would “disappear.”

He said that he believed that these were not empty threats and he believed that people were sent to other countries and were tortured and “those people when they came back from there they were different people.” They were broken “beyond repair.”

In response to a query from CNN about alleged renditions and drug abuse, CNN was referred to a report by the Department of Defense on detainee conditions which said: “It is our judgment that the conditions of confinement, in Guantánamo, are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,” which among other things prohibits violence to life and person and humiliating and degrading treatment.

In 2003, a US Justice Department memo by a Justice Department lawyer at the time, John Yoo, based on a previous memo to then attorney general Alberto Gonzales argued the drugs could be used on prisoners if the drugs did not “disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality,” and US law “does not preclude any and all use of drugs.”

Several released detainees have said they were drugged, according to media reports. The Department of Justice and the CIA denied the accusations, according to the Washington Post, which reported on allegations of detainees being drugged.

A US court said that threats against Al-Rabiah included “rendition to places where Al-Rabiah would either be tortured and/or would never be found,” and threats against him “were also reinforced by placing Al-Rabiah into the frequent flier program,” a sleep deprivation program where detainees were frequently moved from one cell to another.

Al-Rabiah concluded that if he resisted he was not going to be of any use to his family. But If he gave his captors what they wanted, he thought, “maybe I will be able to go back home and I will clear my name when I go back home. I reached a stage of desperation. I could not live any longer. I lost all hope. I had to play the game with them.” This is how his confessions were made, according to Al-Rabiah.

Al-Rabiah recounted the sort of questioning he faced. The interrogator would say:

“Fouad, you were with so and so, doing so and so.”

Al-Rabiah would say: “Yes I have been there.”

The interrogator said: “Did you see so and so person?”

Al-Rabiah would say: “I don’t know, did I?”

They said: “Yes you did.”

Al-Rabiah: “OK, I did.”

Interrogator: “What did you talk about?”

Al-Rabiah said the interrogators would also take him to a detainee recreation area to collect “intelligence” from other detainees, who knew that he was reporting it back to the interrogator.

“Can you believe that?” Al-Rabiah said. “This is the kind of intelligence gathering” they did. The US court noted Al-Rabiah once “made a full confession that is entirely different than his initial confession,” and “Al-Rabiah did not know what to admit” to.

Al-Shammeri, however, said he never “confessed,” even though he alleged he was tortured. “If I did confess, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, referring to Kuwait. But he too reached a point of desperation, not unlike Al-Rabiah’s.

Al-Shammeri said he was so desperate in 2005 that he went on a 100-day hunger strike which ended only when he was released. He also protested his detention in 2002 by refusing to eat.

Al-Shammeri denied all of the government’s claims against him.

According to a Department of Defense memorandum published by WikiLeaks, Al-Shammeri was alleged to have “received training on advanced counter-interrogation techniques, as well as above average terrorist training typically taught by al-Qaeda.”

According to court documents, Al-Shammeri said if he has wanted to kill Americans he did not need to travel to Afghanistan to do so as there were many Americans in Kuwait.

“If I wanted to fight with them, I would have fought them in Kuwait. You saw how people are bombing Americans in Saudi Arabia. If I had any hatred on my part, I would have done that to the Americans in Kuwait. There was no need for me to travel.”

Al-Shammeri said every time he was interrogated they would accuse him of something else (something Al-Rabiah said as well). For example, because he studied Islamic law, he said he was accused of being a Taliban judge, which he said would not be possible because he was in Afghanistan for such a brief time and because he did not speak the language.

He said he was tortured. “Yes, by God. I was tortured,” Al-Shammeri said. There are many ways of being tortured, he added, but he did not elaborate on specifics. “I believe that … if the devil would have been there and witnessed these torture sessions, he would … have said, ‘how would you come up with such twisted thoughts?’ Satan would say, ‘please come on.’ These thoughts would be even surprising to the Devil himself.”

In response to a query about detainee abuse, CNN was told via email by Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde of US Defense Operations: “The Department of Defense requires all its detention operations to meet a high standard of humane care and custody … We have updated our laws, policies, procedures and training to ensure respect for the dignity of every detainee in our custody.”

Life after Guantánamo

When Al-Rabiah returned to Kuwait he said he was warmly received. Those who knew him never thought he was guilty, he said. When repatriated, Al-Rabiah was supposed to — according to a US request — live in a rehabilitation center, according to David Cynamon, the lead lawyer for the Kuwaiti detainees.

Cynamon said the request was improper. “It would be like the US demanding conditions of parole on a prisoner that the court ordered released because the prisoner didn’t commit a crime.”

But Kuwaiti authorities decided there was no case against Al-Rabiah and they allowed him to go free.

Al-Rabiah returned to his job at Kuwait Airways. But he says he has lost so much.

While he was in Guantánamo his father died, his brother died, two uncles passed away and his mother had a stroke while he was away and could not speak to him when he returned.

“I lost the childhood of my children,” he said. His youngest child was six years old when he left, and 15 when he finally returned home.

Al-Rabiah said he was blessed that God kept him sane during his Guantánamo ordeal. But he is not a free man. Per a US request, he is monitored, has to regularly report to a security post and he cannot travel, according to Al-Rabiah. He fears that, if he doesn’t comply, the US will hold his actions against the remaining two Kuwaiti detainees.

Al-Shammeri also has the same restrictions, which he follows mainly for the same reasons. For him, the Guantánamo issue is not finished. Since he was released, he says he has continued to suffer because of the association. Unlike Al-Rabiah, he was not ordered released by the court but rather he was released because of a US government decision. The details of his release are unknown.

When Al-Shammeri, who now works for a private oil company in Kuwait, was told he was going to be released, officials at Guantánamo took his DNA and his photograph, he said. The guards presented him with a paper with a clause that they said Al-Shammeri had written, which he denied, and they wanted him to sign it.

The clause said if Al-Shammeri was found at any time to be with terror suspects, the US would be allowed to imprison him for life, according to Al-Shammeri. This was frightening to Al-Shammeri, who said the list of the American suspects is huge and he worried about what would happen if he was with a suspect but did not know it. He refused to sign the document.

“The situation in Guantánamo is wrong 100%,” Al-Shammeri said. “In my case, I don’t even know why I was transferred there and how and then I have no idea how I was released.” He continued, ” I am so confused … I never understood the guidelines they used to release the detainees,” Al-Shammeri said.

“No one should just rule on the go, as they please. They can’t just imprison whomever as they wish and when you ask about the charge, they say, ‘it is classified evidence that incriminates you.’ This is what opens new gateways to terrorize people under the pretext of the law and this is not the law in any way.”

At its peak, Guantánamo held at least 779 men. But over the years some 600 men have been sent to their country of origin or to a country willing to take them. There are now fewer than 200 held at the facility.

When asked what the US should do about alleged terrorists, people who are a security threat at Guantánamo, Al-Rabiah answered, “take them to trial, let justice take its route. If a person is a terrorist, kills innocent people, he should not be set free.” But, he added, “I was kept there for eight years … saying about me that I am the worst of the worst. Only when I went to court I was cleared.”

Al-Rabiah fears that the evidence against the two remaining Kuwaiti detainees in Guantánamo may be as weak as the evidence was against him. “If you [America] are sure they are bad people, don’t you trust your legal system … or is it justice only for US citizens … since when do people not have a right for justice … isn’t that what the US is known for?”

In Al-Rabiah’s case, the courts also ruled that “none of the alleged eyewitnesses have provided credible allegations against Al-Rabiah.”

Fawzi Al-Odah is one of those two Kuwait detainees being held. According to a Department of Defense memorandum published by WikiLeaks, at least one person who provided evidence against Al-Rabiah gave evidence against Al-Odah.

“YM-252 [Yasim Basardah, a Yemeni known as the most notorious liar in Guantánamo] stated detainee (Al-Odah) and Fuad Mahmud Hasan Al-Rabia assisted KU-552 [Fayiz al-Kandari] in the production and distribution of jihad videos in Kuwait. The videos were created to encourage people to provide contributions or to fight in Bosnia and Chechnya … YM-252 also reported detainee was well-connected to religious leaders in Kuwait, and stated detainee recruited young males in Kuwait to fight in Afghanistan. He also collected money that was then funneled to Afghanistan in support of KU-217 [Al-Shammeri].”

Khalid Al-Odah, Fawzi Al-Odah’s father, says he spoke to him on August 28, and he said his son was not well. Fawzi Al-Odah was on a long hunger strike, close to two months, and he was in isolation.

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Fawzi Al-Odah challenging his indefinite detention. Fawzi Al-Odah said he went to Afghanistan to do charity work, but the government claims he was associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Fayiz Al-Kandari, the other Kuwait detainee at Guantánamo, has an appeal in November in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but his lawyer is not hopeful about the case.

The main difficulty in defending the detainee cases is the government is allowed to rely entirely on hearsay, which is not normally admitted in the US courts, according to Cynamon, who also represents Al-Kandari.

“They don’t have to bring any witnesses who are subject to cross-examination.” The government can simply submit “raw intelligence reports which basically are the summary write-up of what an interrogator says, the detainee or what other people have said,” Cynamon said.

Khalid Al-Odah fears his son is being punished in part because Kuwait has an independent judiciary. The US cannot force Kuwait to hold former detainees in jail.

Here in Kuwait “you cannot bring someone and put in them in jail unless you try them,” Khalid Al-Odah said. But the US has decided to release detainees to other countries that can put anyone they want to in jail without reason, he added. He feels these countries, which lack proper judicial systems, are being rewarded.

He also does not know what more he can do to assist his son’s case.

Khalid Al-Odah was told that the US wanted to make sure that the two Kuwaiti detainees previously released, which included Al-Rabiah, were monitored and reported back often to the Kuwaiti authorities.

After four months, if the system was working, his son would be released. But time passed and the US said it would not release the remaining two Kuwaitis, including his son, for security reasons. Khalid Al-Odah was told that the US said they were very dangerous.

“But they will never tell you why,” Khalid Al-Odah said.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

An abhorrence of solitary confinement is central to my work — both for its inherent cruelty and because it is a form of torture — and I was delighted to read Professor Mendez’s comments, as I had the pleasure to meet him in January at an event on the future of Guantánamo and accountabiity for torture at the American University Washington College of Law, where he is a Visiting Professor of Law, when he delivered a powerful critique of the use of torture, and the need for the absolute ban on its use to be upheld.

Professor Mendez’s opinions are important, not just because he is a survivor of torture in Argentina, but because much of the solitary confinement in the world’s prisons is taking place in the United States, where he is currently based. Back in January, I thought how appropriate it was, given US history under the Bush administration, that the UN Rapporteur on Torture was based in America, and I remain convinced that it is appropriate, because, of course, lawyers in the Bush administration cynically and inappropriately attempted to redefine torture, and the use of torture was approved by senior officials, including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld — and also, of course, because President Obama has failed to hold any of his predecessors accountable for their crimes.

This year, Professor Méndez was refused permission to make a private visit to Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of leaking war documents, diplomatic cables and military files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners, which have all been released by WikILeaks. He told reporters on Tuesday that he he would be “releasing a report on Manning’s detention in the coming weeks,” and also stated, “On the one hand he is no longer in solitary confinement, although he spent something like eight months in solitary confinement. But when he was moved to Fort Leavenworth his regime changed.” He added, “On a daily basis he does communicate and socialize with other inmates in his same category which is a big improvement over the first 8 months.”

He also said that he was “following developments in the case closely, despite being refused a confidential meeting” with Manning. The Defense Department, he said, “agreed to let him visit Manning but would not guarantee the conversation would be private,” and as he explained, “Under the rules of the Special Rapporteur and the rules of all the special procedures, that is a condition that we cannot accept.” he added, “I nevertheless told Mr. Manning through his council that if he still wanted to see me I would make an exception, but he also chose not to waive his right to have a private conversation with me.”

Although it was disappointing that Professor Méndez was unable to meet privately with Bradley Manning, his report on solitary confinement last week provided another reason why it is appropriate that the UN Rapporteur on Torture is based in the US — because solitary confinement in America’s prisons is a huge problem,  and also, of course, because Guantánamo — another prison where solitary confinement has been the norm, rather than the exception — remains open. In his report, Professor Méndez explained that, referring to Guantánamo, experts found that, “although 30 days of isolation was the maximum period permissible, some detainees were returned to isolation after very short breaks over a period of up to 18 months.”

Although solitary confinement in America’s domestic prison system is generally not discussed widely, it has attracted mainstream attention this year through the hunger strikes that have taken place in California, initiated by prisoners in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit (SHU), where some prisoners have been held in solitary confinement for decades (as discussed in my articles here, here, here and here).

Addressing the UN General Assembly, Professor Méndez said, “Segregation, isolation, separation, cellular, lockdown, Supermax, the hole, Secure Housing Unit … whatever the name, solitary confinement should be banned by States as a punishment or extortion technique.” Stating that “the practice could amount to torture,” as the UN news release stated, he also said, “Solitary confinement is a harsh measure which is contrary to rehabilitation, the aim of the penitentiary system.”

He also explained, as the UN news release stated, that “indefinite and prolonged solitary confinement in excess of 15 days should also be subject to an absolute prohibition,” and he cited scientific studies, which have established that “lasting mental damage” can be caused after just a few days of total isolation.

In addition, he made a point of stating, “Considering the severe mental pain or suffering solitary confinement may cause, it can amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment when used as a punishment, during pre-trial detention, indefinitely or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles.”

He added that solitary confinement “should be used only in very exceptional circumstances and for as short a time as possible,” as the UN news release explained. “In the exceptional circumstances in which its use is legitimate, procedural safeguards must be followed. I urge States to apply a set of guiding principles when using solitary confinement.” Later, he stated that these circumstances “could include the protection of inmates in cases where they are gay, lesbian or bisexual or otherwise threatened by prison gangs.”

The UN news release noted that, although there is “no universal definition for solitary confinement,” Professor Méndez “defined it as any regime where an inmate is held in isolation from others, except guards, for at least 22 hours a day,” and he specifically noted that, in the US, “an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 individuals are being held in isolation,” which may be a low estimate, as it seems to refer only to those in superman prisons, and. as Kevin Gosztola explained in July, in an article for FireDogLake, “Tens of thousands more are held in solitary confinement in lockdown units within other prisons and jails. There’s no up-to-date nationwide count, but according to best estimates, there are at least 75,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day in America.”

Warning of “an increased risk of torture” in cases of solitary confinement “because of the absence of witnesses,” he also noted that some prisoners were “held in solitary confinement facilities for years, without any charge and without trial, as well as in secret detention centres,” citing his home country, Argentina, where “a prevention of violent behaviour programme consists of isolation for at least nine months and, according to prison monitors, is frequently extended,” Kazakhstan,  where solitary confinement “can last for more than two months,” China, where an individual sentenced for “unlawfully supplying State secrets or intelligence to entities outside China” was “held in solitary confinement for two years of her eight-year sentence,” and, returning to the US, Louisiana, where two prisoners have been held in solitary confinement for 40 years.

In conclusion, Professor Méndez told the General Assembly, “Social isolation is one of the harmful elements of solitary confinement and its main objective.” He added that it “reduces meaningful social contact to an absolute minimum,” also noting that a significant number of those held in solitary confinement would “experience serious health problems regardless of specific conditions of time, place, and pre-existing personal factors.”

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.