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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.

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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 time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 24 of the 70-part series. 304 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, this latest ten-part series covers the stories of the 111 prisoners released in 2006 (and the three who died at the prison in June 2006) and readers will, I hope, realize that almost all of these prisoners were freed because of political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice. The largest groups released by nationality in 2006 were Saudis (45 in total — 15 in May 2006, 14 in June and 16 in December) and Afghans (35 in total — 7 in February, 5 in August, 16 in October and 7 in December).

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.

For further information, also see Part One (which contained eleven stories about prisoners from a variety of countries, mostly captured in Afghanistan, and including Yasser al-Zahrani, who died in Guantánamo in June 2006), and Part Two (which featured another eleven stories, mostly of prisoners who survived the Qala-i-Janghi massacre in northern Afghanistan in November 2001). Part Three featured another eleven stories, including some examples of prisoners who “returned to the battlefield” after their release, and the story of a Libyan prisoner whose fie is full of statements made by other Libyans, including Abdelhakim Belhaj, now active as a commander of the Libyan rebels, who were subjected to extraordinary rendition and torture in secret CIA prisons, before they were returned to Libya and imprisoned by Colonel Gaddafi. This fourth part tells eleven more stories, of prisoners seized, for a variety of reasons, crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan after the US-led invasion in October 2001. Also see Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine and Part Ten.

The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Four of Ten)

Mohammed Al Asadi (ISN 198, Yemen) Released December 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (5) – Escape to Pakistan (The Yemenis),” I explained how Mohammed al-Asadi, who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, was seized crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and was one of six prisoners transferred to Yemeni custody in December 2006 (and the only one of the six who was cleared for immediate release by the US authorities).

At Guantánamo, he was accused of traveling to Afghanistan in March 2001 “to fight the jihad,” serving as a guard at a Taliban center, and fighting for a month and a half with a Taliban group consisting mainly of Pakistanis, but in response, having agreed to attend his tribunal hearing to make a statement, he proceeded to say, “I do not wish to make a statement because there’s no use in making a statement or defending myself.” He added, “I have many statements and evidence and information that I could present, but there is no use in presenting them because you have classified information that I cannot see or look at to defend myself against them. There is no point in me saying anything.”

After this succinct demolition of the tribunals’ inbuilt bias, he said, “I don’t have any response” to all the allegations in the Unclassified Summary, and it was left to his Personal Representative (the military official assigned to the prisoners in place of a lawyer) to state that he had been “very cooperative” and had “exhibited very good behavior” during his pre-CSRT interviews, that he had stated that he had never fought against the United States, and that he wished to point out that “he was with the Taliban before they fought against the US or the Northern Alliance.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Asadi was a “Recommendation to Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country (TR),” dated September 17, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in July 1979, and had “a history of renalithasis,” but was otherwise “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, after graduating from high school in 1999, he worked for four months as the assistant manager for a real estate company, then quit and drove a bus owned by his family for another six months, until that vehicle was sold. While unemployed, he attended a lecture at a mosque in which a man named Muktar spoke about “the living conditions of Muslims worldwide, specifically regarding the Palestinian situation,” and afterwards, when he “expressed his interest in helping Muslims,” Muktar told him “it was impossible to help the Palestinians,” and “instructed [him] to travel to Afghanistan, to fight in a jihad against [Ahmed Shah] Massoud’s [Northern Alliance] forces and to assist the Taliban government in the construction of an Islamic state.”

Having arranged his transport, Muktar sent al-Asadi on a well-worn route to Afghanistan, via Karachi and Quetta in Pakistan, despite his family’s objections, at the end of March 2001. After arriving at a guesthouse behind the front lines in Kabul, he said that he told the man in charge of the guesthouse, Abu al-Laith (possibly Abu Laith al-Libi, a veteran of the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union, who was reportedly killed in a drone strike in Pakistan in January 2008), that he had “handled weapons in Yemen, that he was experienced with the Kalashnikov rifle, and that he intended to stay in Afghanistan for about four months.” He added that the Taliban “used simple and unorganized tactics, which did not require him to have had prior training,” and that the center he was staying in “was never attacked and was basically used for support.”

In his six weeks at the center, he said that he was frequently given guard duty to perform, and, interestingly, added that a “group of Arabs performing charity missions would periodically visit the guesthouse” and “talk with [him] about the Taliban fighting against other Muslims.” After a number of these meetings, he said, “the group convinced [him] to leave the center and join their mission.” He said that he “was permitted to turn in his weapon, join the charity group, and move to an abandoned house, where he loaded trucks and moved supplies.” It was there, he said, that he heard about the 9/11 attacks, and he then traveled to Jalalabad, “where he was arrested by the Northern Alliance and taken to Kabul, AF, only to be released later.”

He then left for Pakistan with an unidentified “group,” traveling with a guide who “informed them that a group in the mountains of Tora Bora, AF, could provide safe passage to Islamabad,” and said that, despite heavy US bombing in the mountains, he and approximately 20 others “arrived in an unidentified Pakistani village, where they rested,” but were then “taken to a large mosque in the village, where the Pakistani police detained the group and transported them to a jail outside of Peshawar.” They were then supposed to be taken by bus to another prison, but “passengers of one of the buses rioted” and “some of the prisoners escaped,” so the buses returned to Peshawar. The prisoners were then taken to a Pakistani military prison, where al-Asadi stayed for 15 days, and was then handed over to US forces and taken to the US prison at Kandahar airport.

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 6, 2002, apparently because of his “ability to provide information on: A possible Al-Qaida or Taliban recruiter and travel facilitator named Muktar, A Taliban safehouse in Quetta, PK, The area of the front located north of Kabul, AF [and] Taliban and Al-Qaida activities in the Tora Bora Region 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-Qaeda and Taliban suspects” were widespread.

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that, although he “participated in jihad, obtained false passports [for his travel to Afghanistan], and trained with the Taliban,” he had been “cooperative and consistent.” It was also noted that his “intelligence value ha[d] been substantially, if not fully, exploited,” and that JTF GTMO had assessed that there was “little or no additional relevant information to be gained” from him, and had determined that he was “of low intelligence value.”

It was also noted that, in Guantánamo, his “overall behaviour ha[d] been generally non-compliant and aggressive,” and he “only had a limited number of passive-aggressive incidents,” and, moreover, that “further confinement may only lead to greater disdain for the US and its allies.”

The Task Force concluded that he had been assessed as “not a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network,” adding that his “youth, unemployment, and uncertainty about his future goals allowed him to be easily influenced, making him a prime candidate for jihad.” It was also noted that he “apparently had high expectations of the Taliban, only to discover that it did not offer what he expected.” The Task Force also expressed some doubt about his claim that the Taliban allowed him to leave the front lines to do charitable work, noting that, according to other accounts, “individuals who fled the front lines were shot,” although it was also noted that “this was prior to 11 September 2001, and the detainee’s role in the Taliban was not of great importance.” As a result, he was determined to pose “a low risk, as he is not likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “released or transferred to the control of another country.”

On his release, two years and three months later, he was the only one of the six prisoners returned to be freed immediately, and he told Gulf News that “he was released because there was no charge against him and that his file was found ‘clear.’” He also said that, “[b]efore being released, he signed a paper here that he would not participate in any armed activity,” and explained, “Now, I’m going to start a normal life, to find a job, to get married, and generally settle down.”

In January 2007, he spoke to Gulf News again, explaining that a new hunger strike has started at Guantánamo just before his release, and that it had started “mainly because of harassment while praying or while reading the Quran.” Al-Asadi added, “The soldiers interrupt the brothers from time to time even while praying, they inspect the Quran, they inspect their private organs, only to create psychological pressure on them.” He also explained that “the treatment in general [had] become very bad in terms of food, clothes, medicines, blankets,” as Gulf News described it. “They take the blankets at dawn when it’s extremely cold,” he said.

Finally, when asked “why the Americans released him and the other five inmates,” he said, “They told us your release is a special favor to the six of you.” He added that “he refused to sign a US paper pledging he would not join Al-Qaida or the Taliban,” and explained, “They told me that I no longer pose a threat to them but they asked me to sign a paper, which says if you join Al-Qaida and or Taliban, then US has the right to arrest you once again. But I refused to sign that paper. I said I’m now like anyone outside the prison, I’m innocent.” He also said that “the US government had asked the Yemeni authorities to put them in prison,” noting, “There was an agreement between them and our government that we be sent to a prison not to our homes, but I don’t know about how long they agreed we should stay in prison before being released.” This was interesting, as it did not apply to him, but it was probable that the US authorities tried to putt pressure on the Yemeni government to keep the other five in prison, as had happened with the few men released previously.

In conclusion, he explained, in a version of the article in the Yemen Observer, that “he was exposed to less abuse than others during investigations in Guantánamo. “They used to interrogate me every month, but for the last year and a half I have had no more interviews at all,” he said. “The reason for that is that they collected information about me from other various sources and found I did nothing. I told them explicitly that I came to Afghanistan for Jihad. I did not kill Americans; I went there before Americans came. So they had nothing against me to say that I had killed Americans or any of their allies. They had no hard evidence to bring me to court.”

He added, “They care for the truth, yes, but they do not believe the man — any man – - was not fighting. They do not believe he entered for anything else. They have an idea that any Arab in Afghanistan or Pakistan is a terrorist.” He also explained that, before leaving Guantánamo, the prisoners “were allowed to call lawyers, but he “did not call any because he had never organized any lawyer before as he thought the issue was only political and could not be solved by courts.” “I told them the lawyer is American, the judge is American, the jailer is American, and the opponent is American,” he said.

Abdullah Al Yamani (ISN 206, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdullah al-Yamani, who was 34 years old at the time of his capture, was accused in his review board at Guantánamo of knowing both Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, who was killed in 2006) and the torture victim and CIA “ghost prisoner” Abu Zubaydah. He denied the allegations, and spoke very little about his time in Afghanistan, much of which was apparently spent in a safehouse in Kabul.

It also transpired that he was a survivor of what has become known as the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, when, he said, he was shot in the leg. The massacre took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan, where hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers (and some civilians swept up by mistake) were taken by General Rashid Dostum’s Northern Alliance forces after surrendering as part of the fall of Kunduz, the last Taliban-held city in the north, at the end of November 2001. Most of these men died after some staged an uprising, which was put down with savage force, and the 86 survivors huddled underground in a basement, as the Northern Alliance and their US allies bombed them, attempted to set them on fire, and finally flooded the basement. 100 to 130 prisoners died in the flooding, and, in total, it is estimated that at least 360 prisoners in total were killed in the massacre.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Yamani was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated December 16, 2005, in which he was also identified as Abdullah Muhammed Abdel Aziz and Abdullah Mohammad Mohammad Yahia al-Edaini, and it was noted that he was born in 1976. It was also noted that he was “in good health,” although he had a “history of GSW [gunshot wound] to left foot prior to his detention,” had been “evaluated by orthopaedic surgery and podiatry,” had “a history of haemorrhoids,” and “went on hunger strike in July 2005.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he had left secondary school without graduating, had worked for a while as a receptionist, and had then secured work with his father, and that, while obviously unsure about his future, he met a man named Ibrahim at a mosque in Medina who “explained verses of the Koran, which mandated that a Muslim’s duty was ‘to prepare himself to stand against anyone who is against Islam,’” and told him “he could get free training, specifically on the Kalashnikov, in Afghanistan.” He said that he left for Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, “with travel instructions from lbrahim,” but “no contact information,” because, he said, the “Arabs would provide him with the guidance he needed.”

Taking a land route via Iran, rather than flying to Karachi, he arrived in Kabul, via Herat and a guesthouse in Kandahar, and undertook training at a camp outside Kabul that was identified as the Malek Center, where he stayed between four and six weeks. He claimed he was taken to the front lines twice, “but was not issued a weapon, remained in the rear, and did not fight,” and also claimed that, after training, he stayed in the Kabul guesthouse until “he heard that Kabul was to be bombed by US forces,” when “he reportedly fled to Kunduz,” and stayed in another guesthouse, before surrendering to General Dostum’s forces at Mazar-e-Sharif.

Describing the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, and al-Yamani’s experience of it, the Task Force noted, “A riot erupted; detainee was shot in the leg and then escaped to the basement of the castle to hide. He denied taking an active role in the uprising. After several days [actually a week], the group was allowed to surrender and the Red Cross treated detainee. He was taken to a jail in Sheberghan, AF, and delivered to US custody on 01 January 2002″ in Kandahar. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 21, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban safe house used for mission planning and rest in the city of Kunduz, AF [and] Taliban controlled farm on the outskirts of Kabul, AF, where small arms training was conducted.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he had “provided incomplete accounts of his activities,” which made it “difficult to assess his true role within the jihadist network.” It was assessed that he had probably attended a basic training camp before the Malek Center, but facts were elusive. He was, however, assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” even though it was acknowledged that there was “no evidence” to indicate that he “had direct access to leadership” (which perhaps helps to evaluate how generally insignificant “medium” is in this context) and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” primarily because he was assessed as “an Al-Qaida member who received militant training at an Al-Qaida supported training camp in Afghanistan and resided in several Taliban/Al-Qaida guesthouses.” He was also assessed as being “a moderate threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been non-compliant, yet non-hostile to the guard force and staff.”

However, what probably counted most in his favor was that, “After the July 2002 Saudi delegation visit, detainee was identified by the Saudi Ministry of Interior, General Directorate of Investigations (Mabahith) as one of the seventy-seven Saudi nationals of low intelligence and law enforcement value to the US Government but of whom [sic] the Saudi Government would attempt to prosecute if transferred to their custody from JTF GTMO.”

This, in turn, presumably led to the Task Force observing that, although Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for “Continued Detention Under DoD Control,” updating a similar recommendation on May 21, 2004, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, detainee can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO). A visiting Saudi delegation indicated that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of detainee for possible prosecution.”

Anwar Al Nurr (ISN 226, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In Chapter 6 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Anwar al-Nurr, a teacher who was 24 years old at the time of his capture, was one of three humanitarian aid workers arrested in Pakistan, despite only traveling to Afghanistan for charitable purposes. After watching TV footage of refugees fleeing to the Iranian border after the US-led invasion began, he and school principal Rashid al-Qa’id (ISN 344, see Part Six of this series), and another teacher, Wasim al-Omar (ISN 338, also see Part Six), decided to travel to the border to provide humanitarian aid. After spending a few days in Afghanistan, when they distributed money in refugee camps, they were not allowed back into Iran “due to prejudice; we were Sunni and they were Shiite.” They then stayed for a month in a hotel on the border, “trying and failing multiple times” to re-enter Iran, before deciding that their only hope was to cross into Pakistan.

Al-Omar explained that when they reached the border, the police told them to “go in an unofficial way, by bribing them,” but they refused because they wanted their actions to be legal. As a result, when they passed through a checkpoint, “They took my passport and that’s when [we were] put in prison for no reason.” Describing his feelings about being sold, he said that he heard that the going rate was between $5,000 and $8,000 a head, and explained, “It’s a hard truth when human beings are sold and bought. That makes us go all the way back, when humans had no value. It’s a shame for all human beings in general, and all the people who believe in human rights.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Nurr was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated April 28, 2006, in which he was identified as Anwar al-Nur and Anwar al-Shammeri, and it was noted that he was born in November 1969, and, if this was correct, was therefore not 24 years old when he was seized, but 32 years old. It was also noted that, in common with many of the prisoners, he had latent TB,” and it was also noted that he had “a hernia repair and nose surgery, both prior to detainment,” and that, in Guantánamo, he was being “followed by psychiatry for adjustment disorder,” and he “went on a hunger strike in September 2005.” Elsewhere, it was stated that he “participated in the July and August to September total voluntary fasts,” and, on August 13, 2005, “turned in all of his comfort items declaring, ‘I want to live like my brothers,’ referring to the non-compliant detainees in Camps 2/3.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he “graduated from the Islamic University of Medina, SA, in 1994 and taught religion in Al-Jawf, SA” until 1997, when he “left teaching and went to work in an administrative position at the AI-Jawf Board of Education,” until, in 2000, he “took a leave of absence to travel to Afghanistan (AF) to do charity work.”

Al-Nurr said that, in July 2001, after meeting Ziyad al-Harbi, a humanitarian aid worker in his hometown, who worked with the organization Al-Ighatha (“Aid,” in Arabic, and almost certainly Al-Wafa, the Saudi charity regarded as a front for terrorism, although this was never proved), he confided in this man that he had “decided to take a leave of absence from his job and travel abroad to do charity work in accordance with the mandates of the Koran.” This man told him about his work as an Al-Ighatha volunteer, and he decided to go to Khost, in Afghanistan, to volunteer on behalf of Al-Ighatha In October 2001, traveling with al-Harbi and two other friends, identified as Otaibi (not identified further) and Wasem (presumably Wasim al-Omar).

The men arrived in Herat, Afghanistan, via Iran, and al-Nurr then left Otaibi and Wasem in Herat to do charity work with Al-Ighatha, while he and al-Harbi traveled to Khost, where they met a man named Muhammed al-Harbi who was not identified further, but may have been a relative of Ziyad’s. Al-Nurr and Ziyad then stayed in a house rented by Muhammed and another man, Abdallah al-Juhani, “working with orphans for a little over a month,” until, sometime on November 2001, he “departed Khost because it had become too dangerous to work there any longer.”

He said that he and approximately eight other people then traveled to the border with Pakistan, where they “encountered a Pakistani Army Unit and gave themselves up.” He was then turned over to US forces in Kohat on January 2, 2002, and flown to Kandahar, and was sent to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Activities in Ceuta, Spain [and] Ahmad Abd al-Rahman Ahmd ISN US9SP-000267DP [aka Ahmad Abd al-Rahman Ahmad or Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad, ISN 267, released in February 2004, and profiled here].

This should have been a straightforward story, but as the reasons for transfer noted above indicate, al-Nurr’s story was regarded as deeply suspicious by the Task Force, which assessed him as “a probable member of Al- Qaida,” who used “a standard Al-Qaida cover story to explain his presence in an area highly populated with jihadists.” It was also claimed that his name “was found on Al-Qaida associated documents,” that “he was captured with a senior Al-Qaida operative and other Al-Qaida members,” and that he had “a history of support to violent jihad.”

To reach these conclusions, the Task Force claimed that “[a]ctual events” (whatever that means) “place[d]” al-Nurr as part of “a group of individuals who crossed in the Nangarhar region of the Afghani-Pakistani border in mid-December 2001,” which was “assessed to be the group of Al-Qaida affiliated fighters led out of Tora Bora by Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi [aka Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a CIA "ghost prisoner" who was eventually returned to Libya, where he died in May 2009, and who was given the ISN number 212, even though he was never officially held at Guantánamo].

According to the Task Force, this was the group welcomed by Pakistani villagers, but then told to congregate in a mosque, “where they were immediately surrounded by Pakistani forces and hauled away in large trucks,” although it is unclear how, in the chaos of capture, US forces could be clear that al-Nurr was in that particular group, as no one in Guantánamo could be persuaded to claim that they had been with him. In fact, the only person in Guantánamo who claimed to have seen him anywhere was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252), a Yemeni renowned as the most prolific and unreliable informant in Guantánamo, responsible for providing false information about many dozens of his fellow prisoners, who identified al-Nurr as Anwar al-Joyfey (aka al-Jawf or al-Joufi) and claimed that he had been in Tora Bora (the site of a showdown between Al-Qaida and US forces in November and December 2001) with another prisoner, Khalid al-Barakat (ISN 322), who was released in September 2007.

As an example of how difficult it is to be sure of the truth when it comes to the capture of the prisoners sent to Guantánamo, al-Nurr’s file also noted that, from the mosque, a prisoner on one of the trucks “attacked a guard leading to a struggle in which six Pakistani guards were killed and some prisoners were able to escape,” but this was simply not true, as this incident took place on a bus, and also took place several days after the men’s initial capture, when the intention was to transfer them to another prison.

Primarily, the Task Force’s suspicions about al-Nurr were aroused because the Saudi authorities claimed that his statement that “he took a leave of absence from work to perform humanitarian work” was not true, and that “his leave of absence was denied and he simply left his job and the country.” Even if true, this does not prove that he left for jihad, but what also caused consternation to the Task Force were claims that his name was found on various documents associated with Al-Qaida, and that “his pocket litter contained numerous names and phone numbers that require further exploitation, although some are known to belong to Al-Qaida members.”

The reference to his name being found on documents (from computers seized in house raids) surfaces in many other prisoners’ files, and is problematical primarily because some of these involve lists of alleged fighters compiled after the prisoners’ capture, presumably based on information that was leaked by the Pakistani authorities, and that was then made available by pro-jihadi sites on the Internet, even though the decision to describe them as fighters may only have been propaganda by those seeking to use the captured men for their own ends.

As for the pocket litter, that was superficially more troubling, as it was alleged that al-Nurr had pieces of paper with the names of some of his fellow prisoners, who were identified by the Task Force as having connections to Al-Qaida. The prisoners were Abdullah al-Wafti (ISN 262, released in November 2007), Ziyad al-Bahuth (ISN 272, released in December 2007, who was misidentified as Ziad Il Bihawith), Mohammed El-Gharani (ISN 269, a former child prisoner released after winning his habeas corpus petition in 2009, and misidentified as Yousef al-Qarani), and, as noted above, Ahmad Abd al-Rahman Ahmad, (ISN 267), the Spanish prisoner also identified as Hamed Abderrahman Ahmad, who was released in 2004.

All of these men were described either as “assessed Al-Qaida operatives” (al-Wafti and al-Bahuth), “an assessed Islamic extremist with close ties to Al-Qaida (El-Gharani), and an Al-Qaida recruit who was “groomed to lead an Al-Qaida cell in Spain” (Ahmad), but all of the above is nonsense. The first two men claimed that they were in Afghanistan for humanitarian aid, Mohammed El-Gharani’s alleged Al-Qaida ties consisted of being involved in an Al-Qaeda cell in London when he was eleven years old and had never left Saudi Arabia, and Ahmad was cleared by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2006.

Nevertheless, despite having nothing resembling evidence to confirm that al-Nurr was a threat, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “a moderate threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and sometimes hostile to the guard force and staff.”

The Task Force also noted that, although the Saudi Mabahith had “provided information on thirty-seven detainees whom they designated as high priority,” creating a list on which he “was twenty-second,” Saudi intelligence then revised their opinion, and it was noted, “After the 2002 Saudi delegation visit detainee was identified by Mabahith as one of the 77 Saudi nationals of low intelligence and law enforcement value to the US Government but whom the Saudi Government would attempt to prosecute if transferred to their custody from Guantanamo Bay.” Crucially, however, an analyst noted that “JTF GTMO does not concur with the Saudi Government assessment of detainee’s threat and intelligence value.”

As a result, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended him for continued detention at Guantánamo, updating a previous assessment to retain him under DoD control, which was dated August 23, 2005, although it was noted that, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, detainee can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).” Of significance was the Saudi delegation’s indication “that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of detainee for possible prosecution.”

Salah Al Balushi (ISN 227, Bahrain) Released October 2006

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Salah al-Balushi (also identified as Salah al-Blooshi), who was 20 years old at the time of his capture, went to Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission, although, in Guantánamo, he was obliged to fend off all manner of allegations about his purported associations with Al-Qaida. I also noted that he had not spoken since his release.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Balushi was a “Recommendation to Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated November 17, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in December 1981, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he “played guitar for a Reggae band in Bahrain prior to his conversion to the strict Salafi sect of Islam in the second year of high school, aged 17,” and that, in 2001, he was a student at a religious college in Medina when he became interested in the Taliban’s destruction of the ancient Buddha statutes in Bamiyan province, and decided to visit the country. Using money saved from his student allowance, and having informed his father of the trip, he set off for Balochistan province (via Karachi) in July 2001, staying with a friend for three weeks, and then traveling on to Kandahar, where he had been given a contact, and then Kabul, where he had been given another contact.

According to his account, he then “became very sick and required hospitalization for approximately 1.5 months.” When he was discharged, he “made the decision to leave because of the dangerous atmosphere in Kabul.” However, although he had left his passport for safekeeping at the house where he had been staying, another patient told him that he had heard that this man, Muhjin Al-Taifi, had left for Jalalabad. After traveling to Jalalabad, he said, “he became sick again,” and “spent another month in a hospital,” and then made his way with another man, Abu Yayha al-Masri, to the Pakistani border “without reacquiring his passport,” and was “captured in a village just inside Pakistan by the Pakistani army,” and “turned over to US custody on 2 January 2002 from Kohat, PK.” After being held in Afghanistan for five months, he was sent to Guantánamo on May 1, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “to provide information on the following: Various safe houses throughout Afghanistan and the persons who ran them [and] General information on routes of ingress and egress for Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he was “a probable member of Al-Qaida,” whose “[f]ew admitted associates ha[d] significant roles and responsibilities within Al-Qaida,” and it was also claimed that his name “was found on several documents recovered from Al-Qaida safe houses which list detainee among other Al-Qaida members.” I highlighted the problem with this latter claim in the profile of Anwar al-Nurr (above), and when it comes to the claim that al-Balushi was “a probable member of Al-Qaida,” the main grounds for this presumption were the alleged Al-Qaida connections of the people he stayed with in Balochistan, Kandahar and Kabul, which does not establish much about al-Balushi himself, especially as there are no claims that he undertook training or ever took up arms against US or coalition forces.

With nothing else to go on, the Task Force assessed al-Balushi 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.” He was also “assessed as a moderate threat from a detention perspective,” as his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant, but rarely hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, after pointing out that he had previously been recommended to be retained under DoD control (on February 18, 2005), Maj. Gen. Hood noted that, based upon unspecified information obtained since his previous assessment, it was now recommended that he be “Transferred to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” but only “[i]f a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence.” It was also noted, “If a satisfactory agreement cannot be reached for his continued detention, he should be Retained under DoD control (CD).”

Prior to his release, on July 23, 2006, one of his lawyers, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, described his “last interrogation” in an article in Gulf Daily News. After stating that “the camp authorities acknowledge[d] that 75% of the detainees [we]re no longer interrogated,” he “estimated that even fewer detainees [we]re currently being interrogated than US spokesmen acknowledged,” and explained that al-Balushi had “not been interrogated at all in 2006,” and that, during his last interrogation, he “was asked about his activities in the war in Bosnia in 1995. Salah responded that he had been aged 14 in 1995 and wasn’t anywhere near Bosnia. When Salah refused to get into a long discussion in response to such a silly question, his interrogator said that he didn’t want Salah to stay at Guantánamo until his hair turned white. Salah understood this statement as a threat.”

Abdullah Kamel Al Kandari (ISN 228, Kuwait) Released September 2006

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdullah al-Kandari, who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, was an engineer for the ministry of water and electricity and a father of four, and was also a well-known figure in Kuwait, as he played volleyball for the national team.

In Guantánamo, he said that he was moved by the plight of refugees fleeing to Iran after the US-led invasion began. He took a ten-day vacation and traveled to the Afghan border, where he gave $15,000 to a humanitarian aid worker who bought food and blankets for the refugees, but when he tried to return to Iran he was told that the borders were closed to Arabs. His Afghan guide then took him to Jalalabad, to look for a way into Pakistan. Describing what happened next, al-Kandari said, “He put me in a home and he went back to the border. They told him, no, I couldn’t leave the country because I am Arabic. I was then moved from home to home. The problems got worse. The people there wanted to kill Arabs. I was told to be careful and don’t go anywhere. I was always stuck in a small room and never went out.

When his guide gave up on the legal approach, he found two men to take him to the border, who seem to have betrayed him for money. After keeping him in a house for a few days, they took him to the mosque where dozens of others were taken by local villagers, and it was here that he was handed over to the Pakistani army.

In an article based on an interview with al-Kandari for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released  Guantánamo prisoners in 2008, it was noted, by Tom Lasseter, that, in his tribunal at Guantánamo, he “listened to three pieces of evidence that, combined with classified information that he wasn’t allowed to see, formed the US government’s case that he was an enemy combatant who could be held indefinitely.” Lasseter noted that, although some prisoners were accused of “having ties to Al-Qaida leaders, working with charities that funded terrorist attacks, taking part in battles against American forces in Afghanistan, having advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, training at terrorist camps,” al-Kandari “wasn’t one of them.”

He added, “It isn’t possible to be certain why he went to Afghanistan in September 2001 — he claims it was for charity — but the evidence against him that day was thinner than what was presented against men who were released months, sometimes years, before he was.”

He also explained that the first piece of evidence was that al-Kandari “traveled to Afghanistan, via Iran, in late September 2001 with $15,000 in cash,” which he acknowledged as true, but stated that he had traveled to Afghanistan “to fulfill his Islamic duty to charity and had given all but $2,000 of the money to Afghan families.”

The second and third allegations were even more ridiculous. One involved a claim — aired against many prisoners — that he “wore the same model Casio watch that Al-Qaida members used to detonate bombs,” and the third was that an alias of his ”was found on a computer owned by a senior Al-Qaida leader.” In attempting to unravel this mystery, al-Kandari asked, “Can you tell me the name that was found in the computer?” but was told, “We don’t have that information in the unclassified evidence,” by the tribunal president, a US Air Force colonel.

As Tom Lasseter described it, al-Kandari “tried to guess what the alias might have been, but he got no response from the three officers, according to the transcript. ‘Why he put my name in the computer, I don’t know. They don’t know me; I swear they don’t know me … The problem is the secret information; I can’t defend myself,’ Kandari said.”

The tribunal, of course, duly ruled that al-Kandari was an enemy combatant, and, as Lasseter noted, in his review board hearing the year after, more unsubstantiated and irrefutable allegations were made: that “he attended basic training held by Libyans in Afghanistan in 2000, that he had connections to Al-Qaida members and that he knew someone in Kuwait who’d been described as a legal adviser and friend of Osama bin Laden.” As Lasseter also explained, it wasn’t clear where the additional charges came from, and Tom Wilner, his lawyer at the time, “said that when he saw the new allegations from the review board he went to review classified intelligence files that should have had information substantiating the charges. But, he said, there was nothing new in those files. Wilner said he was left to assume that the charges were the result of other detainees who were trying to gain favor with interrogators — and quicker release — fabricating stories about their cellmates.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Kandari was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated December 27, 2005, in which he was also identified as Abdullah Kamel Abdullah, and it was noted that he was born in September 1973. It was also noted that his “in processing BMI [body mass index] on 11 Feb 02 was 20%,” that he had an allergy to soybean oil, peanuts and corn,” and that he “went on hunger strike in October 2002 and September 2005.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he “was employed at the Kuwaiti Electric and Water Institute, where he supervised employees conducting potable water line repair and monitoring the mineral composition of the water,” but that, after September 11, 2001, he decided that “he wanted to help the children and the poor in Afghanistan,” and visited a mosque where an Afghan man, Kulaam, provided him with a letter of introduction and an address in Herat. He then traveled to Afghanistan with the $15,000 mentioned above, flying to Iran, and then traveling by taxi to Herat, where, he said, he spent two weeks “purchasing and distributing 13,000 USD worth of humanitarian supplies to nearby refugees,” using “rented vehicles to distribute the supplies to refugees on the Afghanistan and Iran border.”

Al-Kandari said that “he tried returning home to Kuwait several times, but was repeatedly denied entrance at the Iranian border despite having entered Afghanistan legally.” He then gave up, travelling to Jalalabad,where he stayed for up to two months, and then “paid 100 USD to Afghani guides to smuggle him into Pakistan,” and was “arrested at a mosque on 17 December 2001″ with others caught fleeing Afghanistan. As the Task Force noted, he “was captured without documentation, which he claim[ed] was lost during his travels,” and he also “denied he was acquainted with the individuals with whom he was captured.”

The Pakistani authorities subsequently transferred him to US custody on January 2, 2002 at Kohat, and he was then flown to the US-run “Kandahar Detention Center.” He was sent to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Safe houses in Jalalabad and Herat [and] Additional information on his activities in Afghanistan between 1 September and 30 December 2001 in Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Joint Task Force refused to accept the thinness of the allegations against him, claiming that his story of “performing charity work in Afghanistan [was] a common cover story for Arab fighters,” and also noting that he had “omitted details of places and individuals met during the approximately 100 days spent in Afghanistan, especially his time in Jalalabad.”

In attempting to defend this position, the Task Force claimed that Adel al-Zamel (ISN 568, released in November 2005) said that al-Kandari had traveled to Afghanistan previously, in 2000, allegedly for “training,” but there is no way of knowing how accurate this was. Certainly, the Task Force suggested, as they did with most of the Kuwaitis, that they had all “possibly brought funds to the Al-Wafa non-governmental organization (NGO) in Kabul,” which was regarded as a front for terrorism, although this was never proved. Probably the most troubling allegation against al-Kandari was an unattributed claim that he “was with his cousin Faiz Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari [ISN 552, still held] in Tora Bora in November 2001 when they requested to meet and possibly travel with UBL [Osama bin Laden],” although this also seems dubious, as does further information — an analyst’s note, for example, claiming that the al-Kandari cousins “were possibly being looked at as bodyguards of UBL’s entourage as they traveled through Tora Bora.”

In its assessment, the Task Force decided 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 moderate threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] often been compliant with occasional hostility to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for continued detention at Guantánamo, updating a recommendation for him to be retained in DoD control, which was dated April 17, 2004, and his release became dependant on pressure exerted by the Kuwaiti government, a staunch US ally, of course, as a result of the first Gulf War in 1991.

Mohammed Laalami (ISN 237, Morocco) Released February 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (2) – Tora Bora,” I explained how Mohammed Laalami, who was 25 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of training at the Al-Farouq military training camp in Afghanistan, but said in Guantánamo that this was something that he had admitted “when I was captured and being beaten and threatened with death.” He added, “I have spoken with a lawyer here and the Red Cross in Kandahar. I and others were being beaten and admitted to things that were not true.”

According to his version of events, he went to Afghanistan for two months “as a pilgrimage” with his family, although he later admitted that he was captured alone, and was not asked to explain what had happened to his family. Refuting an allegation that he was captured by Northern Alliance soldiers in Tora Bora, he said, “I was captured in a small village in Jalalabad by Afghans. I did not have a weapon.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Laalami was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control (CD),” dated December 27, 2003, in which he was identified as Suleiman M. al-Alami, born in January 1976, and it was noted that he apparently “claimed he was recruited in Morocco by Ahmed Rafiki, who was a leading member of the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group (MIFG), to travel to Afghanistan (AF) to train and fight Jihad on behalf of the Taliban.” He apparently moved his family to Kabul, where he was apparently supposed to train with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (opponents of Colonel Gaddafi), but “his training was delayed,” so he allegedly “shifted his affiliations to Al-Qaida,” which sounds like an implausible shift of allegiance, and trained at Al-Farouq.

In late November 2001, as the Northern Alliance took Jalalabad, he and others apparently “fled towards the Tora Bora Mountains where they took refuge before fleeing over the Pakistan border.” Laalami “was captured by Pakistani Army units and turned over to US control,” and was sent to Guantánamo on February 2, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban recruitment, training, and tactics as well as his possible affiliation with Al-Qaida.”

In assessing Laalami, the Task Force claimed that he was “a self-admitted member of the MIFG,” described as a Tier 2 terrorist organisation,” and also claimed that he was “a probable member of Al-Qaida” and had “a confirmed affiliation with the LIFB [presumably the LIFG],” described as “a Tier 3 terrorist organisation.” Noting that he had apparently “admitted to having trained at Al-Farouq on advanced courses such as tactics and explosives,” had been at Al- Farouq “when Osama Bin Laden visited twice to encourage and reinforce the trainee’s commitment to the cause of Jihad,” and had “also admitted to having had personal contact with senior extremist leaders,” the Task Force described him as “a dedicated Islamic extremist,” who “remains dedicated to Jihad.”

It was also noted that, although he had been “forthright,” he had “not disclosed any information that could be used as actionable intelligence.” It was also assessed that he would “remain loyal to his extremist organizations,” and, as a result, he was assessed as being “of moderate intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a high risk as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “[r]etain[ed] under DoD control.”

However, it was clear that the Criminal Investigative Task Force disagreed, although, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF [deferred] to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [he] pose[d] a high risk,” and it took another two years and two months until he was released.

In November 2006, Laalami and the other two Moroccans released with him in February 2006 — Najib Lahcini (ISN 75, see Part One of this series), and Muhammad Hussein Ali Hassan (ISN 123, see Part Two of this series) — were sentenced by a criminal court in Salé. As Jurist described it, Laalami (identified as Mohamed Slimani) was “sentenced to five years in prison for his alleged role in creating and participation in a ‘criminal gang, practice of activities in a non-recognized association and organization of unauthorized public meetings,’” and Lahcini (identified as Najib Houssani) and Hassan (identified as Mohamed Ouali) “each received three year sentences for falsifying administrative documents.” Jurist added that the charges were “related to the men’s connection with Salafia Jihadia [an offshoot of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group] and unrelated to their detention at Guantánamo Bay.”

This appeared to justify the alarming file on Laalami that was compiled at Guantánamo, but in May 2007, Laalami (identified at the time as Mohamed Slimani Alami) had his sentence quashed, and was acquitted of all charges, and Lahcini and Hassan had their sentences reduced to one-year suspended sentences.

Haji Hajaj Al Sulami (ISN 245, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (4) – Escape to Pakistan (The Saudis),” I explained how Haji Hajaj al-Sulami (whose name was extremely confusing to the US authorities, who referred to him as Al-Silm Haji Hajjaj Awwad al-Hajjaji) was 21 years old at the time of his capture, and was extremely uncooperative during his CSRT hearing. He was appalled at what he perceived to be the injustice of the proceedings, asking, “Is this court true or is it a lie?” Although he was accused of traveling to Afghanistan “to join the jihad and fight with the Taliban,” and acknowledged that he had attended the Al-Farouq training camp, he maintained that he had not engaged in any kind of hostilities (and he was not, in fact, accused of taking part in combat). “I did carry a weapon, but not in battle,” he said. “A lot of people went to the mountains. I was given a weapon to protect myself and five others. Each person had to guard the group of people for one hour. We were in a burrow approximately the size of this room.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Sulami was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated April 14, 2006, in which it was noted that there had been a fundamental confusion in Guantánamo between him and Salah al-Balushi (ISN 227, see above), whose name was on his file. It was also noted that he was born in 1980, and that he was “in good health,” although he had “a chronic skin condition which require[d] topical medications.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he graduated from high school in 1998 and subsequently worked as a general laborer, until he was recruited to travel to Afghanistan, and introduced to a facilitator who “supplied [him] with plane tickets and arranged for someone to meet [him] in Lahore, Pakistan,” which made a difference from the usual route via Karachi. In Lahore, he apparently took a room in a hotel, as instructed, and stayed for a week before an unidentified Pakistani gave him a plane ticket to Quetta, where he met another contact at the airport, who took him over the border to Kandahar.

He then attended the Al-Farouq training camp (but not in “late 2001,” as the file claimed, because the camp closed after 9/11), and said that, “After seven days he was asked to leave because he had fallen ill with an unspecified kidney disease, precluding him from participating in physical training.” He “was then reassigned to work in a guesthouse in Kandahar. His story then jumped to Tora Bora, where, apparently, on arrival, he “was issued a weapon and hid in the various cave complexes,” until, on or about December 17, 2001, Northern Alliance forces captured him while he was “hiding in a cave in Tora Bora with approximately five other fighters.” He was sent to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Training camps, camp leadership and training of Taliban fighters at Al-Farouq.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he “declined to confirm or deny engaging US forces in combat,” and clearly expressed frustration, noting that he had “provided limited information about his recruitment, travel, and activities.” It was noted that his name allegedly appeared on Al-Qaida documents, which was taken to “substantiate that he had associations with Al-Qaida members,” although I am wary of trusting references to names in documents for reasons outlined earlier in this article.

Of particular relevance, it seems to me, is the note that, “Barring the single possible identification of detainee by senior Al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, no one else has provided information about [him],” which the Task Force regarded as “perplexing given [his] admission of working for a year in a key guesthouse for Arab mujahideen in Afghanistan” (the Al-Nebras guesthouse). The problems here are, firstly, that Abu Zubaydah was actually a torture victim and CIA “ghost prisoner,” who was only transferred to Guantánamo after four and a half years in secret prisons. As a result, his statements cannot be regarded as reliable, and as the sum of his statements about al-Sulami were that he “initially recognized a photo of [him], but could not remember where he had seen him,” and then, in a later interview, “stated that he believed he saw [him] at the Al-Zubayr guesthouse in Kandahar,” it is possible that he was lying to avoid further torture, and did not recognize him at all.

The second problem, as conceded by the Task Force, is that, even if Abu Zubaydah’s identification was correct, no one else recalled al-Sulami, which means either that he lied about the whole episode (which is, after all, possible, as confessions — whether true or not — were the sole purpose of the whole process of detention and interrogation), or that he was at the guesthouse but was thoroughly insignificant, perhaps playing a very lowly role as a servant.

Nevertheless, the Task Force concluded that he was “assessed to be a jihadist whose true activities in Afghanistan (AF) remain[ed] undetermined,” although it was noted that, in Tora Bora, he “probably participated in hostilities against coalition forces.” He was assessed 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 as a high threat from a detention perspective,” as his “overall behaviour, although “mainly compliant,” had been “occasionally hostile to the guard force and staff.” In fact, he was reported to be regularly provocative and manipulative.

As a result, Rear Adm. Harry Harris recommended him for continued detention at Guantánamo, updating a previous recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated July 15, 2005), although it was noted that, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, detainee can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO),” and that, presumably, happened eight months later.

Ahmed Adil (ISN 260, China) Released May 2006 (in Albania) 

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, of all the wrongfully detained men captured crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan, the most woeful group were the Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province. There were 22 Uighurs in Guantánamo in total, mostly in their twenties, who had fled from Chinese oppression in their homeland, and 18 of them had made their way, between May and October 2001, to a small, isolated, rundown settlement in the Tora Bora mountains, where they spent their days reading the Koran and repairing its broken-down buildings (five simple houses and a mosque), and dreamed of hitting back at their oppressors — or finding a way to get to Turkey or Europe, or even the US — in search of work. Occasionally, they fired one or two bullets from the camp’s only gun, an aging AK-47.

The men arrived at the camp in varied ways. Some went there deliberately, while others ended up there while seeking a new start in life, but their isolated, subsistence-level existence came to an end in October 2001, when the camp was hit in a US bombing raid. Yusef Abbas (ISN 275, still held), who was injured in the raid, said that one man died and “we were covered in half a bucket of his body meat.” After the bombing, the men spent a month dodging bombing raids, staying, on one occasion, in a place that “even had monkeys that were also screaming at us,” according to another of the men, Dawut Abdurehim (ISN 289, released in Palau in October 2009). Finally, they saw a large group of Arabs making their way to the Pakistani border, and decided to follow them at a distance.

On arrival, they were among the many dozens of men who were welcomed and then betrayed by villagers. Yusef Abbas explained, “It was the third day of a Muslim holiday … the local people there welcomed us since it was a holiday. They gave us meat and good food.” Abu Bakker Qassim (ISN 283, see Part Five of this series) took up the story: “In the middle of the night, the villagers told us they would take us to another place. We walked two to three hours away to a mosque. The tribe people tricked us and turned us over to the Pakistani authorities.” Ahmed Adil, who was 28 years old at the time, concluded the story:

At the mosque there were a lot of people, Uighurs, Arabs and others as well. There weren’t any Pakistani soldiers or anyone with rifles or weapons to capture us. When we were in the mosque, they told us to get out. We went out in groups of ten and we were taken to a car. They drove us for a couple [of] hours and we ended up in the Pakistani prison.

In the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, Adil was one of the 38 prisoners, out of 558 prisoners in total, to succeed in convincing their tribunals, and the authorities overseeing the tribunals, they they were not “enemy combatants” — or, as the administration insisted, that they were “no longer enemy combatants.” The Pentagon’s document listing the 38 (PDF) describes them as “Detainees Found to No Longer Meet the Definition of ‘Enemy Combatant’ during Combatant Status Review Tribunals Held at Guantánamo.” 29 of these men were released in 2004 and 2005 (as I explained in “WikiLeaks and the Guantanamo Prisoners Released After the Tribunals, 2004 to 2005),” but Adil, four other Uighurs and three other men were not freed until 2006, when another country — Albania — was found that was prepared to take them (and the last of the 38 was repatriated to Saudi Arabia).

Cynically, the Bush administration waited until the last moment to free Adil and his compatriots. They were sent to Albania, where they were housed in a refugee center, on May 5, 2006, just three days before a habeas corpus petition filed by two of the men, Abu Bakker Qassim and Adel Abdul Hakim (ISN 293, also see Part Five), was due to be heard by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Washington D.C. For a report on how they were adapting to their new lives after their first 16 months, see “Guantánamo’s Uyghurs: Stranded in Albania.”

In an interview for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners in 2008, Matthew Schofield visited Tirana to speak to Adil and his companions. Adil explained that he was one of the Uighurs who had ended up in Afghanistan while seeking a new life for himself and his family. He said that he sold clothes for a living, but “had fled the Sinkiang region of northern China in 2000, hoping to find a new home where he’d be able to do business free of government harassment.” He told Matthew Schofield that his plan had been “to put together a nest egg of $10,000, enough to get his family — wife, son, daughter and mother — to Europe, but instead he ended up broke in Afghanistan.” As travel between countries was difficult, “friends in Pakistan had recommended in August 2001 that he travel to a small village where he’d find other Uighurs from his region.”

Describing the settlement, Adil confirmed how basic it was. “It was a simple life, but there was food and shelter, and company,” he said. “I’d only been there 45 days when the bombing started. At first I wasn’t worried, because it had nothing to do with me. But then it did. The bombs got close.” He confirmed that, for a month, he and his companions “lived in caves, or crevices, scars in the rock face that offered shelter from the wind but little else.” However, “they weren’t the only occupants: They’d displaced the monkeys who’d been living in the caves,” and, Adil said, while “bombs were still falling in the area,” and “[s]now was piling up around him, the wind was cutting through his winter wrappings and monkeys were throwing rocks at him from the ledge above,” he “figured that he’d seen the worst life had to offer.”

After a month, however, they all realized, Adil said, that “the bombing wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, so they moved on, hiking through deep snow at night to hide from the bombs.” Eventually, they moved south to Pakistan, where they were welcomed and betrayed, as he had explained at Guantánamo. “We came down from this hike into a Pakistani village,” he said, adding, “They welcomed us to their feast.” However, the next day, the villagers claimed that “Pakistani soldiers were coming and would arrest them if they stayed,” and “led them to a mosque in another village nearby, where they said it would be safe to hide.” As Adil explained, “Of course, we did not know they would collect a reward for turning people in. There were many people at the mosque, and the soldiers arrested us all.”

He then spent six months in the US prison at Kandahar airport, and was then flown to Guantánamo, where, he said, “he was chained to the floor during interrogations, locked alone for days, weeks, in a cage 6 feet deep and 3 feet wide.”

US officials had obligingly “designated the village in the Tora Bora mountains a terrorist training camp,” primarily to ensure that the Chinese government remained onside in the “War on Terror,” and did not specifically oppose the invasion of Iraq, but in his tribunal at Guantánamo, as Schofield noted, he was accused of “nothing more than learning to use and break down an AK-47 rifle” — an allegation which he denied. He added that officials at Guantánamo made a point of accusing the Uighurs of supporting Al-Qaida, but, as Schofield explained, “the accusations weren’t made in public documents.”

Looking back, Adil said, he “[couldn't] help but wonder whether the monkeys — chattering, throwing rocks, trying to scare them back down to their village — had known that the path ahead was very difficult.” “Life is funny that way,” he said. “When troubles come, you think things cannot get worse. Then you learn they can.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Ahmed Adil was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated February 14, 2004, in which he was also identified as Ahman Adil, Oblekim Abdurasul or Oblekim Abdursal, born in 1973, and it was also noted that he was “in good health.”

The assessment preceded his success in his CSRT, but obviously made no sense, as the US government was not prepared to send any of the Uighurs back to China, and therefore could not expect another country to detain them on America’s behalf, but this was just another example of the illogical mess created at Guantánamo. This update was particularly nonsensical given that, in the previous assessment on January 25, 2003, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller had at least recommended that Adil be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government” (emphasis added), based on an assessment that he “was not affiliated with Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader.”

Nevertheless, this subtle upgrading of his supposed threat level was based on a slew of “New Information” regarded as significant by the Task Force, whose mission was evidently to find any reason not to allow prisoners to leave Guantánamo, even if it was not acknowledged as such. This “New Information” consisted of the alarmist rhetoric about the Uighurs’ settlement in Afghanistan that was designed to placate the Chinese government; namely, that Adil was “a probable member of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM),” described as “a Uigher [sic] separatist organization dedicated to the creation of a Uigher [sic] Islamic homeland in China, through armed insurrection and terrorism.” These were high claims for an “organization” that barely existed, and was certainly not any kind of credible threat to the Chinese government.

However, what was also noticeable about the file was an additional claim, which I had not come across before, whereby it was stated, without a shred of evidence to back it up, that “[s]ensitive reporting” indicated that “ETIM and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have unified their efforts to form a larger and more capable terrorist organization, which is now directly affiliated and supported by Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.” It was also noted that further unspecified “[r]eporting” indicated that “both ETIM and the IMU ha[d] expanded and focused their efforts on the United States and ha[d] made attacking Americans their main priority,” which was another piece of startling propaganda, produced in Washington and/or Beijing, that bore no resemblance to the truth when it came to the purported activities of ETIM — although the IMU, it has been clearly established, was closely aligned with the Taliban.

Accompanying this were allied claims that Adil had “received training in an ETIM training camp in Afghanistan,” and that he “was captured in Pakistan along with other Uigher [sic] fighters and Al-Qaida members,” even though it is clear that the Uighurs only joined up with a group of Arabs leaving Afghanistan because they were lost.

In its assessment, the Task Force noted that he had been “fully exploited” as far as  his intelligence value was concerned, and that, in Guantánamo, he had “shown very little signs of being non-compliant and no signs of aggressiveness.” He was, however, assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” because of the ETIM allegations, which led to an absurd declaration that he “had some level of terrorist training” (on the Uighurs’ one and only gun), which, it was claimed, was “confirmed by associations with known terrorist group(s),” and it was also claimed that he was therefore “highly vulnerable to future recruitment by terrorist groups targeting the US and its allies,” even though, like all the other Uighurs, it was clear that he only ever had one enemy — the Chinese government.

As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller made his recommendation about transferring Adil to detention in another country, although it was clear that the Joint Task Force was alone in its opinion, as the Criminal Investigative Task Force had “assessed [him] as a low risk on 19 May 2003.” However, “ln the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF [deferred] to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [he] pose[d] a medium risk.”

Abdul Aziz Al Baddah (ISN 264, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In Chapter 6 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Aziz al-Baddah, who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, and was married with a two-year old daughter, traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001, with his cousins Ibrahim al-Nasir and Abdul Aziz al-Nasir (ISN 271 and 273, see Part Five of this series), to help Afghan refugees with donations of their own money. In Guantánamo, he admitted staying in Kabul at the office of the Saudi charity Al-Wafa (which was regarded in Guantánamo as a front for terrorism, although this was never proved), but insisted that he was not an employee, and knew nothing about its supposed connections to Al-Qaida.

When the bombing of Kabul began, he said that he and his cousins went to Logar, where they stayed in an Al-Wafa house for a week, but when they attempted to return to Kabul to retrieve their passports the city had fallen to the Northern Alliance, and they decided to return home via Pakistan, where they turned themselves over to the police.

In addition to his alleged connection with Al-Wafa, al-Baddah was also accused of being associated with the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. Formerly one of the largest Islamic NGOs in the world, devoted to charitable deeds and education and with a turnover of $50 million, several of its offices worldwide were accused of being fronts for terrorist funding and were condemned by the US. Although US officials “privately conceded that only a small percentage of the total was diverted” and that few of those who worked for the organisation knew that money was being funnelled to Al-Qaida, the Saudi government was put under enormous pressure to shut down the entire organization, which it did in February 2004.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Baddah was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated March 2, 2006, in which he was also identified as Abd al-Aziz Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Aziz al-Baddah, born in April 1982, and it was also noted that he had serious mental health problems. It was stated that he had “a history of self-mutilation,” and was “seen by Behavioral Health Science in September 2002,” that he had “a history of an unsuccessful suicide attempt” and “a history of anxiety and depression with transient psychotic symptoms,” and also that he had “a history of panic disorder.” In addition, he was diagnosed with a “history of latent TB,” in common with many of the prisoners, and it was also noted that he had “a history of musculoskeletal pain in the left knee, left shoulder & lower back,” and “a history of tinea pedis” (athlete’s foot).

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he “left high school early and worked for his father who owned several businesses including a car dealership, a furniture showroom, a restaurant, a consulting business, and a hardware store.” He also traveled widely as a tourist and on business, to countries including the United Arab Emirates, Syria and Turkey.

It was also noted that, “[i]nfluenced by televised reports of Afghan poverty and encouraged by Wael al-Jabri, an employee of [his] father, [he] decided to travel to Afghanistan to perform charity work.” Al-Jabri reportedly “told [him] that Al-Wafa had an office in Kabul, AF, and that it was safe to go because all the fighting was in the north,” and so, on October 14, 2001, he set off with his cousins for Afghanistan, via Syria and iran. On October 27, 2001, they “met up with Wael al-Jabri and crossed the lranian border with the assistance of an Afghan named Farial” (assessed to be Aminullah Tukhi, ISN 1012, released in December 2007, but here identified as Aminullah Baryalai Tukhiak), arriving in Kabul on November 2, 2001.

As he explained in Guantánamo, in Kabul they went to the Al-Wafa office where Abdul Aziz (identified as Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi, ISN 5, released in December 2007) apparently “met and housed them.” Al-Matrafi was described as “the Kabul Al-Wafa office manager,” although he is generally identified as the founder and director of Al-Wafa. The Task Force noted that he then “took them on a tour of Al-Wafa facilities and explained the charitable objectives of Al-Wafa,” and, for approximately a week, the three relatives “distributed food supplies to surrounding villages,” until, in the hope of “escaping the bombing campaign,” as the Northern Alliance approached the capital, they were advised to travel to Logar, and then to “cross the border to the Saudi embassy in Pakistan.”

With another man named Abdullah (al-Wafti, ISN 262, released in November 2007, and identified here as Abdullah Abd al-Mu’in al-Waft), they set off for Logar on November 8, 2001, staying until November 13, when a man named Mohammed Agha “met the group and transported them to his house on the outskirts of Khost.” From there they were taken to Jalalabad (on November 30), where they stayed for another week, and in early December Mohammed Agha took the four men across the border near Peshawar. On December 14, al-Baddah “went to a Pakistani police station looking for assistance in contacting the Saudi Embassy,” but he “was subsequently detained and turned over to the Pakistani Army,” who transferred him to US custody on January 3, 2002. He was sent to Guantánamo on February 9, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Humanitarian aide [sic] in Afghanistan.”

Despite this, the humanitarian aid he was allegedly sent to Guantánamo to discuss was actually the furthest thing from the minds of the Task Force members assigned to his case. It was claimed that he had failed to mention his involvement with Al-Haramain, and, most alarmingly, it was claimed that Adel al-Zamel (ISN 568), a Kuwaiti released in November 2005, who was actually the manager of the Kabul office, “identified [him] as a major HIF financier involved in a large-scale Saudi-based money-laundering network.” Al-Zamel also apparently said that al-Baddah and his cousins “facilitated the collection and distribution of large amounts of Saudi raised money in efforts to support extremist activities in Afghanistan,” and that al-Baddah “collected and stored funds at his house in Saudi Arabia (upwards up to [sic] $1.2 million USD collected monthly),” which was then “distributed to Afghanistan extremists via an unknown Pakistani-based hawala.”

The problem with this is firstly that al-Zamel’s reliability is unknown, and my fear is that he was prevailed upon to make a number of false allegations against his fellow prisoners, as he also made an unsubstantiated allegation about Abdullah Kamel al-Kandari (ISN 228, see above). Moreover, if al-Baddah really was collecting up to $1.2 million a month to support extremism in Afghanistan, it was unusual that, although “in late June 2002, the Saudi Ministry of Interior General Information Directorate of Investigations (Mabahith) provided information on thirty-seven detainees whom they designated as high priority,” and al-Baddah “was thirty-third on that list,” by July 2002, when “a delegation from Saudi Arabia visited JTF GTMO and interviewed [him, he] was identified as of low intelligence and law enforcement value to the US, and unlikely to pose a terrorist threat to the US or its interests.” Instead, “the Saudi delegation indicated that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of [him] for possible prosecution as soon as the US determined it no longer wanted to hold him.”

In assessing him, the Task Force determined 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 as “a low threat from a detention perspective,” as his “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile with the guard force and staff,” although an additional piece of interesting information was the observation that he “ha[d] no hostile actions on record against guards or JTF staff beyond telling an observer that he doesn’t have to listen to him, only the bloc NCO.” This took place on May 24, 2005, and he was then “placed in Camp 2/3″ — isolation blocks — “where he made a token effort in the July Voluntary Total Fast by foregoing nine meals.”

As a result, Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for continued detention at Guantánamo, updating a previous recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (on January 7, 2005), although it was also noted, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, detainee can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO),” based on the “visiting Saudi delegation indicat[ing] that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of detainee for possible prosecution.”

Tariq Al Harbi (ISN 265, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In Chapter 6 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Sharon Curcio, a military intelligence analyst who read over 600 transcripts of interrogations conducted at Guantánamo in 2003 and 2004, noted in a report, “Generational Differences in Waging Jihad,” published in Military Review in 2005, how many of the prisoners were persuaded to travel to Afghanistan for jihad by imams and sheikhs in their home countries who were “quick to position jihad as the panacea for lost, disenfranchised youth” — those who were unemployed, had failed in education or in business, or had family problems — and also noted that, for the educated, the call to jihad was used to play on their “desire for self-discovery and a challenge,” and, for the unskilled, was presented as “alternative employment.” She also explained that charitable organizations “frequently hired young men for warehouse and distribution work to provide relief materials such as foodstuffs or blankets to a local population, so the call to jihad appeared to be more of the same.”

I also noted how Curcio’s observations were reflected in some of the prisoners’ stories, and one of the stories I cited was that of Tariq al-Harbi, who was just 18 years old at the time of his capture, who said in Guantánamo that the sheikhs “told him that he had to go to Afghanistan to help the poor and needy or God would punish him.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Harbi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated December 8, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1983, and was “in good health,” although his “inprocessing BMI [body mass index] on 12 Feb 02 was 20%,” and he had “a history of latent TB,” in common with many of the prisoners, but was “noncompliant with treatment.” It was also noted elsewhere in his file that he “was a major participant in the Voluntary Total Fast (VTF),” which began in the summer of 2005, “missing up to 104 meals in the second half of the VTF.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he “was a poor student,” who left school at the age of 18, and then “began to help on his father’s farm.” In “approximately July of 2001,” he was inspired by a fatwa which “stated every Muslim should wage jihad in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance troops.” His father then “helped to finance and arrange his travel,” and he traveled to Kandahar, via Karachi and Quetta, where he “reported to an Arab guesthouse” (assessed to be Al-Nebras). There, “[u]nidentified Arabs informed [him] that weapons training was a prerequisite to join the Taliban,” and “transported [him] to Al-Farouq training camp, where he spent approximately 20 days conducting prayer, manual labor, physical conditioning, and small arms training.” An analyst noted that he reported that “the full course of training would have taken 40 days, but he left early for various reasons,” described as “the arduous physical labor, poor food, insects, and presence of approximately 10 other Arabs.”

He then returned to the guesthouse,” and, a few weeks later, “met Taliban representatives and inquired if he could become a member, but was rejected due to his youth.” He then “traveled to Jalalabad, AF with the intent to join another Taliban unit,” staying at a guesthouse “operated by unidentified Arabs” for about two months, and then “decided to cross the Pakistani border in hopes that Pakistani authorities would take him to the Saudi embassy to arrange transportation back to Saudi Arabia,” but, instead, he was arrested and transferred to US custody. The Task Force also noted that, in another interrogation, he apparently conceded that he had traveled via the Tora Bora region, “but did not ascend the mountain as far as Tora Bora.” The Pakistani authorities transferred him to US custody in Kohat on January 3, 2002 and he was sent to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban recruitment methods being used in Saudi Arabia [and] Al-Farouq training camp in Kandahar.”

Although he “claimed to have no knowledge of terrorist matters or have any association with Al-Qaida,” the Task Force noted that he had “failed to provide an accurate and complete picture of his actions and associates,” and, as well as listing references to documents seized in house raids, which apparently contained his name, claimed that he was related to “deceased Saudi Al-Qaida cell leader Salih Muhammad Awadhallah al-Alawi al-Awfi,” and to Mazin al-Awfi (ISN 154), who was described as an “assessed Al-Qaida member,” although that was essentially meaningless, as Arab Taliban recruits were routinely described as “Al-Qaida members.”

The source of these claims was Humoud al-Jadani (ISN 230, released in July 2007), who reported that al-Harbi was “either a cousin or a nephew” of Salih al-Awfi, who, he said, “provided false documents for individuals traveling to Chechnya and Afghanistan for jihad.” Al-Jadani also “reported that Mazin al-Awfi was his nephew, and the authorities at Guantánamo then performed a DNA test on al-Awfi and al-Harbi “to determine possible familial ties,” which “determined that the two possess mitochondrial DNA that is consistent with a shared maternal lineage.”

Quite what this proved was not explained, but another attempt to ramp up al-Harbi’s significance was attributed to Walid Haj (ISN 81, released in April 2008), who “reported that an individual listed as Tarique Al-Harbi was a member of the Bilal unit but was killed in fighting.” An analyst noted that Haj “did not specifically say that he saw al-Harbi killed; he may have just heard.” Obviously, this proves nothing, as it remains far more likely than not that al-Harbi was not fighting in northern Afghanistan when he was in the Jalalabad/Tora Bora area, but it (and the DNA test) were examples of how the authorities often resorted to clutching at straws.

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed al-Harbi 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 had been “assessed as a moderate threat from a detention perspective,” whose “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant, yet non-hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated July 2, 2004), recommended him for continued detention at Guantánamo, a recommendation that only lasted for another six months until al-Harbi’s unexpected and unexplained release.

Abdullah Al Ghanimi (ISN 266, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In Chapter 6 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, when three humanitarian aid workers Abdul Aziz al-Baddah (ISN 264, see above), and his cousins Ibrahim al-Nasir and Abdul Aziz al-Nasir (ISN 271 and 273, see Part Five of this series) left Afghanistan for Pakistan after traveling to Afghanistan to deliver humanitarian aid to refugees, they were accompanied by a man named Abdullah, who I thought was Abdullah al-Ghanimi, although in fact it was Abdullah al-Wafti (ISN 262), as noted above.

Al-Ghanimi, who was 27 years old at the time of his capture, had, however, been working for the Saudi charity Al-Wafa in Kabul (which was regarded in Guantánamo as a front for terrorism, although this was never proved), as had the three men mentioned above, but it transpired that he had made his own way out of Afghanistan into Pakistan, where he was seized.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Ghanimi was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated July 18, 2005, in which he was also identified as Abdullah al-Ghanami, Abdallah al-Ghanimi and Abdullah al-Ghanmi, and it was noted that he was born in 1974 and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, it was noted that he “spent four years working as a fisherman followed by five years working as a fireman at ARAMCO” (the Arabian American Oil Company, based in Saudi Arabia). It was also noted that he had traveled to other countries — to Syria for dental treatment and to Bahrain, circa 2000, “to visit nightclubs.”

Circa July 2001, he said he decided to travel to Afghanistan “for humanitarian reasons,” adding that he had “read various fatwas calling on Muslims to help the needy in Afghanistan and decided to go and distribute alms; however, there was no catalyst that solidified [his] decision (i.e. no event, no imam or fatwa).” “It was,” he said, “just what God ordained.”

ARAMCO gave him 30 days’ leave, and, taking 19,000 Saudi Riyals with him (about $4,500), he then set off for Afghanistan on July 1, 2001, via Karachi and Quetta, “where he obtained help from the Taliban to get to Kabul, AF,” and “became affiliated with Wafa Al-Igatha Al-Islami aka Al-Wafa to obtain names of orphans and other persons deserving charity,” working for a Saudi national, identified as Abu Faysal (aka Abdullah al-Utaybi, ISN 243, released in December 2007), who was described as “a known senior Al-Wafa official in Herat.”

With Abu Faysal, he “distribute[d] supplies and supervise[d] digging of wells in villages neighboring Kabul, AF, for approximately 15 days,” but as the fighting approached Kabul, he set off for Jalalabad on foot, which took him about three weeks, where he stayed for a month, and then, as the fighting neared Jalalabad, “traveled further to an unidentified village where he stayed for a month and then joined 12 unarmed Arabs who were traveling to Pakistan.” Having lost his passport and return ticket at some point, he reached the Pakistani border around December 12, 2001.

Now traveling with just an Afghan guide, as the group split up on the border, he said that he “was escorted to a house in an unidentified valley,” and that, after “[t]he Pakistani owner brought an Arab speaker to the house to interpret,” he said that he wanted to go to the Saudi Embassy. The owner apparently agreed and provided al-Ghanimi “with a bed for the evening,” but the following morning, “instead of being taken to the Saudi Embassy, the Pakistani police arrested him.”

Citing a newspaper report, the Task Force noted how numerous Arabs fleeing Afghanistan were rounded up in a mosque and handed over to the Pakistani authorities, and how later, when they were being moved by bus from one prison to another, there was a revolt, in which ten of the prisoners and six Pakistani soldiers were killed, and several of the prisoners escaped. Al-Ghanimi was apparently named as one of the passengers. He was “transferred from Kohat Prison, Pakistani control, to Kandahar Detention Facility, US custody, on 3 January 2002,” and was sent to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on humanitarian organizations operating in Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force attempted to link him to Al-Qaida through his name being found on documents recovered from computers seized in raids on houses with Al-Qaida connections, although, as I have mentioned previously, it cannot be confirmed that these references are rellable. It was also claimed that Fahd al-Jutayli (ISN 177, see Part Three of this series) “identified detainee’s alias, as serving on the Bagram, AF front lines and fleeing with him and others to Tora Bora, AF, when the front collapsed.” However, when al-Jutayli “was shown a picture of detainee he claimed he did not recognize him.” An analyst claimed that it was “possible that ISN 177 was attempting to hide the identity of detainee,” although a more logical suggestion would be that, under duress, al-Jutayli had made up the story about al-Ghanimi being with him in Bagram and Tora Bora.

Incomprehensibly, another claim was that there were “a number of documents concerning an individual named Abu al-Harith al-Ansari who apparently was associated with Camp Farouq and admission of individuals for training,” and it was assessed that al-Ghanimi was “possibly this same individual” — although how this was supposed to make sense was not explained.

In spite of all these claims, the Task Force decided that he was only “of low intelligence value,” although he was also assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that, in Guantánamo, his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-hostile [and] compliant in nature,” and, as a result, although he was recommended for ongoing detention in DoD control (on March 6, 2004), it was noted that, “[b]ased upon information obtained since detainee’s previous assessment,” Brig. Gen. Hood now recommended him for transfer to continued detention in Saudi Arabia, although it was not explained how this conclusion had been reached, as, based on the information above, he was still “assessed as a member of Al-Qaida, who fought on the Bagram AF front lines during ‘Operation Enduring Freedom,’” and whose “name was found on various documents recovered during raids on suspected Al-Qaida safe houses.”

Also see Part One, Part Two and Part Three, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine and Part Ten of this series.

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.

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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 time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 17 of the 70-part series.

In late April, WikiLeaks pushed Guantánamo back onto the international media’s agenda by publishing 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, which drew on the testimony of witnesses — in most cases, the prisoners’ fellow prisoners — whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.

As an independent media partner of WikiLeaks, I liaised both before and after the publication of these documents with WikiLeaks’ mainstream media partners (including the Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, the Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais), and then, after the killing of Osama bin Laden pushed Guantánamo aside once more, and allowed apologists for torture, and those who engineered its use by US forces, to resume their malignant, criminal and deeply mistaken defense of torture, and of the existence of Guantánamo, I began to analyze all of the Detainee Assessment Briefs in depth.

I began, in May and June, 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. These men and boys were amongst the first 201 prisoners released, and unlike the other prisoners, for whom information was released to the public from 2006 onwards, as a result of court cases involving Freedom of Information requests, no information had been officially released about the first 201 prisoners.

“WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo” was followed by a ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004,” published from June to August, 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.

As a result, of the 201 prisoners released between 2002 and 2004, I have, to date, published the most comprehensive reports available in one place on 198 of the 779 prisoners held, with just three stories currently unknown (of prisoners whose Detainee Assessment Briefs were missing, and whose stories have not surfaced in any other media).

For the next phase of this 70-part project (with 16 parts now complete), I have turned my attention to the period from September 2004 to the end of 2005, when 62 prisoners were released (see Part One, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five). This 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.

The tribunals were designed to review the evidence against all the prisoners (which they did from July 2004 to March 2005), to decide whether they had been correctly designated, on capture, as “enemy combatants” who could be held without rights. They were, however, a corrupt and inept process, designed essentially to rubber-stamp the administration’s prior decisions, and not to allow the prisoners to fundamentally challenge the largely flimsy basis of their detention. The prisoners were, for example, not allowed lawyers, and they were not allowed to either see or hear the classified evidence against them, although it was not until 2007 that the extent of the failings of the CSRTs became fully apparent, when their supposed integrity was thoroughly undermined in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham.

A veteran of US intelligence who had worked on the tribunals, Lt. Col. Abraham not only revealed how shambolic the process of compiling the supposed evidence for the tribunals was, but also how, when tribunals such as the one he took part in, disagreed with the authorities’ preconceived notions, by deciding that the man before them was not an “enemy combatant,” the officers were dismissed and “do-over” tribunals were convened until the authorities got the results they desired.

Despite the insuperable problems with the CSRTs, they — and their successors, the annual Administrative Review Boards — often provided the only opportunity for the prisoners to have their own voices heard, and they proved invaluable when I was researching and writing The Guantánamo Files.

Now supplemented with information from the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks, the 62 stories in this five-part series cover 29 of the 38 prisoners who were the only ones, out of 558 prisoners in total, to succeed in convincing their tribunals, and the authorities overseeing the tribunals, they they were not “enemy combatants” — or, as the administration insisted, that they were “no longer enemy combatants.” The Pentagon’s document listing the 38 (PDF) describes them as “Detainees Found to No Longer Meet the Definition of ‘Enemy Combatant’ during Combatant Status Review Tribunals Held at Guantánamo.” The other nine were not freed because, in all but one case, it was unsafe for them to be returned to their home countries, and, as a result, they were not released until 2006 and 2009, when third countries were found that were prepared to accept them.

This series also covers the stories of 33 others released between September 2004 and November 2005 who were not cleared for release after the CSRTs, but were released anyway, and readers will, I hope, be able to see how much of the decision-making process involved political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice.

I also hope that readers will bear in the mind the Bush administration’s refusal to concede that it made any mistakes, which is apparent in its refusal to accept that prisoners were “not enemy combatants,” and its decision to described them as being “no longer enemy combatants” instead, and will reflect on the problems of overclassification 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.

WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released After the Tribunals, 2004 to 2005 (Part Two of Five)

Mishal Al Harbi (ISN 207, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2005

In a footnote to Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how al-Harbi, described as Mishal al-Habiri, who was 21 years old at the time of his capture, drove a food truck for the Taliban, and was released in 2005, two years after he tried to commit suicide and suffered serious brain damage.

This was the most basic outline of his story, but I had the opportunity to tell more in August 2007, in an article entitled, “Saudi who suffered brain damage in Guantánamo gets married in Medina,” in which I explained how he was a low-level Taliban recruit, who admitted during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantánamo — and his Administrative Review Board a year later — that he went to Afghanistan to fight Shiites and not to fight Jews and Christians, as alleged. This suggests — as with many other recruits — that someone misled him while recruiting him in his homeland, as, with the exception of the Shia militias, the majority of the Northern Alliance — the Tajiks and Uzbeks — were Sunni Muslims like himself.

Al-Harbi also admitted that he had received weapons training in Afghanistan, and had been on the Taliban front lines for three days, although he denied an allegation that he fought against US forces, and also denied an allegation that he drove a “rocket launcher mounted truck” in combat against the Northern Alliance, telling his tribunal that he drove a food supply vehicle instead.

After surrendering with several hundred other foreign fighters following the fall of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz in November 2001, al-Harbi survived a massacre at the Qala-i-Janghi fort in Mazar-e-Sharif, which came about after a handful of men, out of a group of several hundred soldiers and stray civilians who had surrendered and had been taken to the fort, staged an uprising, which was put down with savage force, and the survivors, like al-Harbi, huddled underground in a basement, as the Northern Alliance and their US allies bombed them, attempted to set them on fire, and finally flooded the basement.

What marked out his story above others was  when, on January 16, 2003, during a time when, it was alleged, there was particular conflict between the prisoners and some of the guards, who were abusing the Koran, al-Harbi suffered permanent mental and physical damage after his brain was deprived of oxygen for several minutes. According to the US authorities, he had attempted to hang himself, but according to a Washington Post report in March 2007 by Faiza Saleh Ambah, his brother claimed that his injuries were the result of a severe beating by some of the prison’s guards, and his family was “seeking not only financial compensation but also concrete answers from the US government — either an admission that Mishal was injured by guards or proof that he tried to kill himself.”

Quite what happened that night is unclear, but Faiza Saleh Ambah provided details which suggested that al-Harbi had indeed been set upon by guards. Hammad Ali (Gadallah, ISN 712, see Part Four of this series), a Sudanese prisoner released in July 2005, recalled that al-Harbi’s injuries took place shortly after he had been transferred to the isolation block India, and explained that one evening, after the guards had forcibly taken the Koran off another prisoner, prompting a half-hour protest by the detainees, who banged on their cell doors and shouted “Allah-u-Akbar” (God is great), riot guards entered the block, and, according to released Bahraini prisoner Abdullah al-Noaimi (ISN 159, see Part One of this series), “started beating prisoners in their individual cells.” A short while later, al-Noaimi added, one of the guards shouted, “Turn on the lights!” and al-Harbi was carried out of his cell. He then spent three months in a coma, kept alive on an artificial respirator, and after he regained consciousness, according to records released by the Department of Defense, his weight dropped from 116 pounds (his weight on arrival, after six weeks of malnutrition in various Afghan prisons) to just 98 pounds (seven stone, or 44 kg).

For his part, however, al-Harbi was unsure of what happened on the night of January 16, 2003. As Faiza Saleh Ambah described it, “Sitting cross-legged on the carpet in the family guest room, his frayed black leather wheelchair to his left, Mishal said he remembers that after the desecration of the Koran, a guard entered his cell. ‘He was carrying a shield. He pushed me with it. I don’t remember anything else,’ he said, speaking with a heavy tongue.”

Although he recovered sufficiently to write letters to his family, and was helped by physical therapists, al-Harbi was not released from Guantánamo until July 2005, and was still “partially paralyzed” and confined to a wheelchair in 2007. Taking up his story in August 2007, Turki al-Saheil, in a report for Asharq al-Awsat, focused on the rehabilitation program established by the Saudi government to “raise the [ex-prisoners’] spirits and reintegrate them back into society.” Al-Saheil noted that al-Harbi, who “until recently had been receiving treatment at a hospital in Medina … required more time by reason of the incapacity he suffered while inside the US detention facility,” but added that he had “managed to overcome his feelings of despair,” and, with the blessing of the Saudi Interior Ministry, married a Saudi woman last month, “whom he sees as the most beautiful thing in his life.”

In the files released by WikiLeaks in April, the document relating to al-Habri was an “Update Recommendation [for] Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention,” dated June 27, 2004, in which he was described as Mishal Awad Sayaf Alhabiri, born in 1980.

In acknowledging the severity of his injuries, the Joint Task Force stated that he was a “24-year old Saudi who approximately one year ago attempted suicide by hanging, [which] resulted in significant brain injury due to lack of oxygen.” It was also noted that he had been “hospitalized since that time and ha[d] unpredictable motions and behaviour.” The Task Force also explained that he had “a history of a head injury from a motor vehicle accident at age 18,” that he “had a traumatic amputation of his left index finger and ha[d] been treated [at Guantánamo] for depression,” and that he “had a thorough neuropsychological evaluation completed on 23 June 04.”

It was also stated that he was “currently getting care in the inpatient setting with physical therapy, and supervision and training in caring for himself,” and that “[h]is medications include[d] zyprexa and depakote (for brain function and to prevent seizures) and baclofen (an anti-spasmodic).” In addition, it was stated that he was “very mobile in his wheelchair,” that he was “still in training to learn to care for himself, but require[d] assistance,” and that his “likelihood for improvement of current impairments is low,” and “[h]e will need to be in some assisted-living situation, though he can follow simple, concrete directions.”

Even so, it was stated that he was subjected to the same assessment “as stated in JTF CG memo, dated 21 June 2003,” in which Maj. Gen. Geoffrey  Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, “recommended that [his] release or transfer be revoked and [he] remain under continued detention.” Insensitively, it was also stated that his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and aggressive,” and that, as of June 8, 2004, he was “still trying to commit self-harm,” that he “harasses, spits on and has hit members of the guard force,” and that he “has refused meals and medications.”

In conclusion, the Task Force determined that he was “currently of low intelligence value,” and that he posed “a low risk, due to his medical condition,” and as a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood of the US Army, the commander of Guantánamo at the time of the “Update Recommendation,” recommended that he be “released or transferred to the control of another country for continued detention,” based on his “medical status, intelligence value and risk level,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force had stated that they needed “more information to make a recommendation,” and that, “[d]ue to our recommendation that he be transferred to another country for continued detention, JTF GTMO and CITF [we]re in disagreement concerning [him].”

Maroof Salehove (ISN 208, Tajikistan) Released August 2005

Of the 12 prisoners profiled in this article, Maroof Salehove is one of four included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,” I explained how Salehove, who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, said in Guantánamo that he had left his country during the civil war in 1997, and had stayed for four years in Pakistan, studying the Koran and working in a store, and had then been captured in Afghanistan on his way back to Tajikistan. He said that this shocked him, because “during the 25 years of fighting, the Afghanis were fighting each other and they would not bother travellers,” but the situation changed after 9/11, when “the Afghans were picking up all foreigners.”

Refuting an allegation that he fought with the Taliban, he pointed out that the Northern Alliance “are Farsi speakers; they are my own blood and why would I fight against my own people?’” and explained that he was arrested after a Tajik he met at a café near Kunduz told him that it was too dangerous to be near Kunduz — because “if people capture you or find you they will turn you over to the Americans” — and took him to a place where a number of people from Badakhshan (the largely Tajik province in the north east that was never conquered by the Taliban) were preparing to leave by car. He added:

We were riding in cars and we came to Mazar-e-Sharif. We were close to entering the city … and people of Jalalabad asked us to get out of the car and they handcuffed us. They made us sit on the ground. I don’t know what happened; maybe someone was trying to run away or something because I heard some shooting. When I open[ed] my eyes I found myself in the hospital. I did two petitions, one for the Red Cross and one for the United Nations, saying that I was just traveling and they captured me. They never answered. Some Americans came and questioned me. They told us don’t worry and don’t be upset, we are going to send you back to Tajikistan. They brought me to Kandahar and then here.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 27, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” he was identified as Marouf Saleem, born in March 1978, and it was noted that, as well as being diagnosed with latent tuberculosis, like many of the prisoners, he had also been diagnosed with costochondritis, an inflammation of the junctions where the upper ribs join with the cartilage that connects them to the breastbone.

Providing a variant on the story he told his tribunal, Salehove stated that he “left Tajikistan in 1998 after he met a man named Hamza, who convinced him to study the Koran in Karachi,” and that he and Hamza then traveled to Karachi, where he enrolled in a madrassa. Hamza then disappeared, but after six months, Salehove and and another Tajik student, Abdul Rhaheem, “opened a business selling dry fruits and nuts.” He then stated that, after “he heard on the radio that conditions were improving in Tajikistan,” and “since his business was unsuccessful during its first year, [he] decided to travel back to Tajikistan through Afghanistan around 14 November 2001 because he had heard it was safe.”

Via Jalalabad and Kabul, he arrived in Kunduz, where “he was told that the only way out of Afghanistan was to go through Kandahar.” He “got on a truck headed towards Kandahar,” but “was stopped in-route [sic] by General Dostum’s Northern Alliance forces” and “was shot in the stomach and leg during capture.” Taken first to Dostum’s prison at Sherberghan, and then to the US prison at Kandahar, he was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of Hamza and possible knowledge of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) or other terrorist organizations,” although, 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 a senior interrogator who worked in Afghanistan explained in a book that he wrote about his experiences, 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-Qaeda and Taliban suspects” were widespread.

Although Salehove’s account persuaded his tribunal to declare that he was “no longer an enemy combatant” (in other words, not an “enemy combatant” at all), the Task Force was not convinced of his innocence. He was “assessed as being deceptive when describing his travel in Afghanistan,” and was “assessed as having trained at Camp Babu,” near Kunduz, which was “a popular recruiting and training area for IMU fighters.” He was also “assessed as withholding information regarding Hamza, who may have been a recruiter for the IMU or other terrorist organization,” and it was also noted that Salehove told a Tajik delegation that he was arrested at the madrassa in which he studied in Karachi, which, they noted, “contradict[ed his] previous statements,” although the Task Force did not acknowledge that he may have been terrified to have been interrogated by representatives of the Tajik intelligence services, based on his home country’s poor human rights record.

The Task Force therefore assessed him “as being a possible IMU recruit,” who was “of intelligence value to the United States,” and was “a medium risk as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests, or its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended his “[t]ransfer to the control of another government for continued detention,” and it was also stated that a Tajik delegation on May 9, 2003 requested his “expedient transfer to the Tajik authorities for prosecution.” However, in addition, the Criminal Investigative Task Force “indicated that more investigation was needed to complete a threat assessment at this time,” and that, [u]ntil further law enforcement investigation is conducted by CITF and an assessment is made, JTF GTMO and CITF cannot agree on this particular detainee.”

It is not known what happened to him after his release.

Abdul Aziz Al Shammeri (ISN 217, Kuwait) Released November 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Aziz al-Shammeri, who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, was a teacher and a father of two, and how, at Guantánamo, he had stated that he took a short vacation in October 2001 and traveled around Afghan villages teaching the Koran. He explained that he felt he would be safe in the villages, because life would be going on as normal and “would not be interrupted except on the battleground,” and added that he had no idea that the Taliban government “would fall in the blink of an eye.”

As the situation deteriorated, he left everything behind and fled. “You know they killed some of the women as well,” he explained. “And you know that women in Islam are not killed; they don’t fight or participate in the fighting. So, when I hear something like that, I don’t think of going back and getting my passport, I just think of my life.” After escaping across the mountains, he turned himself in to the Pakistani army, thinking they would question him and arrange for him to return home. “I didn’t think they would tell me, ‘Since you don’t have identification or a passport, that means you’re a follower of Osama bin Laden.’” he said. “I have never heard of this before.”

Noticeably, al-Shammeri was one of five Kuwaitis who crossed the border together on December 16, 2001, and whose arrival was well-documented, because Newsweek investigated their case and reported that the local villagers remembered them well. Although they were not the first Arabs to arrive via the precipitous snow-bound paths across the White Mountains, the villagers declared them “the softest.” An eyewitness said that “the Afghan guide who brought them was furious, swearing he’d never take Kuwaitis on that trail again.” Unlike other Arabs he’d guided before — fighters with experience of difficult terrain — he described the Kuwaitis as “weak, nervous, ill-clothed and inexperienced climbers,” and “grumbled that he and his friend practically had to carry them.”

In March 2002, as Newsweek also explained, al-Shammeri (described as Abdulaziz Sayer al-Shammari) joined a hunger strike at Guantánamo. As the article explained:

In a letter dated the 23rd of that month, but received through the Red Cross in Kuwait only on the 23rd of June, al-Shammari told his father he had not eaten for 27 days and not taken water for four days. “I cannot stand life in this place,” reads the letter. “Some persons in America want to achieve electoral gains on our account.” He asked his father to take care of his children and to “take this message to the Kuwaiti press so that they know the reality as it is.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated January 31, 2004, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” and in which he was described as Abd Al-Aziz Sayir al-Shamari, born in September 1973, a variation of the story he told in his tribunal was presented by the Joint Task Force, which noted that he served briefly in the Kuwaiti army, but was discharged after going AWOL for 70 days. It was also noted that he “had a degree in Islamic Studies,” and that he “worked in the Kuwaiti Ministry of Endowments as a Koran instructor from 1994 until he left for Iran (IR) and Afghanistan in 2001,” stating that “an associate in Saudi Arabia invited him to Mashhad, IR.” From there, he said, he traveled to Afghanistan “to study and teach Islamic studies.”

“As US forces were arresting Arabs,” the Task Force continued, he “attempted to flee into Pakistan with a number of other individuals,” but “was arrested by Pakistani authorities due to a lack of identification documents.” The Task Force noted that he claimed “not to remember any details of his capture, although he describe[d] the day as one of the most traumatic events in his life.” First held in the Kohat prison in Pakistan, like many other prisoners who ended up in Guantánamo, he was transferred to US custody on December 31, 2001, and was sent to Guantánamo on February 10, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of religious groups in the region and his work in teaching the Koran” — a thin pair of allegations, which, although grafted on after his transfer, nevertheless revealed how the US authorities did not have any information at all to tie him to militant activity or terrorism.

Even so, the Task Force claimed that he had “not been forthright or cooperative and ha[d] shown deception when questioned about his associates and timeline,” and also that he had “a history of acknowledging information and denying it later.” Based on what was described as his “deception history,” it was “assessed that he ha[d] received training on advanced counter-interrogation techniques, as well as above average terrorist training typically taught by Al-Qaida,” even though there was nothing to indicate that this was the case.

It was also stated that one of al-Shammeri’s fellow prisoners at Guantánamo, Abd al-Rahim Abdul Rassak Janko (ISN 489), stated that he, al-Shammeri and another Kuwaiti, Fayiz al-Kandari (ISN 552, still held), “were fellow students at an Islamic university in the United Arab Emirates.” It was not noted why this was mentioned, although it was, presumably, to suggest that the university was a hotbed of extremism. However, it is a dubious allegation because al-Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda as a spy in Afghanistan and imprisoned by the Taliban before the Americans liberated him and took him to Guantánamo, and his statements are notoriously unreliable.

Following on, however, the Task Force continued to indulge in innuendo, claiming that al-Shammeri’s “story of traveling to Afghanistan to study and teach [was] a typical cover story used by many Arabs to hide the fact that they traveled to fight the Jihad or were associates or members of Al-Qaida,” and that, “[g]iven [his] high family stature in the Kuwaiti government (he has family in the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense), it [was] likely that he ha[d] close ties to senior leadership in that country and may have been a valuable Al-Qaida asset because of those ties.” He was, it was added, “assessed to have connections to high-ranking Al-Qaida members.”

In conclusion, al-Shammeri was “assessed as being a possible member of Al-Qaida,” although it was also noted that he was “of low intelligence value to the United States.” He was also assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended him for “[t]ransfer to the control of another government for continued detention,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force did not agree with this assessment. “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders,” it was stated, “CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that the detainee poses a medium risk.” I cannot tell from this whether CITF regarded him as a lower or a higher risk, although I suspect the former, given that nothing resembling evidence was provided in his case.

Abdullah Al Ajmi (ISN 220, Kuwait) Released November 2005

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, in Guantánamo, Abdullah al-Ajmi, who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, was a lance corporal in the Kuwaiti army, but had specifically denied fighting with the Taliban, saying that he had taken a leave of absence from the army in order to study in Pakistan with the vast missionary organisation Jamaat-al-Tablighi, which is avowedly non-political. He insisted that he had only confessed to fighting with the Taliban because of the circumstances in which he was held and interrogated.

“These statements were all said under pressure and threats,” he said. “I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t bear the threats and the suffering so I started saying things. When every detainee is captured they tell him that he is either Taliban or al-Qaeda and that is it. I couldn’t bear the suffering and the threatening and the pressure so I had to say I was from [the] Taliban.”

After his release, he married and had a child, but on April 26, 2008, according to the US military, he was one of three suicide bombers responsible for killing seven members of the Iraqi security forces. As I explained in my article, “Identification of ex-Guantánamo suicide bomber unleashes Pentagon propaganda,” an article in the Washington Post explained how he had recorded a martyrdom tape before his mission, which was translated by the US-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist websites. On the audiotape, al-Ajmi apparently condemned conditions at Guantánamo as “deplorable,” and stated, “Whoever can join them and execute a suicide operation, let him do so. By God, it will be a mortal blow. The Americans complain much about it. By God, in Guantánamo, all their talk was about explosives and whether you make explosives. It is as if explosives were hell to them.”

As I explained at the time, this is disturbing news, of course, although it did not follow that al-Ajmi’s release, and his subsequent actions, demonstrated that the administration’s post-9/11 anti-terror policies — abrogating from the Geneva Conventions and holding men without charge or trial in an offshore prison and interrogation center — were justified. If al-Ajmi was a threat to the United States, he should either have been held as a prisoner of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, or prosecuted in a recognized court of law as a criminal. Instead, his imprisonment at Guantánamo involved “evidence” compiled by unnamed interrogators and other military personnel that was so far from the standards demanded by any acceptable judicial process that, on his return to Kuwait, he was acquitted of the charges against him — primarily, that he fought with the Taliban against US forces in Afghanistan — and set free.

At his trial, his lawyer, Ayedh al-Azemi, told the court that transcripts of interrogations conducted in Guantánamo by US officers should not be admissible as evidence, because they “do not bear signatures of the US officers nor the defendants and thus should not be admissible as legal evidence by the court.” He added that the transcripts were “not a proper investigation” but “simple reports that included neither questions nor answers.”

Given what al-Ajmi had said about his activities, it needs to be asked whether he was lying in Guantánamo or whether the abuse he suffered for four years in US custody radicalized him and led to his final manifestation as a suicide bomber. As I explained in 2008, the clues provided mixed messages. In Guantánamo, the authorities certainly regarded him as a threat, noting that his behavior had been so “aggressive and non-compliant” that he had “resided in the disciplinary blocks throughout his detention,” but there appeared to be no way of knowing if he was “aggressive and non-compliant” because he was a sworn militant or because he was profoundly angered by his experiences in US custody.

Speaking to the Washington Post, US lawyer Tom Wilner, who represented al-Ajmi and several other former Kuwaiti prisoners, recalled al-Ajmi’s anger and despair. He explained that his client was ”young and not well educated, and that he appeared deeply affected by his incarceration” at Guantánamo. He said that during five meetings in 2005 al-Ajmi had told him that he had been “badly abused after his capture in Afghanistan and later at Guantánamo, at one point coming to a meeting with a broken arm [he] said he sustained in a scuffle with guards.” Wilner added that over the course of his visits, al-Ajmi became “more and more distraught … about the way he was treated and the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it.”

While he too was unable to know for certain what had provoked al-Ajmi to become a suicide bomber, he maintained that this “horrible tragedy” could have been avoided if the administration had not turned its back on the due process of the law. “All we sought for him was a fair hearing, a process, and he was released by the US government without that process,” he said, adding pertinently, “The lack of a process leads to problems. It leads to innocent people being held unfairly and not-so-innocent people going home without any hearing.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Ajmi was an “Administrative Review Board Input,” dated October 19, 2004, which was, as it stated, input from the Task Force for the prisoners’ annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs). These were conducted on an annual basis after the CSRTs, and were designed to ascertain whether the prisoners still had intelligence value and were still regarded as a threat. In it, the Task Force recommended that al-Ajmi be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention (TRCD).”

In this document, it was noted that, at the time of his last assessment, on February 7, 2004, he was regarded as a medium-level threat, of low intelligence value, who was recommended for “[t]ransfer to the control of another country for continued detention (TRCD).” The Task Force assessed him as a medium threat because, although he “was a trained soldier in the Kuwaiti military, [who] went absent without leave to fight jihad in Afghanistan,” and although he “was initially deceptive and claimed Yemeni citizenship for fear of facing the Kuwaiti military court,” he “was an admitted mujahideen fighter,” and “ha[d] been forthright concerning his involvement as a fighter with the Taliban.”

The Task Force noted that he arrived in Afghanistan around March 2001 and “joined a Taliban fighting group” on the front line at Bagram for eight months, where “he acted as both a guard and a scout,” and “was issued an AK-47 and grenades and placed in a defensive position against the Northern Alliance.”

It was also noted that he “denie[d] receiving training in Afghanistan,”but that JTF GTMO assesse[d] this claim may be dishonest.” Al-Ajmi reportedly “state[d] he avoided training by telling the Taliban he had fired a Kalashnikov as a small boy in Kuwait,” although he” did not tell them of his prior military experience or demonstrate his marksmanship ability,” and an analyst claimed, “This does not seem plausible, since at the time [he] arrived in Afghanistan, circa March 2001, it [was] reported that everyone was required to attend a minimum of 7 to 8 weeks of basic training.” This may, however, not be true.

In addition, as with other prisoners, it was stated that he “was captured with a F91-W black Casio wristwatch,” and an analyst noted that this “was typically given to mujahideen who had received Al-Qaida training, and more specifically, who had received advanced explosives training at an Al-Qaida affiliated terrorist camp.” Again, it is unknown how true this was, or whether it proved anything in al-Ajmi’s case, and these claims were followed up with the oft-repeated claim that “[t]his specific model ha[d] been used in bombings linked to Al-Qaida and radical Islamic terrorist improvised explosive devices.”

Overall, it seems to me, the information about al-Ajmi that was made available indicates that he was nothing more than a foot soldier for the Taliban prior to his capture, but that his imprisonment in US custody, as a human being without rights in a brutal experimental prison, angered him so much that, after his release, he was drawn to terrorism.

Mohammed Fenaitel Al Daihani (ISN 229, Kuwait) Released November 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Mohammed al-Daihani, who was 36 years old at the time of his capture, was an auditor for the Kuwaiti government and a father of six. As he described it in Guantánamo, his family had a history of funding aid projects, and he had funded the construction of a mosque in Benin, and, in 2001, the digging of wells in Afghanistan. With unfortunate timing, he took a week’s vacation to check on the progress of his project, arriving the day before 9/11. As the country slowly descended into chaos and the borders were closed, he was trapped, moved from house to house in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad by his contact in the charity to which he had made his donation (the London-based Sanabal Charitable Committee, which, the Americans alleged, was “a fund-raising front for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group”). Finally, he hired a guide to smuggle him into Pakistan with eight or nine other people, where he was handed over to the army by local villagers.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Daihani (described as being born in November 1965, and also identified as Muhammad al-Dayhani) was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated February 7, 2004, in which it was noted that he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting at Kuwait University in 1989, that he worked from 1991 onwards as an Accountant for the Department of Finance Ministry, and that, in 2000, he traveled to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for the hajj, where he met Faisal, a member of the Sanabal Charitable Committee, and, at his urging, “departed for Kandahar, AF, on 09 September 2001.”

Instead of presuming that this was a vacation from work (as it clearly was), the Joint Task Force drew on the testimony of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (ISN 760, still held), who had been tortured in Guantánamo prior to becoming what the authorities regarded as one of their most productive informants. Slahi told his interrogators that “individuals that were part of terrorist cells were urged to go to AF prior to 11 September 2001,” and as a result of this vague, catch-all comment, the Task Force stated that “GTMO feels this might be the reason for [al-Daihani's] travel to AF,” as “[h]e has no records of previous travels to AF.”

Just as vague were claims that al-Daihani “may have direct ties with LIFG [the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group] by his association with Abdel Hakeem,” who was not identified elsewhere, and that his name was “possibly found on the hard drive of a known Al-Qaida associate.” It was also noted that, according to the analysts, the Sanabal Charitable Committee “supposedly focuses on construction and development work, but is suspected of being a fund-raising front for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,” which was a horribly all-encompassing allegation, contradicting the obvious evidence of the Committee’s charitable activities. It was also claimed that al-Daihani had “a history of making numerous contributions to non-government organisations with suspected and known links to terrorist organisations” — another vague allegation that means nothing, as, after 9/11, the US authorities tended to regard all Gulf charities involved in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area as fronts for terrorism, which, even if they were (which is a dubious claim at best), was not a reason for regarding anyone who had donated to them as a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer.

Al-Daihani was sent to Guantánamo on May 2, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because he “may be able to provide general information on the money transfer and transactions of the Al-Qaida network using NGOs as fronts as well as funding for future Al-Qaida Terrorist Organizations.”

In its conclusions, the Task Force noted that it had been determined that al-Daihani was “of high intelligence value to the United States,” and that, even though he “ha[d] only limited amounts of non-compliant incidents,” and his overall behavior ha[d] been compliant and non-aggressive,” he “pose[d] a high risk, as he [was] likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and its allies,” because he was “assessed as being a member of NGOs supporting terrorist organisations,” and because, “[i]n addition, his degree in finance, position within the Kuwaiti government, questionable monetary contributions to NGOs with both suspected and known links to terrorist organizations, [made] his role as being a likely financial facilitator of terrorist actions.”

As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be [r]etained in DoD Control,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force did not agree with this assessment. “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders,” it was stated, “CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that the detainee poses a high risk,” which, of course, indicates that CITF thought that his value had been overstated.

Khaled Ben Mustafa (ISN 236, France) Released March 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Khaled Ben Mustafa (described as Khalid Bin Mustafa), from Lyons, who was 29 years old at the time of his capture, and married with children, had traveled in Afghanistan with Redouane Khalid (ISN 173, see Part One of this series), from Lyons, whom he had met at his wedding in Paris. Establishing connections between the various French prisoners, it was notable that Khalid arrived in Afghanistan in July 2001 with another Parisian, Brahim Yadel (ISN 371, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Five of Ten)“), and that a good friend of his, Hervé Djamel Loiseau, died while leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan with two other Frenchmen who ended up in Guantánamo — Mourad Benchellali (see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Three of Ten)“), and his friend Nizar Sassi (ISN 325, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Four of Ten)“).

As I also explained, Ben Mustafa and Brahim Yadel and another Frenchman, Imad Kanouni (ISN 164, also see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Three of Ten)“), left Afghanistan for Pakistan with many dozens of other men who were later transferred to Guantánamo, because, although they were welcomed in one particular village by the locals, these villagers then betrayed them by sending them to a mosque where they were arrested by the army. As Ben Mustafa explained in a article for Le Parisien in April 2005, which was translated into English by Cageprisoners), and was the source of much of my information about him that I used in The Guantánamo Files, as so little was available in the documents from Guantánamo, “I was with some other French nationals. I produced my French passport and my driving licence to the Pakistani police officers but it wasn’t enough.”

Initially imprisoned in Peshawar, he, like other prisoners, explained how he was occasionally taken to a villa to be questioned by Americans. “They wore civilian clothes” he said. “FBI or CIA, I’ve no idea.”

In Chapter 8, I explained how Ben Mustafa described how, in the US prison at Kandahar airport, where he was held before his transfer to Guantánamo, his interrogators began, slowly, to inflict physical pain. “The aim,” he said, “was to make us confess that we were members or associates of Al-Qaida. It wasn’t true in my case and I refused to falsely confess. I got many beatings as a result of that. I was hit with wet towels, double-folded like a bag and containing small contusive objects such as toilet-soaps. As a result of that I suffered dizziness and aches behind the ear.”

In Chapter 15, I mentioned briefly how, at Guantánamo, he was interrogated over a hundred times. I did not have the space to include other information about his interrogations, but that information is now posted below because of its relevance to the overall picture of abuse at Guantánamo. Ben Mustafa said:

All the interrogations in Guantánamo took place in specially arranged rooms, where we were tied up on the ground. One day when I was not without doubt up to the waiting, I was left for nearly eight hours in the room with the air-conditioning switched on to the coldest temperature. I was literally refrigerated. I know that other detainees endured the same mistreatments. Some were so cold that they relieved themselves in their clothing. All these sessions were filmed by a small camera discreetly located in a corner of the room. In addition to the agents which conducted the interrogation, there was always a second team which listened behind a two-way mirror. Americans quickly understood that I was not a member of al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, I was questioned 100 or 150 times.

In April 2011, Cageprisoners published a detailed interview with Ben Mustafa (described as Ben Mustapha) conducted by former British prisoner Moazzam Begg (which I cross-posted here), in which he stated, “I decided to go to Afghanistan in order to live under shari’ah. At that time, I judged that the Taliban represented an Islamic state. My approach was to see with my own eyes what an Islamic state was, bearing in mind that I am convinced that Muslims should live under the Muslim command, the Law of God.” Explaining that he arrived in August 2001 and “discovered a pleasant Muslim atmosphere,” he also explained that, after 9/11, he had to leave the country and was seized by the Pakistanis in December 2001, and tortured “by the Pakistanis under the American authority” for a week, prior to his transfer to Kandahar after being sold to US forces by his Pakistani captors. As he explained:

When I say “sold”, it literally means “sold”. There was a financial transaction. Many among us saw cash flowing from the Americans to the Pakistanis. Each time they would hand over a person, the counter part was money.

After six weeks of torture in Kandahar, he was flown to Guantánamo, where, he said, “The Americans dearly wanted us to say that we were terrorists, that we were Al-Qaeda members and that we knew Osama Bin Laden. ‘Where is Bin Laden?’ Questions were always the same … Each time our answers were not good to them, they would torture us …”

He also spoke critically about the involvement of the intelligence services of many countries in the interrogations at Guantánamo:

It needs to be known that the Americans called over the secret services from all over the world in order to interrogate the GITMO detainees. During the four years I spent over there, several secret services from different countries came to question pretty much everybody. We could be interrogated by anybody. For sure, I was interrogated by the Americans. I was also interrogated by the French. The French came several times in order to interrogate us under the American torture. They wanted us to denounce people in France. The British used to interrogate the British but they used to interrogate everybody. I was also questioned by people with an accent. They were neither English nor American. All the services could interrogate whomever they wanted. For sure, the Mossad was part of the delegation.

He also described the forms of torture used at Guantánamo:

If they were not satisfied, they would torture us in different ways. There was physical torture. There was psychological torture; they would not allow us to sleep, rooms would be highly refrigerated. It was very cold. They would fill the room with noise using very big speakers. The volume of the music was extremely high. We were deprived of many things. We had almost nothing. The only thing I had was a “short.” I was put in a room for months and all I had was a “short.” I had nothing. No blanket, no towel. There was no hygiene. Torture was very harsh.

At the end of the interview, when asked, “What message would you like to address to our readers?” Ben Mustafa said:

I request them not to forget those who are still over there. We went through it but we have started a normal life again. We should really worry for those who are still there. We must not forget them in our invocations. We must absolutely not stop the positive actions that will be successful, God willing, and will close Guantánamo camp. We must remember that Guantánamo is not only in Cuba. There are Guantánamo camps all around the world. In Iraq, there is Guantánamo. In Afghanistan, there are Guantánamo camps. In Pakistan, there are Guantánamo camps. Guantánamo is everywhere. There are American secret prisons. We all know that Muslims are in there. We must not forget them in our invocations nor in the actions we take to denounce this injustice. We have to do everything possible to free our brothers in Guantánamo. We do not want for them a “prison of substitution” as they try to suggest. They need to go back home. There are people who were freed three years ago but they still have not seen their families. They were sent thousands of kilometres away from their place and they still have not seen their children, mothers and fathers. Is that freedom? Everybody is innocent in Guantánamo, that is known. Guantánamo was created to make people believe that we were guilty. Eventually, praise be to God, we are all innocents.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Ben Mustafa (described as being born in January 1972, and identified as Khaled Ben Mustapha) was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated March 27, 2004, in which, although it was noted that he had stated that he “became dissatisfied with his life in France” and “wanted to live in a ‘pure’ Islamic state along with his family,” it was also claimed that “he did not tell his wife and family members his true purpose for traveling to London,” where, the Task Force alleged, he “was recruited by Islamic extremists (Al-Qaida members); after which [he] agreed to travel to Afghanistan (AF) to receive military/terrorist training.” According to this version of events, he “traveled to England in July 2001 where known Al-Qaida members helped facilitate his further travels to Afghanistan and his entry into Al-Qaida sponsored terrorist training camp along with Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi.”

In this account, on July 22, 2001, Ben Mustapha and an unidentified man named Riduane (evidently Redouane Khalid, although the Task Force seemed not to realize this) traveled from the UK to Pakistan, ending up in Jalalabad, at “The House of the Algerians,” where, allegedly, “[t]wo types of training were known to be given: use of electronic components for the creation of explosive devices and training on the Kalishnakov [sic].” In this version of events, Ben Mustafa was sent to  Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because of his “affiliation with Al-Qaida as a foreign fighter in Afghanistan.”

Describing him as “a probable Al-Qaida member,” who “likely was involved in combat against US and allied forces as well,” even though no evidence was provided for this latter claim, the Task Force also claimed that, “[a]ccording to sensitive information, a Spanish bank account with the detainee’s name, birthdate, and place of birth has been associated with terrorist organizations” (which sounds unlikely), and also that, “[a]ccording to sensitive reporting by other government agency [presumably the CIA], the detainee is tied to terrorist groups operating in London, UK, and throughout Europe” (which, again, seems unlikely). It was also claimed that he had “possible connections with another terrorist group, the Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC),” which is a transparently vague claim, but, as a result of all these allegations, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood recommended that he be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention,” although this did not happen for another year.

Since their release from Guantánamo, Ben Mustafa and four of the other ex-prisoners — Nizar Sassi, Brahim Yadel, and Redouane Khalid — have faced a long ordeal in the French courts, although they did not, of course, face “continued detention,” as envisaged by the Bush administration. In 2007, they were convicted of “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise,” and given one-year sentences, but they were not imprisoned because of the time they had already spent imprisoned in Guantánamo. However, their convictions were overturned on appeal on February 24, 2009, because, as the New York Times explained, “The court ruled that information gathered by French intelligence officials in interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violated French rules for permissible evidence, and that there was no other proof of wrongdoing.”

On February 17, 2010, the Court of Cassation, a higher court, ordered a re-trial of the five men, and that trial began on January 20 this year, with lawyers drawing on US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks to argue that the case should be dropped. As the Miami Herald reported, “defense lawyers presented at least three US diplomatic cables citing French anti-terrorist investigators,” and “argued that it was inappropriate for French investigators to have discussed the ex-inmates’ cases with American authorities.” In April, it was noted in Cageprisoners’ interview with Ben Mustafa (in which he spoke about the French government’s actions in length) that the men’s conviction had been upheld by the Court of Cassation.

Sheikh Salman Al Khalifa (ISN 246, Bahrain) Released November 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how al-Khalifa, who was a member of the Bahraini royal family, stated in Guantánamo that he had traveled to Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid, and also to study his religion. He stated that he gave $5,000 to the Taliban to distribute to the poor and needy, after hearing about their plight on the news.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Khalifa (described as being born in July 1979, and identified as Suleiman al-Khalifa) was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated May 13, 2005, which was a change from his previous assessment, on November 11, 2003, when it was recommended that he be retained in DoD control.

In telling his story, “based on [his] statements,” the Task Force noted that he was indeed “a prince in the Bahraini royal family,” and was “related to the current ruler of Bahrain, through a shared great-grandfather.” It was also noted that, after graduating from high school in 1999, he studied religion at a college in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then, in March 2001, traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he stayed until the end of May, when he traveled to Egypt. There, he said, he watched a television program that “encouraged Muslims to live in an Islamic state,” and his father then “wired him 5,000 USD so that he could travel to Afghanistan.”

On May 28, 2001, he apparently traveled to Islamabad, where he “met with Taliban officials at the embassy,” who assigned him a guide. The two men then travelled to Quetta, eight hours away, where they “stayed at the old Saudi ambassador’s house,” and then traveled to Kandahar, where a man named Muhammad Yuqub took over responsibility for him. After staying at “a Taliban guest house for one night,” they traveled on to Kabul, where “they stayed at another undisclosed Taliban guest house.”

He then apparently spent three weeks “touring the city and visiting most of the mosques,” and “purchased a new AK- 47 rifle.” He then “met Abu al-Walid, an Islamic scholar from Saudi Arabia” (described by the US authorities as “Taliban, and possibly Al-Qaida connected”), who “invited [him] to move in with him at his guest house in the Wazir Akbar Khan district in Kabul to study Islam.” He reportedly stayed there for five months, with one-week breaks with al-Walid and another student in Khost, Kandahar,and Jalalabad, and on one occasion visited the Islamic Institute for Religious Studies in Kandahar, where “he met Abu Hafs Al-Mauritania, the director of the school” (and an advisor to Osama bin Laden, albeit one who opposed the 9/11 attacks).

In November, as US-backed forces neared Kabul, al-Khalifa “decided he would return home,” and traveled to Khost with a man named Muhammad Abdullah, who he “believed was a member of Al-Qaida,” where Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Taliban commander of Khost (and a famous Afghan warlord), “provided [him] a place to stay.” he reported that “Abdullah attempted to entice [him] to defend the Taliban,” but he evidently refused, and left Khost for Pakistan, where he was seized by Pakistani soldiers.

He was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “[t]o provide information on the following — Personalities: Muhammed Wali Razul — detainee’s tour guide, Muhammad Yaqoub — Taliban member detainee met in Kandahar, Sheikh Abu al-Walid, owner of a safe house [and] Taliban safe houses located in Quetta,PK, where detainee stayed for one day, Kabul, AF, where detainee stayed for two weeks [and] Wazir Akbar Khan area in Kabul, where detainee stayed for five months.”

The Task Force assessed al-Khalifa as “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was “assessed as a possible jihadist,” and although it was “unknown if he was involved in any fighting,” it was noted that he “admitted ties to Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, the Egyptian terrorist group, even though “he ha[d] not provided any details about his connection with Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya.” Further information came from a fellow prisoner, the Yemeni Yasim Basardah, who stated that he “told him that he was a fighter in Kandahar, AF, when the US bombing started,” but he is widely known, especially since the WikiLeaks documents were released, as the most prolific and unreliable informant in Guantánamo.

Elsewhere, it was noted that his behavior in Guantánamo had “occasionally been unruly,” which, in Guantánamo-speak, meant that, on one occasion, on March 12, 2005, he “verbally harassed the guards,” and on another occasion, in  November 2004, he “failed to comply with camp rules by not relinquishing all his trash following his meals” — not quite, it seemed to me, the resistance that might have been expected from a determined opponent of the US.

Saleh Al Oshan (ISN 248, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2005

Of the 12 prisoners profiled in this article, Saleh al-Oshan is one of four included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (4) – Escape to Pakistan (The Saudis),” I told, for the first time, the story of al-Oshan, who was apparently released on bail in May 2006 after his repatriation. His story had not been reported before because the documentation relating to him was not released by the Pentagon until September 2007.

According to the US military account released at that time, al-Oshan was an aid worker with the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a vast Saudi-based international charity which was blacklisted by the US because of alleged terrorist connections, and closed down by the Saudi government as a result of US pressure in 2004. Whatever connections with terrorism some parts of the organization may have had, it was nothing to do with al-Oshan, who was working in a refugee camp in Spin Boldak, on the Afghan-Pakistani border. In the course of his work, he stood on a landmine and was taken to a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, where he was seized by the Americans as one of the so-called “Quetta Five.”

As I also explained, all that the US authorities could come up with as allegations against him were that one of his “name variants” was found on two lists associated with Al-Qaida, that he “was identified as having relationship [sic] to Al-Qaida in Afghanistan” (without any corroboration being provided for this allegation) and that he “was captured without proper identification.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Oshan (described as being born in January 1979, and also identified as Abdullah Abu Hussein) was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated October 15, 2004, in which it was noted that, along with the latent tuberculosis that afflicted many of the prisoners, he “had malnutrition with a low Body Mass Index of <17%,” and also “a left, below-the-knee amputation.”

In assessing his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he studied Islamic Law for approximately four years at the Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but did not finish his course. It was also noted that his uncle “traveled between Saudi Arabia and the Philippines frequently for missionary work, and financed [his] travel to Afghanistan.” This might have provided some background for understanding his interest in performing charitable work in Afghanistan, and it was also stated that, In October 2001, he traveled to Karachi, Pakistan, where he met people at a university, who told him, as he “was seeking to help refugees, that refugees could be found in the Spin Boldak, Afghanistan (AF) area,” where there was a large refugee camp.

Traveling there in November 2001, he “denie[d] ever going to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance because that was a Muslim against Muslim war,” and explained that, three weeks after arriving in Spin Boldak, in December 2001, he “was walking alone to a nearby refugee camp when he stepped on a landline,” and “[w]hen he awoke he was in the Red Crescent Hospital in Quetta, PK, without his passport,” and the Pakistanis “informed [him] he was not allowed to go free.”

On or about January 10, 2002, he was handed over to US custody and flown to Kandahar, and he was sent to Guantánamo on January 21, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because he “may provide information on the refugee camp outside Spin Boldak, AF, and Islamic presence in the Philippines.”

An analyst, or analysts expressed doubts about what al-Oshan had been doing in Pakistan prior to traveling to Afghanistan, and also cast doubt on his story about the landmine, claiming that locals would have known where the landmines were, and would not have rescued him had he wandered into a minefield, and that, therefore, “A more likely scenario is detainee was either attacked with explosives or during his attempt to flee Afghanistan, he wandered into a mined area with other Al-Qaida members who rescued him.”

The notes reveal the extent to which analysts thought about — or obsessed about — reasons why the men in their control might not have been innocent men seized by mistake, and there are further examples in al-Oshan’s file. After a self-fulfilling assessment of danger that involved a statement that his name was “on the CIA’s watch list as a suspected member of Al-Qaida,” assessments were made about his supposed deception. The CIA apparently analyzed al-Oshan’s claim that his uncle had three wives as an attempt to pretend that they were not his own wives (although that seemed unlikely at the age of 22), and this, according to the analysts, “suggest[ed] he is probably wealthier than the average Saudi,” and, in addition, because he was “deceptive about his wives,” it was assessed that he may also have been deceptive about traveling to the Philippines, where it was presumed that he had contact with al-Qaeda related groups, even though it seemed apparent that it was his uncle who traveled regularly to the Philippines.

It was also noted that he was the cousin of two brothers also imprisoned in Guantánamo, Yousef al-Shehri (ISN 114, released in November 2007) and Abdul Salam al-Shehri (ISN 132, released in June 2006), and, as a result, an analyst noted that al-Oshan knew of “extremist groups, personnel, and their activities through his familial ties and likely ha[d] first hand knowledge,” and it was also noted that “JTF GTMO assessed that the inclination for jihad is passed, in part, through indoctrination from family members, i.e. from father to son and so on.”

It was also noted, in what seemed to me to be a particularly paranoid manner, that he “sent mail to Abd al-Rahman Bin Saad al-Qassem at the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Justice,” and an analyst noted that this relationship needed to be “investigated for possible extremist links within the Saudi government.” In general, moreover, it was claimed that there were numerous holes in [al-Oshan's] timeline and he ha[d] failed to detail his activities or associates,” and it was noted that he was “uncooperative and require[d] exploitation.”

As a result, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium to high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” The Task Force noted that it was “assessed that [he was] a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network and, if given the opportunity, [would] continue to support them.” The Task Force also claimed that, if released, he would “most likely support jihadist activities channels, which make it imperative [he] be retained in the custody of the US Government or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Government,” and it was also stated, “His continued detention will allow for fairer exploitation of his past affiliation with various terrorist groups and prevent him from engaging in further terrorist activity” — even though, of course, there had been no demonstration that he had ever engaged in “terrorist activity” in the first place.

Rather casting doubt on the Task Force’s assessment, it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force “assessed [al-Oshan] as a low risk on 22 March 2004.” However, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [he] poses a medium to high risk.”

Mosa Zi Zemmori (ISN 270, Belgium) Released April 2005

In a footnote to Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, a house outside Kabul that was allegedly used as a training camp (as mentioned in connection with the Moroccan prisoner Younis Chekhouri) was also mentioned in the tribunal of Mosa Zi Zemmori, a Belgian (also identified as Moussa Zemmouri), who was 23 years old at the time of his capture. According to the information collated for his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, he had apparently traveled to Afghanistan in October 2000, but was unable to attend a training camp because he contracted malaria.

In the Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 13, 2003, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” in which he was identified as Moussa Zamouri Adris, a Moroccan national born in July 1978 (which seems to be a mistake, as I believe he is a Belgian citizen), it was noted that he had previously lived in Holland, Syria and Iran, and the Joint Task Force claimed that, in October 2000, he was “recruited by an individual” to travel to Afghanistan. He reportedly stayed in Kabul for two weeks with two men identified as having received military training, and then in Jalalabad with a man named Abu Yassir, identified as a mujahideen who “received subsidies” from a terrorist group operating out of London, and then attended the Derunta training camp, “where he received basic training and small arms training.”

It is unknown whether there is any truth to these allegations, or whether, as Zemmori said, he contracted malaria and was unable to undertake training, but even if that was not the case, the account tried hard to dress up as significant a story that involved a young man visiting Afghanistan and undertaking basic military training, which is not an account of terrorism.

According to the Task Force, when the US-led coalition began bombing Jalalabad, he and Abu Yassir “fled to a small Afghan village where an Afghan guide led them and a group of Moroccans to the Pakistani border,” where he “surrendered to local police” in Peshawar, and was then handed over to US forces and taken to Kandahar. He was sent to Guantánamo on February 15, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his general knowledge of the Derunta training camp and two trainers from that camp,” and elsewhere it was claimed he could provide information about Mustafah, described as “the Derunta camp leader.”

Despite the largely straightforward nature of this account, the Task Force nevertheless regarded him as having been “evasive and deceptive during questioning,” and claimed that “sensitive reporting” indicated that he was “a high-ranking member of the Theological Commission of the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group (MIFG),” although it is unclear whether this was simply because he was seized with two Moroccans whom he had met on the way to Pakistan, or if he had a longer-standing relationship with them. One (as mentioned above) was Younis Chekhouri (ISN 197), who is still held, and was described here as the head of the MIFG (although that has not, of course, been proved in any way), and the other, as I explained In “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Seven of Ten),” was Brahim Benchekroun (ISN 587), who was freed in July 2004 but received a ten-year prison sentence in September 2007 for allegedly “recruiting Moroccans to fight for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI).”

The rest of the Task Force’s suspicions involved Zemmouri’s family. It was noted that his brother was a member of the vast and apolitical missionary organisation Jamaat al-Tablighi (which was, nevertheless, “believed to be used as a cover for action by Islamic extremists” by the authorities in Guantánamo), and alleged connections were claimed between his father and brother and Essid Sami Bin Kemais, who was arrested in Italy in 2001 and imprisoned in 2002 on charges of trafficking in arms, explosives, and chemicals, although this information, which clearly came from Belgium and Italy, was not elaborated upon, and its reliability is unknown.

The Task Force assessed Zemmouri “as being a trained Al-Qaida combatant and a member of the MIFG,” adding that he was “of intelligence value to the United States,” and posed “a high risk as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “[r]etain[ed] under DoD control.” Nevertheless, he was released 16 months later, presumably because of the involvement of the Belgian government.

Noticeably, in May 2009, Zemmori and Mesut Sen (ISN 296, see below) were cleared in court of belonging to a criminal conspiracy, as reported here (in French), and in August 2009 he was free to travel to the UK to take part in an event organized by Cageprisoners (follow the link for a video).

Sami El Leithi (ISN 287, Egypt) Released September 2005

Of the 12 prisoners profiled in this article, Sami El-Leithi is one of four included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how El-Leithi, who was 45 years old at the time of his capture, left Egypt in 1986, disgusted that democracy was not practiced in his homeland, and traveled to Pakistan, where he took a master’s degree in economics and taught at various schools and universities for ten years. He then moved to Afghanistan, where he taught at Kabul University, and, despite various run-ins with the Taliban, managed to avoid serious problems until the US-led invasion in October 2001.

When the bombing raids began, he suffered a head injury and was transferred to a hospital in Kabul with several other injured Afghans. After hearing that the US was also targeting hospitals, he and the others decided to seek refuge in Khost, but when they were told that members of the Taliban had also fled to Khost and that US forces would soon be targeting the area, they decided to flee to Pakistan. Although he was still severely injured, El-Leithi made it to the border via car, but was then arrested with his Afghan driver.

In Chapter 15, I explained how, during a session of abuse in Guantánamo, he suffered irreparable physical damage. when “military personnel and interrogators stomped on his back, dropped him on the floor and repeatedly forced his neck forward,” which resulted in two broken vertebrae and his confinement to a wheelchair. He was then “denied the necessary treatment and operation that would have saved him from permanent paralysis,” as was explained in an article in October 2005 in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. Elements of his story were also available in the documents from the tribunals in Guantánamo.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to El-Leithi (described as being born in October 1956, and also identified as Al-Muntasir Billah Ahmad al-Kibr, Sami Abdul Aziz Salim Allaithy, and Samy al-Leithy) was an “Update Recommendation [for] Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TR),” dated June 27, 2004, in which the Joint Task Force did not agree with the tribunal’s decision in 2005 that he was not an “enemy combatant” and should be released.

In assessing his medical condition, the Task Force noted that he had a “history of depression, chronic low back pain (secondary to L2/L3 spondylolisthesis and pars fractures), schistosomiasis (a parasite for which he has been treated), tinnitus, and gastric reflux.” It was also noted that his “current treatments include ongoing physical therapy, mantic for reflux and metamucil for constipation,” and, crucially, that he “ha[d] been offered back surgery to prevent further deterioration from the fractures but he refused” — which was understandable if, as he maintained, his injuries had been caused by, essentially, the same people he would have had to entrust to operate on him. It was also noted that he was “transported about the camp via wheelchair, but [could] walk short distances and [was] independent with transfers from wheelchair,” and that he “will require ongoing physical therapy for his musculoskeletal pain,” and it was reiterated that “he ha[d] been offered back surgery as this could deteriorate over time, but he ha[d] refused surgical intervention.”

In this particular document, it was not noted what rationale the Task Force had used to consider El-Leithi a threat, although it was noted that a decision that he should be “retained under DoD control” had been recommended by Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood on April 7, 2004. Noting that he was “of medium intelligence value,” but only “pose[d] a low risk, due to his medical condition,” the assessment was revised, so that Brig. Gen. Hood recommended that he be “released or transferred to the control of another country for continued detention,” although it was also noticeable that the Criminal Investigative Task Force did not agree that he was a medium risk. Under an agreement between CITF and JTF GTMO, CITF “deferred to JTF GTMO’s assessment that the detainee was a medium risk” on April 26, 2004, although their thinking was clearly more in line with what El-Leithi’s tribunal decided a year later.

However, although the Task Force glossed over the extent of his injuries, and what caused them, it was clear when he was finally released in November 2005 that, although his release had been approved in May 2005, his lawyers and the media had played a significant role is actually securing his freedom — and, presumably, that his visibility meant that the Mubarak regime would not be tempted to mistreat him on his return home.

El-Leithi was freed on September 30, 2005, just six weeks after the mainstream media had reported his injuries. In the Washington Post on August 13, 2005, for example, Carol D. Leonnig, drawing on “newly declassified records of statements to his attorney,” came up with the description of US personnel stomping on his back that I used above, and also noted that he “said he ha[d] been denied an operation that could save him from permanent paralysis and [was] being held at Camp V, a maximum-security wing of isolation cells reserved for the most uncooperative and high-value inmates, while he await[ed] transfer.”

The Washington Post also noted the fears of El-Leithi (described as Al-Laithi) about his return, noting that he believed he would be “imprisoned and tortured for his past criticism of rigged elections there,” and that he “would prefer to be sent elsewhere, including Pakistan or Afghanistan, where he lived for most of his adult life.”

Describing his injuries, the Post noted that his attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, “want[ed] him to get medical care for his spinal injuries, to be removed from Camp V and to have his prison medical records turned over.” He added that “he hop[ed] that the declassified statements [would] bolster Al-Laithi’s case.” In his statement, he said of his treatment, “This is barbarism. Why, even if I was guilty, would they do this? I am in constant pain. I would prefer to be buried alive than continue to receive the treatment I receive. At least I would suffer less and die.”

The US military gave the Post the official position — that the DoD “operates a safe, humane and professional detention operation” and “provides state-of-the-art medical care,” and, as Lt. Col. James Marshall, deputy director of public affairs, said, “Each detainee receives expert medical attention and treatment, if necessary, throughout detention. This medical care is often better than what detainees would receive in their home countries.”

According to Stafford Smith, when a prison spokesman was asked in July 2005 about El-Leithi’s back condition, he “expounded that the fractured vertebrae were the result of a degenerative disease.” However, El-Leithi clearly “trace[d] his disability to a day soon after his arrival at the prison when he was beaten by US military personnel while at the prison hospital.” In his exact words, “Once they stomped my back. An MP threw me on the floor, and they lifted me up and slammed me back down. A doctor said I have two broken vertebrae and I risk being paralyzed if the spinal cord is injured more.” He added that “his neck is also permanently damaged because Emergency Response Force teams at the prison [who punish prisoners with violence for the most minor infringement of the rules] repeatedly forced his neck toward his knees,” and also said the military “forced a large object into his anus on what his lawyer called the ‘pretext’ of doing a medical exam. “I know most prisoners had Americans put their fingers up their anuses, but with me it was far worse — they shoved some object up my rectum,” he wrote. “It was very painful.”

Sadly, another section of the Washington Post article did not come true, in which Leonnig wrote:

Al-Laithi’s account of his treatment comes as the Bush administration moves to downsize the military prison, negotiating agreements to transfer as many as 400 of the 510 Guantánamo detainees to other countries. A small number of those to be transferred are detainees whom the military has found not to be enemy combatants. Others were judged to be enemies who tried to harm the United States but are of little current danger — or intelligence value — to the military as it tries to combat terrorism.

In fact, by the time Bush left office over three years later, there were still 242 prisoners in Guantánamo, and, at the time of writing, 171 still remained, even though the Obama administration had stated its desire not to hold 89 of them.

In March 2010, Al-Ahram spoke to El-Leithi again, and discovered that he was still confined to a wheelchair, and that his “heavily wrinkled face bespeaks years of anguish. His eyes bear the look of someone who is lost, or of someone who feels that he has been deprived of any sort of justice. For El-Leithi, justice is something better sought in heaven. It definitely does not exist on earth.” The article also noted that his repatriation “was very far from being plain sailing, and upon his arrival in Egypt he was subjected to interrogation before being admitted to hospital,” where, although he was “granted free medical care,” his hospital room was “put under surveillance by state security agencies.” El-Leithi also said that “the security forces still follow his every footstep.”

Five years after his release from Guantánamo, he still “has no proper medical care, no source of income and no compensation for all the injustices he has suffered,” and “has to live on donations.” His brother explained that “he also lost his job when his employer found out that his brother was a former prisoner at Guantánamo.”

For further information about El-Laithi, see this interview with AFP conducted after his release, this interview with Daily News Egypt from 2008,  and this Reuters article for assurances made by the Egyptian government guaranteeing his humane treatment on his return.

Mesut Sen (ISN 296, Belgium) Released April 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, during the Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantánamo, an Algerian prisoner called Abdulli Feghoul (ISN 292, released in August 2008) had attempted to call Mesut Sen, a Belgian of Turkish origin, who was 21 years old at the time of his capture, as a witness to confirm that he stayed at an Algerian guest house in Afghanistan and did not attend a training camp. Sen, however, refused to testify on Feghoul’s behalf, and when he was released from Guantánamo in April 2005, he left a trail of unanswered questions behind him.

Presumably released through an arrangement between the Belgian and US governments, he made no statement on his release, although it was alleged that he and his father were connected with Milli Görüş, a Turkish organization regarded as an extremist group by the Belgian government, and that, in September 2000, he traveled from Germany to Jalalabad, where he lived for nearly a year at a “Taliban transit house.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Mesut Sen (described as being born in February 1980, and identified as Mesut Sin) was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated February 7, 2004, in which it was noted that he claimed that he traveled from Belgium (BE) to Afghanistan (AF) in October 2000 to study Islam at the urging of a man named Abduallah,” and that, en route, in Quetta, Pakistan, the Taliban office “directed [him] to a Koranic school in Kandahar,” where another man “suggested [he] go to a house in Jalalabad, AF, where he could study the Koran.”

He said that “he studied Islam for approximately seven months in Jalalabad,” and then traveled to Kabul because of difficulties returning home. In December 2001, he left Kabul “with several others” and traveled to Peshawar, PK, where he was captured by Pakistani authorities and handed over to US forces.” He was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, on the spurious basis that he “may be able to provide specific information on: Routes of Travel from Brussels, BE, to Afghanistan via Hamburg, GE, Holland, Dubai, Karachi, and Quetta, PK, Activities and personnel at the Youth Center, Brussels, BE, Activities and personnel on [sic] the Center El-Bukhari, Gare Du Midi in Brussels, BE [and] Activities and personnel at a safe house in Jalalabad, AF.”

Despite his statements, the Task Force noted that his story story had “changed a number of  times,” that he “appear[ed] to have been recruited by Al-Qaida facilitators in Europe and sent to Afghanistan with the purpose of receiving training,” and that “[s]ensitive reporting indicate[d] [he] received weapons and explosives training while at the guest house in Jalalabad, AF, yet he refuse[d] to admit receiving anything other than religious training.” It was also claimed that other prisoners had stated that [he] was “with another Belgian receiving training in electronics components (explosives related),” who, it was noted, was “likely Nizar Tabelsi,” who was later tried and convicted in Belgium.

Regarded as generally “compliant and non-aggressive,” he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and  “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and its allies,” and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that the be “[r]etained in DoD control.”

Despite the allegations, it is noticeable that, in May 2009, Mesut Sen and Mosa Zi Zemmori (ISN 270, see above) were cleared in court of belonging to a criminal conspiracy, as reported here (in French).

Salih Uyar (ISN 298, Turkey) Released April 2005

Of the 12 prisoners profiled in this article, Salih Uyar is one of four included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (6) – Escape to Pakistan (Uyghurs and others),” Uyar was 20 years old when he was seized, and in his tribunal at Guantánamo he confirmed allegations that he traveled to Afghanistan via Iran and Pakistan in 2000, and that he lived with someone in Kabul for two months before the US-led invasion began, although he denied that the person was associated with al-Qaeda, as was also alleged. When the tribunal asked for clarification of his friend’s business in Kabul — his occupation, for example — Uyar said, “When I was there with him, I didn’t see him do anything. I don’t think he had an occupation. He himself was actually a refugee from Iran and that’s how we became friends.”

In another allegation, the US authorities claimed that Uyar had “traveled in and out of Turkey multiple times, including multiple trips to Syria under the guise of Arabic language studies,” which he responded to by saying that he had indeed traveled to Syria numerous times for Arabic language studies. He added that his visit to Afghanistan was “mainly to see the place,” denied an allegation that he was associated with Turkish radical religious groups, saying, “It is just lies,” and fended off a ludicrous allegation — also leveled against numerous other prisoners — that his Casio watch could be used a timer for an Improvised Explosive Device by saying, “If it’s a crime to carry this watch, your own military personnel also carry this watch. Does that mean that they’re terrorists as well?”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Salih Uyar (described as being born in April 1981, and identified as Salah Uyar) was an “Update Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated May 21, 2004, in which it was noted that, on September 27, 2002, Maj. Gen. Dunlavey recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government,” based on an assessment that he was “not affiliated with Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader.”

However, under “New Information,” it was claimed that he and his father were “known to have ties to radical Islamic groups in Turkey” (although, again, this was not substantiated), and there was also an extremely vague allegation that a man named Rustam Shavkatovich Baltabayev, described as a detained Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and suspected Al-Qaida supporter, “had an extensive list of phone numbers on him,” and that “[f]our of these phone numbers possibly belonged to [his] father in Turkey.” This was not only vague, but it was also troubling because it is not known who Baltabayev was, or where he was held, as he was not held in Guantánamo.

It was also claimed that there were “several inconsistencies” in his statements regarding his time in Afghanistan, and that he had been “uncooperative during interrogations,” and it was alleged that, in Kabul, where, he said, he stayed in a house “with six others, rarely outside and then mainly for walks, had no job, studied religion, did not interact with locals, [and] did not have firm relationships with other members of the house,” an analyst suggested that this was the same house in which four Syrian prisoners at Guantánamo stayed, who were alleged to have had “links to Osama Bin Laden’s religious advisor, Sheikh Issa, and to have attended military training.”

There were also claims from an analyst that, although he had denied traveling to Georgia, he “likely traveled to Georgia and then Chechnya where he received military training and participated in Jihad, returning through Iran to provide credibility to his cover story,” which seems unlikely, given his age at the time of his capture and the difficulty in actually traveling to Chechnya.

Nevertheless, the Task Force assessed him as “a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network with links to radical Islamic groups in Turkey and mujahideen in Chechnya where he received military training and engaged in Jihad” (again, not established), and determined that he was “of high intelligence value,” and posed “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood recommended that he be “retained under DoD control.”

Despite all these claims, the members of his tribunal at Guantánamo evidently did not believe the kind of claims aired by the Task Force, and on his return to Turkey he was apparently questioned and released without charge.

Also see Part One, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five of this series.

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, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), 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.

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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 time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 16 of the 70-part series.

In late April, WikiLeaks pushed Guantánamo back onto the international media’s agenda by publishing 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, which drew on the testimony of witnesses — in most cases, the prisoners’ fellow prisoners — whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.

As an independent media partner of WikiLeaks, I liaised both before and after the publication of these documents with WikiLeaks’ mainstream media partners (including the Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, the Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais), and then, after the killing of Osama bin Laden pushed Guantánamo aside once more, and allowed apologists for torture, and those who engineered its use by US forces, to resume their malignant, criminal and deeply mistaken defense of torture, and of the existence of Guantánamo, I began to analyze all of the Detainee Assessment Briefs in depth.

I began, in May and June, 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. These men and boys were amongst the first 201 prisoners released, and unlike the other prisoners, for whom information was released to the public from 2006 onwards, as a result of court cases involving Freedom of Information requests, no information had been officially released about the first 201 prisoners.

“WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo” was followed by a ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004,” published from June to August, 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.

As a result, of the 201 prisoners released between 2002 and 2004, I have, to date, published the most comprehensive reports available in one place on 198 of the 779 prisoners held, with just three stories currently unknown (of prisoners whose Detainee Assessment Briefs were missing, and whose stories have not surfaced in any other media).

For the next phase of this 70-part project (with 15 parts now complete), I am turning my attention to the period from September 2004 to the end of 2005, when 62 prisoners were released (also see Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five). This 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.

The tribunals were designed to review the evidence against all the prisoners (which they did from July 2004 to March 2005), to decide whether they had been correctly designated, on capture, as “enemy combatants” who could be held without rights. They were, however, a corrupt and inept process, designed essentially to rubber-stamp the administration’s prior decisions, and not to allow the prisoners to fundamentally challenge the largely flimsy basis of their detention. The prisoners were, for example, not allowed lawyers, and they were not allowed to either see or hear the classified evidence against them, although it was not until 2007 that the extent of the failings of the CSRTs became fully apparent, when their supposed integrity was thoroughly undermined in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham.

A veteran of US intelligence who had worked on the tribunals, Lt. Col. Abraham not only revealed how shambolic the process of compiling the supposed evidence for the tribunals was, but also how, when tribunals such as the one he took part in, disagreed with the authorities’ preconceived notions, by deciding that the man before them was not an “enemy combatant,” the officers were dismissed and “do-over” tribunals were convened until the authorities got the results they desired.

Despite the insuperable problems with the CSRTs, they — and their successors, the annual Administrative Review Boards — often provided the only opportunity for the prisoners to have their own voices heard, and they proved invaluable when I was researching and writing The Guantánamo Files.

Now supplemented with information from the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks, the 62 stories in this five-part series cover 29 of the 38 prisoners who were the only ones, out of 558 prisoners in total, to succeed in convincing their tribunals, and the authorities overseeing the tribunals, they they were not “enemy combatants” — or, as the administration insisted, that they were “no longer enemy combatants.” The Pentagon’s document listing the 38 (PDF) describes them as “Detainees Found to No Longer Meet the Definition of ‘Enemy Combatant’ during Combatant Status Review Tribunals Held at Guantánamo.” The other nine were not freed because, in all but one case, it was unsafe for them to be returned to their home countries, and, as a result, they were not released until 2006 and 2009, when third countries were found that were prepared to accept them.

This series also covers the stories of 33 others released between September 2004 and November 2005 who were not cleared for release after the CSRTs, but were released anyway, and readers will, I hope, be able to see how much of the decision-making process involved political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice.

I also hope that readers will bear in the mind the Bush administration’s refusal to concede that it made any mistakes, which is apparent in its refusal to accept that prisoners were “not enemy combatants,” and its decision to described them as being “no longer enemy combatants” instead, and will reflect on the problems of overclassification 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.

WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released After the Tribunals, 2004 to 2005 (Part One of Five)

Abdul Sattar (ISN 10, Pakistan) Released September 2004

Sixty-two Pakistanis were sent to Guantánamo in 2002 and 2003, and the majority were seized in northern Afghanistan, and held in a notoriously brutal and overcrowded prison in Sheberghan run by General Rashid Dostum, an Afghan Uzbek warlord (and former Soviet ally), who was also one of the commanders of the US-backed Northern Alliance, until US forces came and picked them out and sent them to Guantánamo, mostly via the prison at Kandahar airport.

Thousands of mainly young and impressionable Pakistanis had been recruited to help the Taliban against the US, via a number of militant organisations, including Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM). They may well have included Abdul Sattar, although, as I explained in Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files:

Hundreds of HUM soldiers travelled to Afghanistan to assist the Taliban after the US-led invasion, including the organization’s leader, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, who crossed the border in early November, accompanied by a number of guards and colleagues. While Khalil subsequently escaped, many, if not most of the HUM volunteers were killed in Afghanistan. One survivor, at least, made it to Guantánamo, although he had little to tell. In his tribunal, 20-year old Abdul Sattar (who was transferred to Pakistani custody in September 2004 and released in June 2005), spoke only to deny that he knew of any connection between HUM and al-Qaeda.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 23, 2003, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” the Joint Task Force explained how Sattar, born in 1981, had become a minor HUM recruit. After noting that he had “worked odd jobs after finishing high school until 1999, when he began working at a textile factory,” the Task Force stated that he met the local leader of HUM shortly before he was laid off from the factory, who “spoke to [him] about Jihad.” A few days later, he went to the local HUM office to apply to attend a training camp, “to get out of his parents’ house and because he wanted to fight the Jihad,” and attended the camp for approximately one month, where he was trained on number of weapons.

In June 2001, the local head of HUM told him it was “time for Jihad in Afghanistan,” and he then traveled to Kabul, staying in a HUM guesthouse for two days before traveling to Bagram, where he “was given an AK-47 and told to stand guard under Shamshir, the HUM leader in Bagram.” He was then apparently “sent to guard a building just south of Bagram, where he served as the leader of approximately 20 others.” After approximately two and half months, he was transferred to Kabul with ten others to guard a building for approximately 20 days, and then, in September 2001, was flown “with 20 others associated with HUM and 50 Taliban fighters” to Kunduz, and then traveled by truck to the front line at Khawaja Ghar, where he remained for a month and a half “in bunkers/fighting positions near the town.”

He then went back to Kunduz in October 2001 for more guard duty at a compound, before surrendering to the Northern Alliance the following month, with thousands of others, when Kunduz fell. However, contradicting this account, it was also stated that he “fled to a village in the west as Mazar-e-Sharif was bombed,” where “[t]he villagers turned him over to the Northern Alliance who then turned [him] over to US Forces.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 3, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of AI-Qaida recruiting practices in Pakistan,” although, 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 a senior interrogator who worked in Afghanistan explained in a book that he wrote about his experiences, 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-Qaeda and Taliban suspects” were widespread.

In its assessment, the Task Force claimed that Abdul Sattar had “repeatedly expressed his commitment to Jihad and martyrdom” during his detention, noting some dubious statements he had reportedly made — “that he did not care whom he fought for or even who the enemy was,” which is seriously at odds with the fact that most of his short service for the Taliban consisted of guard duty, and that he “stated that he still claim[ed] himself as a member of HUM.” It was also noted that, during interrogation in August 2003, when he “was asked if released would he go to Afghanistan to be a martyr, [h]e replied,’I don’t have to go to Afghanistan to be a martyr, there are many other ways to become a martyr.’”

As a result, he was “assessed as not being a member of AI-Qaida, nor a Taliban leader,” although it was noted that “his commitment to Jihad martyrdom makes [him] a continuing threat,” and even though he was regarded as being “of minimal intelligence value to the United States,” and was also regarded as “a medium threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” Maj .Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, then recommended that he be “retained under DoD control,” and notified the Criminal Investigative Task Force, who had previously “approved [his] transfer under a conditional release agreement on 06 June 2003.” Nevertheless, he was released 13 months later, with 34 other Pakistanis, who were then held in Pakistani custody for another nine months, before being released in June 2005.

Muhammed Ijaz Khan (ISN 17, Pakistan) Released September 2004

As I explained in Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, many of those who were recruited to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan were not necessarily well-informed about who the Taliban’s enemies were. One of the examples I cited was that of 25-year old Mohammed Ijaz Khan, who was captured leaving Kunduz. In his tribunal, Khan “admitted that he traveled to Afghanistan ‘to fight the jihad,’ but said that he didn’t know that the Northern Alliance were Muslims.”

This may or may not have been a calibrated lie, but there was nothing in the documents released by WikiLeaks to suggest that he was anything more than the most basic foot soldier recruit. In the case of Khan, described as Mohammed A. Khan, born in August 1976, the file was an “Update to Affirm Recommendation to Release to the Control of Another Country,” dated August 20, 2004, in which it was stated that he left high school in 1991 or 1992, and then worked in a textile mill in Faisalabad, in a Suzuki parts factory in Lahore and in a bookshop from 1994 to 1999. After returning to his home village in approximately May or June 2001, he reportedly “went to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban because he was unable to find work in Pakistan.”

After surrendering to Northern Alliance Forces near Ushkar, Afghanistan (which is near Bamiyan, west of Kabul, in Hazara country), he was transferred to US forces and sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, just three days after the prison opened, on the spurious basis that it was because “[i]t was suspected that [he] had knowledge of training techniques and individual members of the Pakistani military as well as information on Taliban recruiting in the mosques in Lahore, Pakistan.”

In its assessment on September 27, 2002, the Joint Task Force stated that it “consider[ed] the information obtained from and about him as not valuable or tactically exploitable,” and Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government …  based on an assessment [that he] was not affiliated with Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader and [did] not pose a future threat to the US or US interests.” However, under “New Information,” it was stated that he had “expressed continued commitment to Jihad,” and that a foreign intelligence source had indicated that his name was “found in a document from a Libyan-born, Dublin-based Muslim extremist who may have links to the 1998 Embassy bombings in Africa,” which is, frankly, a ridiculous suggestion, as he was clearly nothing more than a short-term foot soldier in Afghanistan, although it led to a determination that he was “of medium intelligence value due to his Muslim extremist links to the 1998 Embassy bombings in Africa.”

In conclusion, although the Task Force recognized that Khan was “not a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network,” it was noted that he “does admit to being a Taliban foreign fighter,” and he was assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” because he had “demonstrated a commitment to jihad,” and had “expressed during interrogation a continued commitment to jihad.” Also mentioned was the ludicrous claim of a possible link to the African embassy bombings. and, as a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, “affirm[ed] a recommendation that [he] be released to the control of another country,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force had been “unable to make a threat determination” about Khan in September 2002, and that, until they did so, “JTF GTMO and CITF cannot agree on this particular detainee.” Within weeks, CITF had evidently agreed with the Task Force, leading to his release, and his imprisonment in Pakistan for another nine months.

Feroz Abbasi (ISN 24, UK) Released January 2005

As I explained in Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, Feroz Abbasi, who was 21 years old at the time of his capture, was seized in Kandahar. A student from Croydon, he apparently traveled to Afghanistan in December 2000 with James Ujamaa, a black American civil rights activist who converted to Islam in the early 1990s and travelled to the UK, where he became close to the radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri at London’s Finsbury Park mosque.

According to Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory, in their book, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park mosque, Abbasi also became close to al-Masri, eventually living at the mosque. After initially hoping to travel to Chechnya to defend the Muslims oppressed by the Russian government, he traveled instead to Afghanistan, where he reportedly trained at al-Farouq (a camp associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11), and was then apparently sent to receive specialized training in a camp at Kandahar airport, where, he said, he was the only one of the recruits to argue that martyrdom operations should only be directed at military targets and not at civilians.

As I explained, this was a moral stance which was also at odds with the views of his mentors, but which resurfaced in his opinions about 9/11. “I’ve had enough of innocent people losing their lives,” he wrote in a 156-page autobiography that he produced in Guantánamo. “I did not leave my home except to defend innocent people.”

Allegedly called upon to defend Kandahar airport against the forces of Gul Agha Sherzai, the US-backed former governor of Kandahar, he described it as a terrifying experience in which he spent his time “running around like a madman in the middle of nowhere trying to dodge missiles,” and then found himself alone, as the Yemeni fighters with whom he had spent the night ran away. A few days later, he was caught with a grenade stuffed down his trousers by two Northern Alliance soldiers in Kandahar. “This guy’s a nuttier,” one of them apparently said, before handing him over to the Americans.

Abassi has not spoken publicly about his experiences, either in Afghanistan or in Guantánamo, although he is well-known for his criticism of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, in which he took part, and in which, after he brought up his status under international law, the Tribunal President stated, “International law does not apply. Geneva Conventions do not apply. You have been designated an enemy combatant. This Tribunal will fairly listen to your explanation of your actions.” When Abassi refused to drop the subject, the Tribunal President, tiring of his refusal to behave, stated, “I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the word international law again.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated November 11, 2003, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” in which it was noted that he was a British national, born in Entebbe, Uganda in 1979, most of the above was reiterated. It was stated that, after becoming interested in jihad and contacting Abu Hamza, he traveled to Afghanistan, and trained at al-Farouq. More contentious are the claims that he then met up with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Saif Ul Abel (actually Saif al-Adel), an Egyptian explosives expert and a high-ranking member of al-Qaida, and the Australian David Hicks (ISN 2), and was chosen for advanced training.

Describing his capture, the Task Force failed to mention the colorful story above, noting only that he had been in a guest house in Kandahar, and that he “fled towards Pakistan with several others,” was “captured by a band of Afghans and disarmed, and subsequently turned over to the US Marines.”

He was apparently sent to Guantánamo the day before the prison opened, on January 10, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his affiliation with Al-Qaida and knowledge of their training camps,” and also because he was “very familiar with the tactics and training employed by Al-Qaida in various terrorist operations, recruitment of Islamic men outside Afghanistan and Al-Qaida intelligence collection training and operations.”

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force described him as “a confirmed member of Al-Qaida, who has received advanced training and who has pledged to martyr himself in Jihad against the West and the United States in particular. [He] has had personal contact with some of Al-Qaida’s most senior operatives and planners and is assessed to have considerable information pertaining to Al-Qaida personalities and future operations.” It was therefore noted that he was “of intelligence value to the United States,” and that he posed “a high threat to the US, its interests and its allies.” Asa result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “retained under DoD control.”

The Task Force also noted that he was “a candidate for prosecution as a terrorist, under the President’s Military Order of November 2001,” authorizing the creation — or revival — of the deeply contentious Military Commission trial system for terror suspects, which was particularly backed by Vice President Dick Cheney, for which Moazzam Begg (ISN 558) was also “a candidate.” Both men were, however, released before their hearings began, and were freed without charge on their return to the UK.

Adel Kamel Haji (ISN 60, Bahrain) Released November 2005

As I explained in Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, Adel Kamel Haji, who was 37 years old at the time of his capture, told those reviewing his case in Guantánamo that he took a break from his job as a clerk for the ministry of defence in Bahrain “to help the refugees and the poor who suffered from the war” in Afghanistan. Taking 2,500 Bahraini Dinars (around $6,700) of his own money, he entered Afghanistan in a taxi from Iran in late October, passing through Herat, where he expected to see refugees but found none, and taking a bus to Kabul via Kandahar, where he discovered that the office of the International Red Cross was boarded up. In Kabul, he told the owner of his hotel that he had come to help refugees and the poor, and he “offered to show me people in areas outside the city where people were in need of help,” so “I went and gave money to families living in poor small houses and things like that.”

A few days after his arrival, however, Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance, and the owner advised him to flee, finding a driver who took him towards the Pakistani border, dropped him off and said that if he carried on walking he would reach Pakistan. He was then picked up by an Arab called Omar (Rajab Amin, ISN 65), in a car with an Afghan driver, who “saw my clothes and my features, which looked familiar to him, so he stopped.” On arrival in Pakistan, he handed himself in to the authorities, anticipating that he might receive “a verbal admonishment” for not arriving through the proper channels, but never considering that he would be arrested. When this was pursued by a Board Member, who asked, “Why do you think you ended up here after showing up with the proper papers?” he replied:

I don’t know what happened exactly. But it became clear to us later that … the Pakistani police force was selling people for money [and] that the price for Arabs was a large sum of dollars. I think you have documentation to show that many of the people here had nothing to do with fighting or killing … I think you have become certain that these people did not have anything to do with this affair. One of the interrogators told me that a lot of the Pakistanis were selling people for money … They said these people are all from al-Qaeda and they turned them in.

In Chapter 7, I included Haji’s descriptions of his detention in Peshawar, Pakistan, prior to being transferred to US custody. He explained that, having been detained for the night at the border with other foreigners, he expected to be taken to a police station for routine questioning when a military helicopter arrived instead, with about 15 officers from the Pakistani Special Forces on board. At this point, he said, “we realized that we had been betrayed by the officers at the border post.”

Blindfolded and bound, the men were thrown onto the helicopter and flown to Peshawar. On the way, each prisoner was assigned four soldiers, who “sat on our backs throughout the flight,” and at Peshawar airport they were dragged from the plane and thrown on the ground, where “we remained in the open for about two hours without anyone uttering a word with us.” They were then taken in trucks to a police station and held in cells, which were “located somewhere underground with doors made of steel.” Haji explained that the cells were “very dirty,” that “the treatment in [the] prison was awful,” and that “the food was very bad.”

He also said that, during his detention in Peshawar, the Pakistanis took him and some other prisoners for what they claimed was routine questioning, but explained that they were taken to a villa where they were confronted by American interrogators, who “asked us about our names, nationalities, age, qualifications, the reason of going to Afghanistan, how we entered and when,” and then returned them to the prison.

In “Guantánamo Bay Detainee Statements,” compiled in May 2005 by his attorneys Mark Sullivan and Joshua Colangelo-Bryan of Dorsey & Whitney (PDF), he spoke briefly about his time in Kandahar, explaining that, on arrival, “US soldiers beat [him] in the face and stomach as he was led from the plane.”

He also wrote an op-ed after his release, in which he was identified as Adel Kamel Abdulla. This was published in The Media Line on December 28, 2006, and is available here in a cross-post from the Cageprisoners website. In it, his most powerful insight into his time at Guantanamo was in the introductory paragraphs, in which he wrote:

Captivity means isolation. We were in a military base, on an isolated island in Cuba. It was as if we did not exist on Earth! We never used to see anyone or anything nor receive any news. We could barely see sunlight. Almost none of the letters that we wrote to our families were sent. After a year at the Bay we knew something was wrong when we received letters from our family saying they had not heard from us.

At night the lights were so strong that it was difficult to know whether it was night or day. We couldn’t sleep because it was constantly noisy. There were lots of scorpions, insects, lizards and rats. We were allowed a 3 minute shower per week. There were no clean clothes and those we had were made of polyester, which was horrible in the hot and humid weather.

The prison is under the control of psychiatrists whose goal is to turn us crazy by the time we left, but I think it’s they who are crazy now.

He also explained how the prisoners “turned to God for help, spending as much time as we could in prayer and reading the Holy Qur’an and as the days went on we began to feel we were in God’s hands and that gave us all the strength and patience we needed to survive Guantanamo.” he added, “Without God’s help no one can tolerate that place for even one minute.”

He also revealed how the prisoners “had become one big family. We were very caring and supportive to each other and after four years, I had adapted to life in Guantanamo Bay. In leaving I felt I was leaving behind my family because the inmates were genuinely my brothers.”

In conclusion, he wrote about the general ignorance about Guantanamo in Bahrain and around the world, explaining that “when we were there we … suffered serious injuries due to clashes and torture but it was never announced. The world does not know anything about Guantanamo.”

In 2008, he was one of 66 former prisoners interviewed for a major McClatchy Newspapers report, in which he was identified as Adil Kamil al-Wadi. In an article based on an interview with him conducted by a McClatchy reporter in a coffee shop in Bahrain, Tom Lasseter explained how he was particularly concerned to explain how, at Kandahar, the guards had begun attacking the prisoners’ religion. After initial bemusement, al-Wadi said:

[T]he soldiers began to laugh at the prisoners when they prayed. He said that some shouted obscenities about them being terrorists. The prisoners, he said, continued without acknowledging the hecklers with M-16s. Then the soldiers began to demand that the prisoners stand up for head counts, he said. When the prisoners refused to get up and continued to pray, the soldiers hoisted them to their feet and sometimes punched them.

That, Wadi said, is when things changed. “The soldiers told us, ‘We will teach you a lesson.’ We told them, ‘If you want to do something, you will be sorry. We are not afraid to die for our religion,’” Wadi said. “We told them, ‘If you want to stop us from praying, we will fight you to the death.’” Wadi said that for him and many other prisoners, the battle came to seem like a religious war between Muslim prisoners and American soldiers who seemed to hate Islam.

Al-Wadi also showed his interviewer “pencil-thin scars across his flesh,” which, he said, were “left by tight handcuffs and shackles,” but primarily he wanted to continue talking about the Americans’ assault on Islam, explaining how, in Guantánamo, after the prisoners were given copies of the Quran, guards conducting cell searches sometimes abused the holy book. This was how al-Wadi described the problems:

During one of the first searches, he said, “they threw mine [my Quran] on the floor; a soldier kicked it.” “We became angry and asked him, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘What did I do?’ We said, ‘You kicked our holy Quran. He said, ‘Oh, this book?’ And then he kicked it again. We started to scream and kick the fence.”

An officer came to the cellblock to see why the detainees were making so much noise. Told that a soldier had kicked a Quran, the officer apologized, Wadi said. “He said the soldier was a fool,” Wadi said. “We said, ‘OK, please do not let it happen again.’” Five days later, a different soldier threw a Quran to the floor and kicked it, Wadi said.

When Camp Delta opened in May 2002, al-Wadi said, “he was called in for interrogation less frequently than he had been before; months passed without him being asked a single question.” He added, “They didn’t give me any idea about my case; they just said, ‘What do you want to talk about?’ They didn’t ask me any questions. I said, ‘Are you joking? You have me here and have no questions?’”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Haji was an “Administrative Review Board Input,” dated November 22, 2004, which was, as it stated, input from the Task Force for the prisoners’ annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs). These were conducted on an annual basis after the CSRTs, and were designed to ascertain whether the prisoners still had intelligence value and were still regarded as a threat. In it, the Task Force recommended that Haji be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention (TRCD).”

The document also noted that, at the time of his last assessment, on November 11, 2003, he was regarded as a high-level threat, of medium intelligence value, who was recommended for ongoing detention. The Task Force assessed him as “a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network,” who had been “neither forthright nor cooperative during his interrogations.” It was claimed that there were “inconsistencies in [his] story,” and that his “travel patterns and contacts indicate [that he] did not travel to Afghanistan to help the poor as he claimed, but that he in fact traveled to Afghanistan to fight Jihad against the United States and was probably supported and facilitated by Al-Qaida.” It was also noted that he was “captured with a confirmed Al-Qaida member, but refuse[d] to explain in detail the true circumstances of this association,” even though this does not appear to have surfaced as an allegation in either his CSRT or his ARB.

In conclusion, as well as assessing him as “a probable Al-Qaida recruit,” who had “clearly demonstrated his dedication to Jihad,” the Task Force also noted that  he had been “disruptive and aggressive while in detention,” and “had to be confined in the maximum-security unit because of this behaviour” — which, of course, proves only that he reacted with anger to his detention, and not, as the Task Force implied, that reacting with anger to one’s detention in Guantánamo somehow provided proof of an affiliation with terrorism.

It was also noted that, despite the above, the Task Force had determined that he was not a high risk, but was, instead, “a medium threat to the US and its allies,” and it was also noted that the Task Force had determined that he was “of low intelligence value,” and was “assessed as being fully exploited.” Providing further uncorroborated information, the Task Force claimed that, although he had “consistently denied that he went to Afghanistan for jihadist reasons, his brother, Mahir Kamil Abdullah Haji, provide[d] evidence that [he] actually went to Afghanistan twice for jihadist purposes.” The Task Force conceded that there was “no indication that [he] received advanced training or had any leadership role in Al-Qaida,” but this whole scenario involving his brother strikes me as deeply suspicious, partly because the first instance cited was a visit “for two months for jihad against the Soviets in 1988,” which, of course, was a US-backed “jihad” that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda’s global terrorism, and secondly, because no proof was provided that his visit in October 2001 was for jihad, and it sticks me as deeply unreliable that his brother was supposed to have stated that, at the time, he “had also decided to go to Afghanistan for jihad himself,” and “that he and his brother  agreed that [he] would go to Afghanistan first and then call Mahir to tell of his whereabouts in Afghanistan.”

Whatever the exact status of these dubious allegations, Haji and two other Bahrainis were freed a year after this document was issued, and were then released without charge on their return to Bahrain.

Lahcen Ikassrien (ISN 72, Spain) Released July 2005

I first told the story of Lahcen Ikassrien in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” drawing on an article in El Pais in November 2006 (which was translated into English for Cageprisoners), and expanded on it in March 2011, in an article entitled, “The Case of Lahcen Ikassrien: Torture in Kandahar and Guantánamo.”

A former gardener, cook and construction worker, who had spent three years in prison for dealing hashish, Ikassrien’s journey to Guantánamo began when he traveled to Afghanistan after separating from his Moroccan wife in Spain. “I wanted to know how it was to live there, if what was said about the Taliban was the truth,” he said. “For me, Taliban was synonymous with Muslim, good Muslim.”

After a difficult journey via Turkey and Iran, Ikassrein arrived in the western Afghan city of Herat. There, he said, the Taliban “interrogated me in a police station for six hours. They wanted to know everything. Where I went and what I wanted to do. These people did not trust anyone. I told them that I came from Europe to live like the true Muslims. They sent me to Kunduz, near Mazar-e-Sharif, and there I bought a taxi and a butcher shop that was run for me by two Afghans. I could not run it because I understood neither Pashto nor Arabic.”

Denying allegations that he trained in an al-Qaeda camp and fought alongside the Taliban, he explained that he was captured by men serving under the Northern Alliance warlord General Rashid Dostum, after fleeing Kunduz in a convoy of trucks, and taken to Qala-i-Janghi, an ancient fort, with hundreds of other captured men. Most of these men died after some staged an uprising, known as the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which was put down with savage force, and the survivors, like Ikassrien, huddled underground in a basement, as the Northern Alliance and their US allies bombed them, attempted to set them on fire, and finally flooded the basement. Ikassrien, who was wounded in the arm and hand by shrapnel from a US bomb, said, “My group was in an underground trench and they were throwing gasoline at us. Many died burnt. Then Dostum’s men flooded us with water and it went up to my neck. It was horrible. I left alive by a miracle.”

From Qala-i-Janghi he was taken, via Dostum’s vile and overcrowded prison at Sheberghan, where, he said, he was questioned at gunpoint, told that he had been sold for $75,000 and described as an “important terrorist,” to the US prison at Kandahar airport, where an American soldier fastened a plastic bracelet on his wrist, which stated, simply, that he was “Animal Number 64.” Treated with a brutality that is familiar from other prisoners’ reports — “They burned my legs with cigarettes, they hit me over the head with gun butts, and repeated time and time again that a person like me did not have the right to live” — he was then transferred to Guantánamo.

Recalling his arrival at Guantánamo, he noted that he was weighed, and that “the scale marked 55 kilos, 23 less than when I was seized in Afghanistan.” He added, “My arm had gangrene, and they gave me a paper to sign to authorize an amputation. A volunteer of the Red Cross advised me not to do it, as he thought that it was possible to save my arm, and thanks to him I kept it.”

The hospital in Guantánamo was “a tent,” and he remained there for about three months, seated in a folding chair and tied at his feet and hands, in the company of 20 other prisoners, most of them Arabs, Afghans and Pakistanis. “The soldiers entered the infirmary with dogs that barked wildly at us,” he said, adding, “We went on a hunger strike so that they would not enter anymore.”

In May 2002, Ikassrien received his first visit from a Spanish delegation, which included a diplomat from the Spanish embassy in Washington D.C. and Spanish police officers. He explained that, after the visit, the Americans began to treat him worse, and torture and threats followed one another. “They said that, according to the information provided by the Spaniards, I was an international drug trafficker and I financed jihad inside and outside Spain.”

He explained that the interrogations in Camp Delta, which opened in May 2002 to replace the animal cages of Camp X-Ray, were held in a special room, which reminded him of his experience in Kandahar. There, he said, interrogators showed him hundreds of photographs of alleged jihadists and spoke of tens of groups close to al-Qaeda. As he also explained, referring, in all probability, to the regime introduced by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller later in 2002:

They came to the cell, they used a spray that made you cry, you turned around, went down on your knees with your hands intertwined over your head, and they tied your hands and feet with chains. They led you to a room with plastic walls, and there they left you alone for hours. Hours of anguish waiting for them to arrive. They put ventilators so that you were freezing cold.

The Spanish police officers visited again in early 2003. Again, there were several agents led by the same commissioner and a representative from the embassy. Ikassrien was played tapes of a conversation about jihad in which he was supposedly one of the speakers, but he denied that the voice was his. “They offered to make me a protected witness,” he explained. “They said that they would give me money, work and a house if I collaborated. They offered to let me speak to my mother the following morning. I said yes to this, as I had no news from her for three years.”

The next day a US captain and an interpreter prepared to let him call his mother in Alhucemas in front of Spanish police officers. “You can speak for two minutes,” they said to him. “Tell her that you are alive and well, but do not say where you are.” Ikassrien said, “I told them that if I could not tell my mother where I was, I would not accept the call, and they went away angry. Soon the Americans returned and gave me a beating. They undressed me and threw me into a container where there were rats. I remained alone for three days, naked, without food or water. Like an animal. People from the Red Cross came to visit to me and asked me why I was there.”

Although the Spanish police stated in a report presented at Ikassrien’s trial (see below) that they did not return to see him in Guantánamo, he was adamant that they visited him again in June or July 2003. “They came with more photos,” he said. “I told them that I was Moroccan and that they did not have the right to interrogate me. They replied that they wanted to help me.” Ikassrien added that he also told them, “Every time you come, the Americans torture me.” He also explained that he had been interrogated by Moroccan agents.

After this third Spanish visit, as Ikassrien anticipated, the Americans again subjected him to torture, in an attempt to persuade him to identify alleged terrorists in photographs. “Again I was naked for several days and without food,” he said. “An interrogator who called herself Anna came and began to show me more photos. I refused to answer. They brought black dogs with muzzles, they hooded me and the animals barked and they struck me with their legs. I only felt the shoves, I did not know if they were loose. My companions heard everything and struck with their fists on the cell walls.”

The last visit of the Spanish police took place in March 2004, and in July Ikassrien was moved to the solid-walled isolation cells of Camp Five, where a psychiatrist who looked oriental subjected him to sustained psychological mind games, and told him, ‘If you do not collaborate you will be here all your life.” Ikassrien added, “To eat, I got a piece of bread and a little bit of onion. It was hell. You could not hear any noise, you did not know if it was day or night .”

A year after he was moved to Camp Five, Ikassrien was taken to the infirmary, where he was given a check-up and read a document in Arabic, which stated that the US government “did not have anything against him, but if they found he was linked to al-Qaeda they had the right to take him to Guantánamo again.” He added, “They wanted me to sign it, but I refused.” He was then hooded and taken to a plane that returned him to Spain on July 18, 2005.

When Ikassrien was returned to Spain, he was not a free man, but had been extradited at the request of anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzón, who claimed that he was linked to the Syrian-born Spaniard Imad Yarkas, serving 12 years in prison for belonging to al-Qaeda.

In June 2006, however, the Spanish Supreme Court threw out Yarkas’ conviction for conspiracy to commit murder in the 9/11 attacks, and, with the case against Ikassrien demolished, he was finally freed on October 11, 2006. The Associated Press reported that the court concluded, “It has not been proved that the accused, Lahcen Ikassrien, was part of a terrorist organization of Islamic-fundamentalist nature, and more specifically, the al-Qaeda network created by Bin Laden,” adding that wire-tapped conversations between Ikassrien and another suspected al-Qaeda member in Spain had also been considered invalid.

Prior to WikiLeaks’ revelations in April 2011, all that had been revealed about Ikassrien from the US government was a one-page summary of unclassified evidence for his CSRT, identifying him as Laacin Ikassrin. In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Ikassrien was an “Administrative Review Board Input,” dated November 8, 2004, which was, as it stated, input from the Task Force for the prisoners’ annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs). These were conducted on an annual basis after the CSRTs, and were designed to ascertain whether the prisoners still had intelligence value and were still regarded as a threat. In it, the Task Force recommended that Ikassrien be “retained under Department of Defense control.”

It was also noted that this recommendation corresponded with the most recent JTF GTMO assessment, on November 11, 2003, in which he was assessed as being a high risk threat, and of medium intelligence value. In the document released by WikiLeaks, claims were made about his involvement with terrorists in Spain (the claims that were later dismissed by the Spanish Supreme Court, leading to Ikassrien’s release). It was also stated, with no evidence provided, that Ikassrien had “actively tried to recruit another individual to go fight jihad in Afghanistan with him,” and the Task Force also drew on a statement made by an Iraqi prisoner, Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111), also held in Qala-i-Janghi, who was well-known within Guantánamo for the unreliability of his statements. Al-Tayeea stated that Ikassrien “could provide detailed information regarding Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi,” a senior al-Qaeda military commander for al-Qaeda who was finally seized by US forces and sent to Guantánamo in 2007, because he “was in an artillery group commanded by Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.”

As a result, the Task Force not only believed that he could provide further information about those involved in the terrorist attack in Madrid in March 2004 (which does not seem to have been true), but also that he “should be able to provide information on Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, whom he has denied knowing in the past,” even though there was a good reason for doubting that he had lied about this in the past.

In conclusion, the Task Force stated that, although Ikassrien had been “cooperative with his debriefers, [his] accounts remain[ed] vague and inconsistent when questioned on topics of a sensitive nature,” and cited as an example the analysts’ inference that he was an Al-Qaida member, but that he “ha[d] yet to admit being part of Al-Qaida and continue[d] to deny any knowledge of any terrorist affiliation.” An analyst’s note that was included added that, as Ikassrien insisted after his release, he “denie[d] ever joining a terrorist organization and even claim[ed] to have never received military training in Afghanistan.” It was also noted that he “continue[d] to deny any incriminating information,” and, confirming that protestations of innocence could only be met with the kind of response that accused witches met with during the 17th century witch-hunts, the analyst added that this was “a common anti-interrogation technique used by numerous JTF GTMO detainees, as well as by known members of Al-Qaida,” without mentioning that it was also identical to the stance taken by innocent people seized by mistake.

In February 2011, as I explained in an article entitled, “Spanish Court Gives Go-Ahead for Guantánamo Torture Investigation to Continue,” the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) gave hope to those seeking to hold accountable the Bush administration officials and lawyers who authorized torture by agreeing to continue investigating allegations made by Lahcen Ikassrien that he was tortured at Guantánamo, where he was held from 2002 to 2005. For more on this, see the website of the Center for Constitutional Rghts, which is involved in two ongoing torture cases in Spain against the US government.

Habib Rasool (ISN 120, Afghanistan) Released July 2005

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Habib Rasool, whose real name was Rabel Khan, was born in Afghanistan but had Pakistani ID. In Guantánamo, he explained that he had been living in Pakistan, where he was working in the logging industry, but was forcibly conscripted by the Taliban when he returned to Afghanistan to work on his house in October 2001, and was taken to a compound in Kunduz, where he was kept under guard for 20 days. “There were armed guards outside the compound and we could not leave the compound on our own,” he said. “They were sending people by numbers to fight. In those 20 days they did not get to my number and I did not fight.” He also explained that he gave a false name — Habib Rasool — to the Uzbeks who captured him, “because I know that the Uzbek military are not our allies, they do not like Pakistanis. If they understand that I am a Pakistani, they would kill me because they did it before. They killed a lot of Pakistanis there.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Rasool was an “Administrative Review Board Input,” dated November 4, 2004, which was, as it stated, input from the Task Force for the prisoners’ annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs). These were conducted on an annual basis after the CSRTs, and were designed to ascertain whether the prisoners still had intelligence value and were still regarded as a threat. In it, the Task Force recommended that Rasool be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention (TRCD).”

It was also noted that this recommendation corresponded with the most recent JTF GTMO assessment, on November 22, 2003, in which he was assessed as being a medium risk threat, and of low intelligence value. In the document released by WikiLeaks, it was noted that he was “assessed as being a low level Taliban recruit,” who, after joining the Taliban, “spent approximately 20 days in the Kunduz, Afghanistan (AF) frontline region before surrendering to Northern Alliance forces at Sheberghan,” largely confirming his story. It was also noted that the spurious reason for his transfer was because of his knowledge of the “[l]ocation and activity at the safe house in Kunduz, where [he] stayed for twenty days before he surrendered.”

It was, however, also noted that his “truthfulness [was] in question,” based solely on a polygraph test administered on January 19, 2004, in which, “according to the examiner, deception was indicated when asked the following questions: (a) Other than the Taliban, have you ever been a member of any other anti-US organization? (b) Did you ever participate in attacks on coalition forces? (c) Have you planned to conduct combat operation on coalition forces upon your return home?”

Fazaldad (ISN 142, Pakistan) Released September 2004

Of the 12 prisoners profiled in this article, Fazaldad is the only one included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,” I explained how he was 19 years old at the time of his capture, and how he told his tribunal at Guantánamo a rather confusing story in which he claimed to have gone to Kunduz with other Pakistanis to preach, but also admitted attending two training camps — one where he learned to use a Kalashnikov, because “everyone is fighting over there (in Pakistan),” and one that was religious, whose purpose, he said, was “to tell people to follow the Koran, do their duties, and not to fight against each other.” Settling on one particular story, he said that he went to Afghanistan “to serve,” adding that he “did not fight against anyone,” and that he was “making beds and giving food and water to the Pakistanis there.” Describing the circumstances of his arrest, he said, “an airplane came and there was a big light and people were dying. Then we started heading back toward our homes in Pakistan. We were captured by some ‘English people’ and were handcuffed. Then I was put in jail.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 9, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was revealed that Fazaldad had mental health problems. As the Joint Task Force explained, he “stated he was in Kunduz, Afghanistan (AF) for three months where he went to serve Pashtun people by bringing water and washing dishes for them.” He “claimed he never served any soldiers while he was there and was simply fulfilling a religious obligation to ‘serve Allah as best he could.’” He also explained that he “fulfilled his obligation by remaining in Kunduz, AF for 15 days,” and was then seized in Mazar-e-Sharif, “while preparing to return to Pakistan,” by Northern Alliance soldiers, and delivered to US forces at Bagram, in December 2001, “without weapons, documents, passports or money.” He was sent to Guantánamo in January 2002 on the spurious basis that it was “because of his possible affiliation to the Taliban as a foreign fighter.”

The Task Force assessed him as “not being a member of any extremist group nor associated with any extremist association,” and, crucially, he was “described as a ‘simple’ person with a very low IQ and who was a ‘follower’ who is barely able to function on his own.” The Task Force concluded that he was “of no intelligence value and pose[d] a low threat risk to the US, its interests and allies and should be repatriated without condition” — a clear revelation of how completely innocent prisoners seized by mistake ended up being described as “a low threat risk,” rather than no threat at all. As a result of the assessment, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer or release,” although for some reason it took another 13 months.

Khalid Al Hubayshi (ISN 155, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Khalid al-Hubayshi, who was 26 years old at the time of his capture, crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan with two Tunisians, traveled to Afghanistan in June 2001, but had previously visited in 1997, when he trained at the Khaldan camp, and got to know its gatekeeper, Abu Zubaydah, who was seized on March 28, 2002 in Faisalabad, and regarded — erroneously — as such a significant “high value detainee” that the CIA’s torture program was developed specifically for use on him.

Al-Hubayshi explained all of this at Guantánamo, stating that Abu Zubaydah was responsible for “receiving people and financing the camp,” that he once bought him travel tickets, and that he was the man he went to when he needed a replacement passport. He also noted that Zubaydah did not have a long-standing relationship with bin Laden. When asked, “When you were with Abu Zubaydah, did you ever see Osama bin Laden?” he replied, “In 1998, Abu Zubaydah and Osama bin Laden didn’t like each other,” adding, “In 2001, I think the relationship was okay,” and explaining that bin Laden put pressure on Zubaydah to close Khaldan, essentially because he wanted to run more camps himself.

Al-Hubayshi was extremely suspicious of both Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and presented himself, instead, as a freedom fighter who focused on particular struggles that various Muslims around the world had with non-Muslim oppressors (the notion of “defensive jihad” that was also the main philosophy of Khaldan). It was for this reason, he said, that he trained at Khaldan, which was not associated with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda at the time, and it was also for this reason that he returned to Afghanistan in 2001, joining “a private small camp” outside Jalalabad, which was subsequently closed down by the Taliban. He insisted, “I wasn’t a member of al-Qaeda or on the front lines with the Taliban because I don’t believe in what they are doing. I believe what the Taliban did in Afghanistan was ethnic war [and] al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation.” He also explained:

I think Osama bin Laden is wrong. He just wants to be famous. He doesn’t care how he does it, killing people, killing Muslims, or destroying countries. I think he got what he wanted — to be famous. I don’t need to meet him. I don’t understand the politics. People look at the vision of Osama bin Laden and believe America is their enemy. They don’t understand what is going on or what happened in Afghanistan in 1980.

In April 2008, al-Hubayshi was interviewed by Faiza Saleh Ambah for an article, “Out of Guantánamo and Bitter Toward Bin Laden,” that was published in the Washington Post, which I drew on for an article entitled, “The Insignificance and Insanity of Abu Zubyadah: Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Confirms FBI’s Doubts.” The Post‘s article began, “A calling to defend fellow Muslims and a bit of aimlessness took Khalid al-Hubayshi to a separatists’ training camp in the southern Philippines and to the mountains of Afghanistan, where he interviewed for a job with Osama bin Laden.”

In the interview, he admitted that, although he had certainly become disillusioned with the inter-ethnic fighting in Afghanistan — “I was not there … to help Afghans fighting Afghans for political gain,” he said, adding, “If I was going to die, I wanted to die fighting for something meaningful” — his return to Afghanistan in May 2001, and what he subsequently did there, was both more complicated and more compromised than he had admitted at his tribunal.

He explained that, while attempting to return home in 1999, he had been arrested and imprisoned by the Pakistanis, who confiscated his passport. After his release, he used a false passport to travel to Yemen, and was smuggled back into Saudi Arabia, where he resumed his job at a utilities company. Two years later, however, when he learned that he was “wanted for questioning by the Saudi authorities,” he obtained another false passport and fled to Afghanistan, where, he said, he noted that “al-Qaeda’s influence had spread and the organization had become more like a corporation … with company cars and many safe houses,” and the Taliban “had also grown more powerful.”

After becoming “adept at making remote-controlled explosive devices triggered by cellphones and light switches,” he admitted that an associate of bin Laden, who was “impressed by his skills,” asked him “to join al-Qaeda, or at least meet with bin Laden.” He recalled that he “spent half an hour with bin Laden at a converted military barracks near the city of Kandahar,” where the two men “sat on carpets in bin Laden’s office and shared a fruit platter.”

The following conversation took place, according to al-Hubayshi. “What are my duties toward you, and what are your duties toward me, if I join with you?” he asked, to which bin Laden replied, “That you don’t betray us and we don’t betray you.” He added that bin Laden also offered him a plot of land, but said that he refused the offer to join al-Qaeda, explaining that bin Laden’s fight “had changed from defending Muslims to attacking the United States. I wasn’t convinced of his ideology. And I wanted to be independent, not just another minion in this big group.”

After returning to his independence — presumably at the small camp near Jalalabad that he talked about in his tribunal — al-Hubayshi said that he was training Chechen fighters on 9/11, and that a month later, when the US-led invasion began, the Afghans “blamed us … and forced us out of the city at night. We slept by the river for two weeks.” Later, he was drawn once more into bin Laden’s orbit when another of his associates came and took him and some of the other men to the Tora Bora mountains, for what, it seems, was touted as a glorious showdown with the Americans.

“Bin Laden was convinced the Americans would come down and fight,” al-Hubayshi said. “We spent five weeks like that, manning our positions in case the Americans landed.” He added, however, that as the airstrikes moved closer, and as the Americans’ Afghan allies advanced on their positions, bin Laden abandoned the fight and fled. Faiza Saleh Ambah wrote that al-Hubayshi “remains bitter about what he considers bin Laden’s betrayal: calling the fighters to Tora Bora and then abandoning them there.” “The whole way to Cuba,” he explained, “I prayed the plane would fall. There was no dignity in what he made us do.” He also said that he was “sorry that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks because they targeted civilians.” “That was wrong,” he explained. “Jihad is fighting soldier to soldier.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated January 31, 2004, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” in which he was described as Khalid Sulaymanjaydh al-Hubayshi, born in 1975, much of the story he told at his tribunal and after his release was corroborated.

The Task Force noted that In 1996 he had traveled to the Philippines, where, it was alleged, he “received basic paramilitary training from a Moro Islamic Liberation Front terrorist training camp under the command of Kuwaiti Al-Qaida operative Umar Al-Farouq” (who was later captured by US forces, and reportedly killed in Iraq in 2006, after escaping from Bagram in 2005), although it should be noted that he also denied the significance of his training in the Philippines during his tribunal. It was also noted that he then traveled to Pakistan in 1997 with his twin brother “under the direction of Umar al-Farouq,” meeting Abu Zubaydah and attending the Khaldan (or Khalden) camp as he admitted.

After two months of training, he allegedly “returned to Pakistan in order to retrieve his passport from Abu Zubaydah,” but “spent two months in a Pakistani jail and then spent six months in Islamabad, PK, with Abu Zubaydah while waiting for a false Saudi passport. When the false passport arrived, he reportedly “traveled to Yemen and stayed with Umar Al-Farouq’s uncle Mohammed for approximately two weeks before Mohammed smuggled [him] back into Saudi Arabia in 1997.”

After working at an electrical power plant until 2001, he allegedly stated that, in July 2001, he “traveled to Afghanistan to join the jihadist movement again and to receive further training to assist him in fighting in Chechnya.” At a guest house, while waiting to attend al-Farouq, he said that he met a man called Abu Nasser, described as an “Al-Qaida recruiter,” who took him to another guest house “that was for fighters heading to Chechnya.” It was also noted that he “claim[ed] he didn’t want to fight with or for the Taliban.”

After approximately three months of training at this camp, near Jalalabad (the “private small camp” he talked about in his tribunal, but which the Task Force described as being Derunta, a well-known advanced training camp, also known as the Abu Zubair camp), the US-led invasion began, and “he and his class fled to the south towards Pakistan,” where he “was captured with a group of four by Pakistani authorities on 26 December 2001,” and then handed over to US forces. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002 on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of the Sceco Power Plant located on [sic] the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and his association with Al-Qaida.”

In its assessment, the Task Force claimed that he had stated that his full name was Khalid Sulayman ‘Ayld Uwayidh Salim Salman al-Zuwa’l al-Hubaishi al-Jihani,” and that “[s]ensitive reporting” indicated that his twin brother was “involved in a plot to attack US interests in Uzbekistan,” and that he “has two other brothers who have traveled to the US and one of them attended flight training in Arizona.” It was also  noted that it was “suspected that [he was] related to Al-Qaida suicide operative Khalid lbn Mohammed al-Jihani, who was involved in the 12 May 2003 terrorist attacks that took place in Riyadh, SA, and may have been engaged in planning additional attacks.” In addition, it was claimed that “a passport by [sic] the name of Ahmad Sulayman’ Ayld al-Jayshi al-Jahini (possibly a relative of detainees [sic]) was found among the possessions of two Saudi Arabian citizens who admitted to being involved in an alleged plan to conduct suicide operations in Saudi Arabia on the behalf of Osama Bin Laden.”

After noting his training in the Philippines, and “at three Al-Qaida sponsored training camps in Afghanistan” (Al-Farouq, Derunta, and then Al-Farouq again), as well as noting that the full extent of his and his family’s “involvement with Al-Qaida and international terrorism is undetermined and needs to be exploited further,” the Task Force concluded that he was “assessed as being a member of Al-Qaida who has definite ties to senior level Al-Qaida operatives, received specialized training, demonstrated a commitment to jihad and may be a key member in the international Al-Qaida network.” As a result, he was regarded as being “of high intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “[r]etain[ed] under DoD control.”

How much truth there was to any of the allegations against him is unknown, but it is, I contend, odd that he was one of the first Saudis to be repatriated, despite this assessment. On his return, however, he was put through a rehabilitation program to which the majority of the Saudi prisoners in Guantánamo were subjected, which, as the Christian Science Monitor explained in August 2008, “seeks to convince prisoners to abandon what officials call ‘deviant’ or ‘misguided’ beliefs. It is run by a committee that includes a religious subcommittee of about 100 clerics, a psychological-social subcommittee of about 30 psychologists and social scientists, and a security subcommittee, which determines suitability for release and monitors ex-prisoners.”

As Carlyle Murphy explained in that article, al-Hubayshi’s rehabilitation “started in Guantánamo, but ripened only after he returned home in 2005 to an unexpected reception. Mr. Hubayshi was treated to a mix of forgiveness, theological reeducation, psychological counseling, prison time, and cash. With this carrot-and-stick approach, the Saudis aimed to bring Hubayshi back into the fold of society and ensure, as much as possible, that he left behind old ways of thinking.” Murphy added, “It seems to have worked for Hubayshi … who now lives with his new wife in Jeddah, where he works as a power plant technician.” As al-Hubayshi himself explained, “if the government had not helped me marry and get my job back, I might be in Iraq now.”

The success of al-Hubayshi’s rehabilitation still doesn’t explain why he was released before so many other Saudis, but it should serve as a reminder of the importance of the Saudis’ rehabilitation program, which, it seems to me, remains a largely enlightened response to a problem that, elsewhere — in Guantánamo, for instance — has involved brutality, torture, and a disdain for the law.

Abdullah Al Noaimi (ISN 159, Bahrain) Released November 2005

In Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdullah al-Noaimi, who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, is the cousin of a lawyer who represented over a hundred Guantánamo prisoners. At Guantánamo, he said he went to Afghanistan to find another of his cousins, and was captured by Pakistani guards after crossing the border with four Arabs and two Afghans.

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 that he spoke briefly about his time in Kandahar, explaining that, while being moved to the processing center after his arrival with other prisoners, “the soldiers kicked his legs out from under him, causing him to fall to the ground,” and he “heard other detainees screaming in pain.” He also explained that he and other prisoners “were ordered to stand with their backs to the soldiers, who then knocked them to the ground and held guns to their heads,” and added that, during his anal probe (to which all the prisoners were subjected), a female MP grabbed and held his penis.

Al-Noaimi also told his lawyers that he “witnessed other detainees being bitten by military dogs,” and said that “a female soldier, upon learning that [his] brother lived in the USA, threatened to kill him.” He also developed a urinary tract infection and came down with a fever, which made him vomit and left him unable to eat, but explained that, when he was taken to the clinic, “a military doctor allowed a military policeman to inject him with an unknown substance. When he began to bleed as a result, the doctor and the policeman laughed.” He was then placed in isolation for seven weeks, and was ignored by the medical staff, even though his eyes were yellow and there was blood in his urine, and added that a doctor told him, “you’re about to die and there’s nothing we can do for you.”

In Chapter 19, I also related al-Noaimi’s recollections about being used for medical experimentation at Guantánamo, drawing on the statements he made to his lawyers, in which he told them that, during his first few days at the prison, he “was injected with an unknown substance which made him depressed and despondent. He was unable to control his thoughts and his mind raced. He was also unable to control his body and fell to the floor.” He was then placed in isolation for three days, where medical staff administered an unknown medicine “that made him feel drunk,” until he refused to take it any more, and on another occasion was given pills which “caused him to hear voices.” When he told his interrogators that he “felt like he was losing his mind,” their only response was, “Yeah, we know.”

In June 2006, after the mysterious deaths of three men at Guantánamo, which was officially described as a triple suicide, al-Noaimi (described as al-Nuaimi) provided a detailed explanation of why he did not believe the official story — doubts that were spectacularly amplified in January 2010 in an article for Harper’s Magazine by Scott Horton, based on the testimony of a nubbier of soldiers who were present in Guantánamo at the time (and which I commented on here and here).

In an article in Gulf News, he explained, via a statement sent to the newspaper, “The three brothers who died last Saturday were, based on my own knowledge about them and my relationship with them, totally innocent. They were not even accused of any crime by the US military.”

He added, as Gulf News described it, that Manei al-Otaibi [aka Mani al-Utaybi], Yasser al-Zahrani and Ali Abdullah [aka Salah Ahmed al-Salami] “had memorized the Holy Quran and were deeply religious,” and that, of course, “Islam forbids Muslims from committing suicide or engaging in harmful activities.” He also said, “Otaibi and Abdullah told me that they were studying in Pakistan when they were seized. I do not know if they were together when they were arrested, but they were sold out when they were living in a house and turned over to American custody in 2002.” [Note: Al-Otaibi was actually seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan].

Crucially, al-Noaimi explained that al-Otaibi and Abdullah “had been told by the military interrogators and authorities that they were not regarded as threats and that they would be going home soon.” In his own words, “The interrogations dealt with them only during the first month of their detention. For more than a year before I left Guantánamo in November 2005, they were left alone. But they were still held in bad conditions in the camp by the guards.”

He also explained that Yasser al-Zahrani “was too young to be in Guantánamo,” saying, “He was 21 when he died, barely the legal age in most countries, and was merely 16 [actually 17] when he was picked up four and half years ago. His age shows that he is not even supposed to be taken to a police office; he should have been turned over to the underage [juvenile] authorities.”

Speaking more generally of juvenile prisoners at Guantánamo, he said that “young boys” were being held at the prison, as indeed they were. “I have seen 13-year-old and 15-year-old kids sitting together,” he said. “Where are their governments? What are the human rights communities doing to protect those young people?” He also “called upon activists to be allowed to visit Guantánamo and assess the conditions and the age of the inmates,” saying, “If the US has nothing to hide, why doesn’t it let people go in there, see the circumstances and tell the international community?”

In conclusion, he said that the US administration “cannot keep people in detention as a political currency. There is a limit and they must pay attention to it. After all, the US administration did not benefit anything from keeping people like Manei, Yasser and Ali in detention to use for political issues, like putting pressure on countries to give them something for their return to their families. This political card has already expired.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to al-Noaimi was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention(TRCD),” dated April 1, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in March 1982. It was also noted that he was monitored by mental health [personnel] for personality disorder and mood disorder until November 2002,” but that “[b]oth conditions are stabilized and [he] is not taking medications for t