This was the day before the rally and march to close Guantánamo, which I covered here, here and here, and it was an extremely well attended event, with over a hundred people in the audience — mostly campaigners from the various organizations involved in the January 11 protest, including Amnesty International, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, Code Pink and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

Also present were: the attorney Tom Wilner — my colleague in the newly established “Close Guantánamo” campaign and website, with whom I had just taken part in a lunchtime event at the New America Foundation (also with Congressman Jim Moran and Col. Morris Davis) — and Darold Killmer and Mari Newman, attorneys from Denver whom I had asked to come along and speak about their clients, five Yemenis who are still held at Guantánamo.

The half-hour Q&A session that followed the screening was filmed, and I’ll be posting that soon, but first I’m posting below a short introduction I delivered while the staff at Busboys and Poets worked on technical issues involving the screening. While these were being resolved, I told the audience about the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and our petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, asking President Obama to fulfil his promise to close Guantánamo. The petition has a one-month deadline, which comes to an end on February 6, so please sign it if you haven’t done so already.

I also told the audience about the news from Guantánamo, via Ramzi Kassem, the attorney for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, which I had announced on my website that day. Shaker and other prisoners had made it clear that they would be holding a three-day protest and hunger strike, to let the world know that they were not happy that President Obama was getting away with portraying Guantánamo as a safe and humane facility, and also to show solidarity with those protesting in Washington D.C. and elsewhere in the US.

In addition, I spoke specifically about the need to create a campaign on both sides of the Atlantic to push for the release of Shaker Aamer, well known as the foremost defender in Guantánamo of the prisoners’ human rights, on the basis that the Obama administration no longer wants to hold him, and the British government has asked for him to be returned to his wife and family in the UK.

I noted that the Congressional restrictions on releasing prisoners to countries that lawmakers regard as dangerous (included in provisions in the horrendous National Defense Authorization Act, in which lawmakers also declared their intention to hold terror suspects in permanent military custody, without charge or trial), could not realistically extend to the UK, making Shaker the prime candidate for breaking the deadlock regarding the release of prisoners from Guantánamo.

As I also explained, in 2011, the restrictions were so successful that only one living prisoner — an Algerian who had his habeas corpus petition granted by the courts — was released, and two others left in coffins, having died at the prison.

My thanks to everyone who turned up to make the screening such a successful event, to Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait for organizing it, and to Palina Prasasouk for filming my talk, and to Justin Norman for editing it.

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.

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, and one of the attorneys for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, said that his client, who is held in isolation in Camp 5, told him on his last visit that the prisoners would embark on a peaceful protest and hunger strike for three days, from Jan. 10 to 12, to protest about the President’s failure to close Guantánamo as promised.

He explained that the men intended to inform the Officer in Charge ahead of the protest, to let the authorities know why there would be protests, and added that the prisoners were encouraged by the “expression of solidarity” from US citizens planning protests on Jan. 11, the 10^th anniversary of the opening of the prison.

Kassem also said that another of his clients, in Camp 6, where most of the prisoners are held, and where, unlike Camp 5, they are allowed to socialize, stated that prisoners throughout the blocks were “extremely encouraged” by reports of the protests in Washington D.C.

The prisoner, who does not wish to be identified, also said that banners and signs had been prepared, and that there would be peaceful sit-ins in the communal areas. He added that the prisoners were concerned to let the outside world know that they still reject the injustice of their imprisonment, and feel that it is particularly important to let everyone know this, when the US government, under President Obama, is trying to persuade the world that “everything is OK” at Guantánamo, and that the prison is a humane, state of the art facility.

He also explained that the prisoners invited the press to come to Guantánamo and to request interviews with the prisoners, to hear about “the toll of a decade” of detention without charge or trial, and said that they “would like nothing more” than to have an independent civilian and medical delegation, accompanied by the press, be allowed to come and talk to the 171 men still held.

In Camp 5, Shaker Aamer and the other men still held there will not be able to stage a sit-in, as they are unable to leave their cells, but they will participate in the protests by refusing meals.

No one knows how the authorities will respond to the protests, especially as the new commander of Guantánamo, Navy Rear Adm. David Woods, has gained a reputation for punishing even the most minor infractions of the rules with solitary confinement.

According to Kassem, prisoners have complained that the new regime harks back to the worst days of Guantánamo, between 2002 and 2004, when punishments for non-cooperation were widespread.

Of the 171 men still held at Guantánamo, 89 were “approved for transfer” out of Guantánamo by a Task Force of career officials and lawyers from the various government departments and the intelligence agencies, and yet they remain held because of Congressional opposition and President Obama’s unwillingness to tackle his critics. 36 others were recommended for trials, and 46 others were designated for indefinite detention without charge pr trial, on the basis that they are too dangerous to release, but that there is insufficient evidence against them to put them on trial.

That is a disgraceful position for the government to take, as indefinite detention on the basis of information that cannot be used as evidence indicates that the information is either tainted by torture, or is unreliable hearsay. It remains unacceptable that President Obama approved the indefinite detention of these men in an executive order last March, even though he also promised that their cases would be subject to periodic review.

Just as disgraceful, however, is the fact that all of the 171 prisoners still at Guantánamo face indefinite detention, as none of them can leave the prison given the current restrictions. That ought to trouble anyone who cares about justice and fairness, and the protests by the prisoners, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, ought to convey, more eloquently than any other method, why the pressure to close the prison must be maintained.

Note: For further information, and to sign up to a new movement to close Guantánamo, please visit the new website, “Close Guantánamo,” which you can join here, and also please sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Please support my work!

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

This is Part 32 of the 70-part series. 399 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 their fellow prisoners, 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 Two of Ten)

Yahya Al Sulami (ISN 66, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2007

As I explained in Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, Yahya al-Sulami (also identified as al-Silami), who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, said in Guantánamo that he had been teaching the Koran in Afghanistan. I also explained that he was one of many prisoners who came under particular suspicion because he did not have a passport at the time, as the US authorities had realized that those who attended training camps did not have passports because they were required to hand them in at guest houses before training. However, this inevitably meant that those who did not have passports for other reasons — either because they were lost, stolen or abandoned in the rush to leave a hostile environment, or because they were entrusted to others in an attempt to find a legitimate way to leave Afghanistan — were automatically regarded as liars, whether or not this was the case. As I also explained, al-Sulami said that he was given a contact in a village near Khost by a friend in Mecca, where he taught the Koran for four months, but was clearly regarded as lying when he said that he lost his passport in a river while following a group of Afghan refugees to the Pakistani border.

As I also explained at the time of his release, he was one of 30 prisoners accused of being bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, as one of a group of prisoners who became known as “the Dirty Thirty,” although the origin of the allegations was not made clear. In Guantánamo, al-Sulami denied a claim by the US authorities that all 30 were bodyguards, and “were told the best thing they could tell US forces when interrogated was they were in Afghanistan to teach the Koran,” and also refuted another allegation, which he said was made by a Yemeni prisoner whom he described as “mentally unstable and on medication” (presumably Yasim Basardah, known as the most notoriously unreliable informant in Guantánamo), in which he was “identified as the Emir of a group of 10-15 fighters guarding a river crossing leading to the Tora Bora camp.”

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 August 11, 2006, in which it was noted that he was born in February 1979, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that, after graduating from high school in 1999, he “attended the Religious Institute in Mecca,” and, after graduating from there, “decided to teach Islam to non-Arabs in accordance with various religious decrees that had been issued by religious scholars.” In “approximately August 2001,” he flew to Karachi, with the assistance of a man named Khalid al-Muslih, who, he said, he “had met while studying at the Holy Mosque in Mecca” (although an analyst described him as “possibly an al-Qaida facilitator”).

On arrival in Karachi, he said, he contacted the Dar al-Ifta (the House of Religious Affairs),” and “informed them of his plan to teach the Koran in Afghanistan.” He then “crossed into Afghanistan via the Miram Shah border crossing and proceeded to Khost,” where a man named Muhammad al-Afghani (also described by an analyst as “a possible al-Qaida facilitator”) took him to a mosque, where, he said, he stayed for four and a half months, teaching the Koran to children.

He “denie[d] receiving any type of military training” during this period, and said that, once the war in Afghanistan started, he “contacted al-Afghani and requested that he arrange for [his] return to Saudi Arabia.” Al-Afghani then “introduced [him] to two Afghan guides who led [him] and 30 other Arabs from Khost back [sic] to Pakistan.” He “stated that the group he was with traveled for six days in the mountains before they arrived in Pakistan,” and, after crossing the border near Parachinar, were seized by Pakistani border guards.

After being held in a Pakistani jail in Peshawar, he was transferred to US custody at  the Kandahar Detention Facility on December 27, 2001, and was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, allegedly for the following reasons: “To provide background information on members of the group with whom detainee was captured, To provide information on the tactics and logistics of the Al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan from 2000 until the fall of Tora Bora [and] The effect of the civil war on the Afghanistan educational infrastructure.”

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 his story, the Task Force described his “claim of traveling to Afghanistan to teach the Koran” as “highly suspect,” although their rationale for doubting him was questionable. Firstly, it was noted that “[t]he only language [he] speaks is Arabic; however, he claims that without a translator, he taught to children who only spoke Pashtu.” This analysis rather shamefully ignores the fact that the Koran, regarded as the literal word of God, is taught and learned in Arabic regardless of whether those learning it are actually Arabic speakers.

Another reason for disputing al-Sulami’s story was that one of the men seized with him apparently “stated that a prison warden instructed the members of [his] group, when they were captured, to claim they were in Afghanistan to teach the Koran,” although this, to be honest, was the kind of reasoning used in the 17th century witch hunts, and it made it impossible for a genuine teacher of the Koran to establish that he was not a liar.

Most alarmingly, however, the main allegations against al-Sulami came, as I suspected, from Yasim Basardah, the most notoriously unreliable witness in Guantánamo — and also from another unreliable witness, a well-known victim of torture. Basardah “reported numerous times that detainee was the commander of approximately 15 fighters responsible for guarding a river crossing leading to a Tora Bora camp,” although no one else said he was, and he “also stated that detainee had become one of [Osama bin Laden]‘s bodyguards while [he] was at Tora Bora.”

This was a typical allegation, as the group of men of which al-Sulami was a part were described as the “Dirty Thirty,” and were all regarded initially as bin Laden bodyguards, although, on close inspection, these claims all seem to have been made either by Basardah or by other prisoners who were tortured, and whose statements are therefore unreliable. Alarmingly, in al-Sulami’s case, an analyst noted that Basardah had “stated that detainee was a bodyguard on only one occasion,” and added, crucially, “In every interview where [Basardah] was questioned on detainee, [he] has changed his story. Detainee’s identity as a bodyguard has not been substantiated through other known sources.”

Basardah also “speculated that detainee probably received special mission training,” and “stated that there was a special group at Al-Farouq that trained and then disappeared,” with “[a]dditional special training for the group” being “conducted at the Kandahar Airport.” He also “stated that detainee once possessed a computer disc showing this training,” and that he “knows important people in Yemen and Afghanistan,” but as the analyst’s comments reveal (above and beyond what is known of Basardah’s general unreliability), all of the above is worthless because he couldn’t even maintain a coherent story when it came to conjuring up information about al-Sulami.

The torture victim who also apparently identified al-Sulami was Abdu Ali al-Haji Sharqawi (ISN 1457, still held, and also identified as Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj), who was tortured in Jordan and in CIA facilities in Afghanistan. His worthless claim was that he “believed detainee went to Afghanistan after 11 September 2001″ (he didn’t), and he also said that he “believed detainee was part of Hamzah al-Qaiti’s  group in Kabul,” because he “saw him at al-Qaiti’s guesthouse.” Al-Sulami said that he hadn’t been in Kabul, but, instead of believing him, the authorities persuaded an Egyptian, Fadel Roda al-Waleeli (ISN 663, released in July 2003, and also identified as Reda Fadel El-Weleli), “met detainee once in Bagram,” prompting an analyst to claim, “This corroborates [Sharqawi]‘s placement of detainee in the Kabul area, which is located near Bagram.”

In conclusion, the Task Force claimed that al-Sulami “continue[d] to hide his true activities while in Afghanistan, such as in which cities and guesthouses he stayed,” adding, “Further exploitation is necessary to assess [his] true threat and intelligence potential.” As the Task Force explained, “Due to the lack of available information about detainee,” JTF-GTMO determined that he was “at least 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 behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and sometimes hostile to the guard force and staff.”

As a result, Rear Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of Guantánamo at the time, updating a recommendation for his continued detention at Guantánamo (dated September 19, 2005), repeated that recommendation, although it was also noted, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to [al-Sulami] and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).” This was particularly significant because, in a key passage in his file, it was stated, “After the 2002 Saudi delegation visit, [he] was identified by the Saudi Mabahith as one of the seventy-seven 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 JTF-GTMO.” Even so, it took another 11 months for an agreement to be reached that led to his repatriation, when he was put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Abd Al Razaq Al Sharikh (ISN 67, Saudi Arabia) Released September 2007

As I explained in Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, Abd al-Razaq al-Sharikh (also identified as Abdulrazzaq al-Sharikh, and Abd al-Razaq al-Sharekh), who was only 16 years old when he arrived in Afghanistan in late 2000, was the younger brother of another juvenile prisoner, Abdulhadi al-Sharikh (ISN 231, released in September 2007), who was only 17 at the time of his capture. In Guantánamo, al-Sharikh said that he wanted to fight in Chechnya, where another brother had been killed, but explained that, although he wanted to “go over there so I can die and meet up with him,” a friend advised him that he “wouldn’t last one day” in Chechnya, and suggested that he went to Afghanistan instead.

Al-Sharikh also admitted training at Al-Farouq (the main training camp for Arabs, associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11), and serving on the Taliban front lines with Pakistani members of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, but insisted that he never fired a weapon at anyone, and that there was little activity until after 9/11, when the Northern Alliance attacked them so hard that they retreated. In his tribunal, he was not questioned about whether he was at Tora Bora, which was taken to be a significant sign of militancy, and said that, instead, he went to Khost via Kandahar, and then crossed into Pakistan, where he was arrested with two Pakistani guides.

As I also explained, in my articles, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo,” and “WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo,” despite being a juvenile at the time of his capture, al-Sharikh was not treated differently from the adult population at Guantánamo, according to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which stipulates that juvenile prisoners — those under 18 at the time their alleged crime takes place — “require special protection,” and obliges its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

At the time of his release, I told more of his story, explaining how he said that, in Saudi Arabia, “The Muslim scientists, or clergymen, were telling me to fight in Afghanistan. They convinced me to fight there, and told me how to get there, so I went.” Turning to the circumstances of his capture, he denied an allegation that he was “captured by Pakistan police while traveling with a group of Arabs and Afghanis, some of whom were security guards for Osama bin Laden,” saying, “This is not true. When I went to Pakistan, I only had two people with me. When I was turned over, they captured the Arab and Pakistani people. When they sent me to prison, I was taken along with the other group.” He added that he had traveled with two Pakistani guides, and that, after surrendering, he was met by a representative of the Saudi government, who knew of him because “I am from a very well known family.” Despite assurances from the representative that he would help him return to Saudi Arabia, however, he was then handed over to US forces.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Sharikh was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated August 6, 2007, in which he was identified as Abd al-Razzaq al-Sharikh, and it was noted that he was born in January 1984, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that he “completed one year of high school and then sold honey outside various mosques near his parents’ home” in Riyadh, but, in early 2000 (when he was mistakenly identified as being 18 years old, even though he was only 16), his brother, identified as Abd Abdallah Ibrahim Latif al-Sharakh (aka Abbad), “was killed while participating in jihad in Chechnya.” It was noted that he “looked up to Abbad and when he heard that Abbad was killed, he became zealous to join the jihad and martyr himself.”

Al-Sharikh stated that he “was not recruited by any organization and did not become a member of Al-Qaida,” and, instead, “decided to travel to Afghanistan (AF) on his own initiative and at the suggestion of his brother’s friends,” who “approached [him] at his brother’s funeral and encouraged him to travel to Afghanistan because the living conditions and training opportunities were better there than in Chechnya.” His brother’s friends arranged for him to travel with another individual (perhaps because of his age), and in early December 2000, the two flew to Karachi, and then on, via the Taliban’s office in Quetta, to Kandahar, and a compound near Kandahar airport, where al-Sharikh spent a week before training at Al-Farouq.

He said that he spent a few months training, and then traveled to “a location a short distance behind the front line at Bagram,” where he “rotated between the front and secondary battle lines for approximately eight or nine months until the Bagram line fell to the Northern Alliance and the order came to retreat.” He and four other individuals then “started back to Kandahar, but because of Coalition bombing, they diverted to Khost,” where he stayed “for approximately ten days before he heard that all Arabs needed to make their way to Pakistan.” He then set off for Pakistan on foot with two Afghans, presumably as guides, and said that, after eight days, he “joined a group of 20 to 30 other Arabs who hiked to Pakistan through the Tora Bora Mountains.”

It was also noted that, on December 15, 2001, the day after this group arrived in Parachinar, they were seized by the Pakistani authorities. The Task Force claimed that he was apprehended “with a group of 31 other Arabs, which consisted mostly of [Osama bin Laden] bodyguards, but this was not necessarily a reliable assessment, as will be noted below. The group was then transferred to a prison in Peshawar, where al-Sharikh was held until he was transferred to Kandahar on December 26, 2001. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 17, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information about the following: Terrorist recruitment of Muslim foreign nationals attending the Hajj in Saudi Arabia.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force was dubious about his claim that he was not a member of Al-Qaida, claiming that, as well as traveling to Afghanistan and taking part in training and combat, as he acknowledged, he had also been “selected by senior Al-Qaida leaders” for a terrorist attack on the Prince Sultan Air base (PSAB) in Saudi Arabia, and had “also acknowledged having been present at Tora Bora during meetings of senior Al-Qaida commanders during the battle.”

It was also noted that he had “reported about his brother,” and had “provided much of what [was] known about [his] timeline,” but “continue[d] to omit specific details regarding [his brother]‘s activities and his associates at Tora Bora.” Moreover, the Task Force claimed that he had “not acknowledged being a UBL [Osama bin Laden] bodyguard or a member of UBL’s security detail,” and noted that he had “provided very little information of value about UBL, Sayf al-Adl, or other senior Al-Qaida figures to whom he had access, and it is not clear whether he has no valuable information about them or if he is deliberately withholding important information.”

In seeking to justify its claims, the Task Force drew on some distinctly dubious witnesses. One was Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016, still held), the supposed “high-value detainee” for whom the US torture program was specifically developed, who said that he recalled al-Sharikh and his brother paying for specialized training, and another was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (ISN 212, but never held at Guantánamo), a particularly important “high-value detainee,” who was the emir of the Khaldan training camp until it was closed by the Taliban in 2000, after he refused to allow it to be taken over by Osama bin Laden. Al-Libi’s 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.

Despite his conflict with bin Laden, al-Libi was described as “a trusted Al-Qaida senior trainer and commander,” and it was claimed that, “while providing explosives training at Al-Farouq in April 2001, he was directed by senior Al-Qaida operative Abu Hafs al-Masri to provide specialized training to two Saudi nationals named Akrima and Hammam” — identified as the aliases of al-Sharikh and his brother — and that he “provided the training at a special site for three days,” after which they were “to conduct attacks against a US military base in Saudi Arabia.”

Another dubious witness, and well known as an unreliable witness in Guantánamo, was Abd al-Hakim Bukhari (ISN 493, released in September 2007), who, ludicrously, was described as an “[a]ssessed Al-Qaida operative,” even though he had been imprisoned and tortured by Al-Qaida as an alleged spy. Bukhari apparently identified al-Sharikh and his brother “as having connections to terrorist cells in the US and the United Kingdom.”

Another even more unreliable witness was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), a Yemeni known as the most prolific and unreliable witness in Guantánamo, who claimed that al-Sharikh was “a jihadist from Saudi Arabia who belonged to the Mehjin Center (camp of fighters) in Tora Bora,” and “further stated” that Yahya al-Salmi (ISN 66, also identified as al-Sulami, see above) “became the leader of the Mehjin Center after Mehjin died, and that [al-Sharikh] was [his] deputy. He also claimed that al-Sharikh, along with al-Sulami, “commanded approximately 15 fighters responsible for guarding a river crossing leading to a Tora Bora camp.”

The claim that al-Sharikh “stated he witnessed a meeting held in Tora Bora,” which included various Al-Qaida leaders, prompted an analyst to note that it was “unlikely [he] would be allowed to witness a high-level meeting if he did not hold a position of authority or trust among the senior Al-Qaida commanders at Tora Bora.”

Some of the allegations above may well have been true, but it was disturbing how many were produced by notoriously unreliable witnesses, and how few came from al-Sharikh himself. Nevertheless, it was clear that there were reasons to regard him as suspicious, because, as the Task Force also noted, “Prior to the visit of a Saudi government delegation to JTF-GTMO in 2002, the Saudi government provided information about 37 detainees whom they designated as high priority. Detainee was number one on that list.”

In conclusion, he was assessed 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.” It was also noted that he was “assessed to be a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been mostly compliant and rarely hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, as a result, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, updating a recommendation for his continued detention at Guantánamo (dated August 3, 2006), repeated that recommendation, and it is unclear why he was released the next month.

After his release, and after he had been put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program, the Pentagon claimed that al-Sharikh became involved in providing support to terrorists. In May 2009, the Pentagon produced a fact sheet, “Former Guantánamo Detainee Terrorism Trends” (PDF), in which it was claimed that he had been “arrested in September 2008 for supporting terrorism,” although this was not listed as “confirmed” but only as “suspected.” No further information has been provided to justify this claim, and it may be that he was included because, in February 2009, one of his brothers, Abdulmohsin al-Sharikh, was listed as one of Saudi Arabia’s 85 most wanted terror suspects.

Khalid Al Bawardi (ISN 68, Saudi Arabia) Released November 2007

As I explained in Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, Khalid al-Bawardi, who was 24 years old at the time of his capture, told his tribunal at Guantánamo the most complete tale of being a missionary, which he related with a superior moral tone that was both pompous and convincing. He explained that he took a vacation from his job with the Chamber of Commerce, and went to Pakistan to find people who were receptive to the idea of dawa, which he described as correcting the mistakes of Muslims who have “strayed from the path of righteousness.”

He then gave his tribunal a lecture on Jamaat al-Tablighi, the vast missionary organization, saying that, although he met Tablighi representatives in Pakistan, “They have certain procedures that they are tied down by and the procedures they follow are wrong in our religion. Their work is good and it’s correct but they make some mistakes,” adding, “You are not able to understand this or get a whole clear picture because you don’t have a complete picture of Jamaat-al-Tablighi. Besides that, you have to know Islam to know what is right and what is wrong.”

Having decided to work on his own, he said he traveled around Pakistani villages with a guide, correcting people’s mistakes (particularly to do with raised graves and good luck charms), and then went to Kabul, where the people were more in need of his help. When the war started, he was advised to leave the country, and, after explaining that he suspected that his landlord stole his bag, which contained his passport, he described a difficult journey to the border, in which a man who gave him a lift in a car “forcefully told me to get out” in the desert, and a young Afghan who took him into his house also asked him to leave “I told him I wanted this and that and he said he was poor and that he couldn’t help me,” he said. After finding a guide, he was arrested crossing the border.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Bawardi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated October 6, 2006, in which it was noted that he was born in November 1972, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that, after quitting school, he “became a telephone operator and receptionist in the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce,” and then, after about a year, “quit work and sold vegetables for a few months.” On an unknown date, he traveled to Dubai, “to conduct missionary work and teach the Koran,” and at some point “read an old fatwa” issued by a sheikh, which “directed all pious men to travel abroad and perform missionary work in underdeveloped Islamic countries,” which he took to mean places such as Afghanistan or Pakistan. Pointing out that “there was no mention of jihad in the fatwa,” he said he chose to travel to Pakistan, and flew to Karachi in approximately May 2001.

On arrival, he said that he met an Afghan named Muhammad, who offered to be his guide. He said he “spent approximately one month in the Karachi area teaching the Koran in small unnamed villages,” while Muhammad translated for him. In approximately June or July 2001, Muhammad told him “they could do great work in Afghanistan and suggested they go there,” and he and Muhammad then traveled to Kabul, where he “facilitated discussion groups on Islam for four months,” but, in October 2001, “after the air war started,” he “decided go back to Saudi Arabia and left Kabul without Muhammad.”

Essentially telling the same story he later told his tribunal at Guantánamo, he said that, after “seeking out someone to help him leave Afghanistan, [he] returned to his apartment in Kabul to find all of his possessions, including his passport, stolen in his absence.” He then set off for Pakistan “by car, but his Afghani driver left him somewhere on the road between Kabul and the Pakistan border in fear of being seen with an Arab.” He then “walked for some time before reaching a small village where he stayed for three or four weeks.” Sometime in November 2001, with an Afghan guide, he “left on foot for the border,” but, on the way, “ran into and joined a larger group of 10 to 23 male refugees heading toward Pakistan.” He said that he traveled with this group for about a week until they were seized by Pakistani border officials, and added that he “was held for a few days in a Pakistani jail and questioned by Saudi officials,” and then, on December 27, 2001, was transferred to US custody.

He was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, and the Task Force provided the following explanation, which, unusually, added analysis from Guantánamo to the spurious information compiled in Afghanistan: “Detainee’s transfer was likely due to the perceived association between him and the 30 UBL [Osama bin Laden] bodyguards, Al-Qaida members, and Taliban fighters with whom he was arrested. However, initial reports suggested he was able to provide information on the following: Effect of the civil war on religion and ethnicity as they affect regional security issues.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he was “utilizing a cover story passed to him while in a Pakistani prison,” noting that a fellow prisoner had “stated that a prison warden instructed members of [his] captured group to claim they were in Afghanistan to teach the Koran,” and adding that it was assessed that he “continue[d] to hide his true activities.” To reach these conclusions, however, the Task Force relied on a number of dubious witnesses.

One was Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), well known as the most prolific and unreliable witness in Guantánamo, who “stated detainee trained at Al-Qaida’s Al-Farouq Camp for three weeks, two months before the US bombing campaign started in October 2001,” and “also identified detainee as fighting in the Quodous area” (noted by an analyst as “a likely reference to the center in Tora Bora commanded by Al-Qaida member Abdul Qadoos”) “and as being in charge of determining where to dig caves and bunkers.”

Another unreliable witness was Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held, and also identified as Maad al-Qahtani), who said he “met detainee in Tora Bora.” An analyst described al-Qahtani as “a confirmed Al-Qaida operative with direct ties to senior Al-Qaida leadership, including UBL [Osama bin Laden] and Khalid Shaykh Muhammad,” but he is more generally known as the most notorious victim of torture in Guantánamo.

It was also claimed that variations on his name had been found on various documents seized in raids on houses connected with Al-Qaida, and this led to a far-fetched claim that he “may have been an Al-Qaida facilitator,” because a “variation of [his] alias, Abu Khalid al-Tamimi, [was] the same as that used by a facilitator of a 1998 suicide plot against a US tanker ship in the Straits of Gibraltar.”

In conclusion, 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.” He was also “assessed as a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been semi-compliant but mostly hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a previous recommendation for his continued detention at Guantánamo (dated October 15, 2005), repeated that recommendation, although, crucially, he added, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to [al-Bawardi] and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO),” although it took another 13 months for that agreement to be reached, and for him to be repatriated, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

In an interview in January 2010, al-Bawardi spoke to the Daily Telegraph, and claimed that he had, in fact, traveled to Afghanistan for jihad. As the article noted, “Bored, depressed and stuck in a dead-end job, Khaled al-Bawardi spent just a few hours watching jihadi videos to convince himself that he wanted to fight for militant Islam. It took another six years in Guantánamo Bay, plus a year in religious rehab in Saudi Arabia, to realize there might be better career options.”

Al-Bawardi said, “When I was young, I thought these people were angels and we had to follow them. Now, though, I can see between right and wrong.” The article also stated, “Quietly-spoken, and dressed in a traditional Arab robe and keffiya, Mr. Bawardi is an alumnus of the Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Counselling and Care outside Riyadh, where for the last two years, batches of former Guantánamo inmates have undergone religious ‘deprogramming’ in exchange for their liberty.” The article also noted differing points of view about the program, stating that, “although there is widespread agreement that the battleground lies as much in the mind as in the streets, mountains or deserts, debate remains as to whether Saudi-style rehab programmes are the right answer. Critics contend that the Prince Mohammed project’s softly-softly approach is simply a way for Saudi’s rulers to sweep dissent under the carpet, and that it is far too easy for inmates to simply pretend they have reformed. Its backers, though, say there is little alternative — punishment, after all, is a limited sanction against a movement that thrives on martyrdom.” In contrast, “Saudi officials maintain that only a tiny minority of the programme’s 120 former Guantanamo inmates are known to have reoffended — while the rest are, they claim, helping to combat the spread of Al-Qaida’s ideology. Defeating that, they point out, is the only sure route to vanquishing Al-Qaida permanently.”

Sadeq Mohammed Said Ismail (ISN 69, Yemen) Released June 2007

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (9) – Seized in Pakistan (Part One)” and in an article at the time of his release, I explained how, according to his account at Guantánamo, Ismail (also identified as Sadeq Mohammed Said), who was born in 1982, and was therefore 19 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of traveling to Afghanistan in May 2001 and serving as a courier for the Taliban. Although he had been injured in an aerial bombing attack near Khost, and was captured after crossing the border into Pakistan, the US authorities managed to claim, based on an unsubstantiated allegation, presumably from another prisoner, that he was captured in Tora Bora, during the showdown in November and December 2001 between Al-Qaida and Taliban forces, and the US military and their Afghan proxies, when Osama bin Laden and the senior leadership of Al-Qaida slipped away across the unguarded border to Pakistan.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Ismail was a brief “Administrative Review Board Input,” dated November 12, 2004, in which Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended to his military review board that he be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention (TRCD).”

Little information was provided in this document, although it was noted that, according to the Task Force’s assessment, he “traveled to Afghanistan for the purpose of receiving military training; however, he claims to have received no training.” The allegation that he was a courier was also mentioned, as it was claimed that, “While in Afghanistan, [he] participated in escort or courier operations between Kandahar and Kabul for the Taliban for several months until the US bombing campaign began in the area.”

The Tora Bora allegation was not mentioned, but it was noted that the Task Force assessed him “as being very deceptive, as he ha[d] not been forthcoming during debriefings,” was “very uncooperative,” and gave “conflicting information.”

It was also noted that, in his “Most Recent JTF GTMO Assessment, signed on 6 September 2003,” which also recommended his transfer to the control of another country for continued detention, he was assessed as being of low intelligence value and a medium threat. Despite the recommendation for his transfer, however, he was not released for another two years and seven months, and three years and nine months after he was first recommended for transfer.

After his return from Guantánamo, in an interview with Gulf News following his release from four months in Yemeni detention on October 12, 2007, he told reporter Nasser Arrabyee that “he did not know why he was arrested in the first place, and why he was released.” Identified as Sadeq Mohammad Saeed, he told a different story abut his capture, claiming that he “was arrested along with his compatriots in Afghanistan from a hospital where he was undergoing treatment for injuries he suffered in a battle more than six years ago.”

Arrabyee explained that, just hours after arriving at his home in Ibb city, “he was receiving visitors who came for a welcome ceremony,” and was dressed “in smart traditional Yemeni clothes and sporting a long beard.” His brothers “were introducing him to those who came to the house, many of whom were strangers.” Some were relatives of other Guantánamo prisoners. She noted that, although he “was initially reluctant to speak to the journalists,” he “gave in after some persuasion by his brothers and spoke to Gulf News,” focusing on what he called a “letter to the Americans and the world,” in which, with some defiance, he “said he and his companions were engaged in ‘jihad’ since they left [their] homes and families and would continue doing so as long as they live.” That may have been bravado, to be honest, although it may also have got him labeled as a suspected recidivist by the US authorities.

Explaining more, he said, “I traveled to Pakistan and from there to Afghanistan and then I joined one of the Taliban battlelines.” As Arrabyee described it, he “refused to delve into the bodily abuses he suffered while in Guantánamo, but spoke about abuses against religion inflicted on all detainees,” and said, “The abuses targeted religion, reviling God, and Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and his companions and the believers. Some brothers were subjected to psychological and physical torture because they were Muslims. There were a lot of abuses, and it is enough to say they were directed at Allah, his prophet and the believers.”

He added that “he was not sure of his future plans,” and explained, “I cannot say anything right now. I’m still a stranger on this land, I’m a new-born, I cannot say I can do this and that.” Arrabyee noted that he “traveled to Afghanistan before completing his secondary school.”

In a final rhetorical flourish that can only have alarmed the US authorities, fearful of retribution and unable to understand the desire of some Muslims to fight in other Muslim countries, one of his brothers, Rashad Mohammad Saeed, who had traveled to Afghanistan for jihad, said, “Let the Americans know that jihadists are respected in their nations and they are not killers or criminals.” As Gulf News put it, “he exhorted Muslims to rise in revolt against the Bush administration which spends billions of dollars to destroy Taliban and Al-Qaida,” saying, “These attempts are only making the Taliban and Al-Qaida stronger and stronger.”

Mishal Saad Al Rashid (ISN 74, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2007

As I explained in Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, and in an article at the time of his release, Mishal Saad al-Rashid (misidentified by his captors as Mesh Arsad al-Rashid), who was 21 years old at the time of his capture, was typical of numerous men captured and sent to Guantánamo, in his insistence that he went to Afghanistan, over a year “before any problem happened in America,” to help the Taliban fight General Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance.

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

In his tribunal at Guantánamo, al-Rashid accepted an allegation that he was a member of the Taliban (but not Al-Qaida), and also acknowledged that he had received military training in Afghanistan. He was one of several hundred Taliban fighters who surrendered after the fall of Kunduz, believing that they would be freed after handing over their weapons, but who discovered, instead, that they were to be imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a fortress run by General Dostum. After the prisoners were tied up and taken for questioning, some of them, fearing that they were about to be killed, staged an uprising, which was put down by the Northern Alliance, backed up by US and British Special Forces, and supported by American bombing raids, in which the majority of the prisoners were killed. In the end, a week after the uprising began, 86 survivors emerged from the basement, who had survived being bombed and flooded.

At Guantánamo, when asked about the “uprising,” al-Rashid, who was injured in his thigh and shoulder, said, “What uprising? We didn’t do any uprising. We had given up our weapons, so how could we be part of an uprising? They [Dostum's troops] were the ones that had the weapons. We tried to defend ourselves but we couldn’t, because they had all the weapons.” He added that accusing men who were tied up of using weapons was a sure sign of the “betrayal” that had taken place in the fort.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Rashid was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated April 28, 2007, in which it was noted that he was born in 1980, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that he attended elementary school but “acquired no further formal education,” and, from 1995 to 2000, worked as a guard at a palace. Around March 2000, he responded to a fatwa “telling Muslims to support the Taliban in Afghanistan against the NA [Northern Alliance],” and also “heard about religious persecution of Muslims in Afghanistan,” and, as a result, he quit his job and traveled to Qatar, intending to take a flight to Pakistan. For reasons that were not explained, he and a new friend he met en route were unable to fly to Pakistan, and so they returned to Saudi Arabia, where they succeeded in taking a flight to Islamabad instead. They then made their way to Peshawar, where “they spoke with a Pakistani about their desire to travel to Afghanistan to join the Taliban,” and he “helped them cross the border into Afghanistan and escorted them to a Taliban house in Kandahar.”

He attended training at Al-Farouq (the main training camp for Arabs, associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11), and was then “assigned to the reserve lines (secondary line) for several months.” He then traveled to the front lines in the Khawaja Ghar region, where, with other Arabs, he fought alongside the Taliban. After the Taliban withdrew (as the Northern Alliance advanced), he and others retreated to a Taliban house in Kunduz, where his commander, Mullah Thaker, told the them to surrender and said that “they would be allowed to return to their country.” It is not known whether Thaker knew this to be untrue, but after surrendering, they were taken to Qala-i-Janghi, where he “was shot in the left leg and under his right arm.”

After he and the other survivors were moved to General Dostum’s prison at Sheberghan, he was transferred to the US prison at Kandahar airport on December 29, 2001, and was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: The uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif [and] Taliban membership.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he had “denied having knowledge of any of the detainees that ha[d] identified him,” had “failed to provide any detailed information concerning his activities and associates while in Afghanistan,” and had “provided inconsistent information about his personal history.” Nevertheless, there was nothing about his story to demonstrate that he was anything more than a simple foot soldier, but the Task Force managed to come up with an alternative account from Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111, released in January 2009), a talkative Iraqi known as one of the most unreliable witnesses in Guantánamo.

Al-Tayeea claimed that al-Rashid “worked with wireless communication systems,” and “reported that detainee was responsible for transporting trainees between Kabul and Al-Farouq, and served as Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi’s liaison when he came to the camp (al-Iraqi, ISN 10026, who was moved to Guantánamo in 2007, and is still held, was described as “one of [Osama bin Laden]‘s closest commanders and the person in charge of non-Afghan Taliban troops and Al-Qaida fighters that made up the 55th Arab Brigade on the Afghanistan northern front”). Al-Tayeea also stated that al-Rashid “reportedly collected intelligence on trainees and soldiers for al-Iraqi and that the two men had frequent contact.”

To be fair, although an analyst noted that “[t]his reporting indicate[d] detainee had direct access to al-Iraqi and served in a significant role in UBL’s 55th Arab Brigade, possibly as a counterintelligence officer,” the analyst also noted that al-Rashid’s “close association to al-Iraqi” was “uncorroborated by other sources and require[d] further exploitation,” although anyone reading just the start of the 10-page file would not have known this, as, in an “executive summary,” it was stated simply that he “may have served as a counterintelligence or intelligence officer,” and “may have served as a liaison for senior Al-Qaida leader Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi at the Al-Farouq Training Camp.”

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,” although one reason for regarding him as a risk was because he had cursed an interrogator during a session in 2003. While this was not actually indicative of anything but frustration, an analyst claimed that, “While this can be construed as only rhetoric, it also denotes the detainee’s inclination to continue to wage or support jihad in the future.” Al-Rashid was also “assessed to be a medium threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been semi-compliant and rarely hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a previous recommendation for his continued detention at Guantánamo (dated April 14, 2006), repeated that recommendation, although he was released just eight months later, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Rukniddin Sharopov (ISN 76, Tajikistan) Released February 2007

As I explained in an article after his release, Rukniddin Sharopov, who was born in 1981 (although the US authorities initially stated that he was born in 1973), claimed in Guantánamo that, because he wanted to earn some money, he agreed to “serve for the army of Tajikistan’s government.” He said that he believed that he would be serving in Lajerg in Tajikistan, but was “tricked” into fighting with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a close ally of the Taliban in the fight against the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan, and serving in Afghanistan instead. He explained that, in Lajerg, he found himself in a camp run by the IMU, where his passport was taken away from him, and one of the organization’s leaders, a man called Rostum, “told him it was better if he went into the military.” As a result, he said, he was sent to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban against General Dostum’s Uzbek faction of the Northern Alliance.

He then explained that he was a passenger on a truck containing Uzbek soldiers — not Taliban, as alleged by the US authorities — who surrendered to Dostum’s forces in a compound in Khawaja Ghar, near the border with Tajikistan, and added that, although he had no criminal record in Tajikistan, he believed that this might cause a problem for him in his home country. “This is one thing the interrogators told me,” he said. “The interrogator told me it would be a problem for me if I went back to Tajikistan because I was with the Uzbek community.” He denied receiving training at Lajerg, as, he said, he had received some mandatory training in Tajikistan, and he added that he didn’t like to shoot guns and that at the camp he collected wood for the fire. “I never fought before and I am not going to fight after this. I have never fought in my life,” he stated.

After his capture, he was taken to Qala-i-Janghi, a fort in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and was one of only 86 men — out of a total of around 450 foreign fighters — who survived a notorious massacre in the fort. This followed an uprising by a number of the prisoners, who feared that they were about to be shot. He said that he did not take part in the uprising, but was in the basement when it was flooded by the Northern Alliance and the US Special Forces, and that some soldiers untied his hands and “put something around my injury.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Sharopov was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated August 3, 2005, in which he was identified as Rukniddin Sharipov, and was noted that he was born in September 1981, and was “in good health,” although it was also noted that he “complained of chest pain a few times,” although there had “not been findings on chest X-rays,” and that he “was on a hunger strike in Oct 02.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account and mostly corresponding with what he told his tribunal at Guantánamo, the Joint Task Force noted that he was sent to school in Pakistan “when he was five and remained there until age 15,” and then “attended Government Degree College, where he studied Civics, Pashtu, and History.” He apparently “stated he returned to Isfara when he and a friend, Tsabit Vakhidov” (ISN 90, see below, also identified as Muqit Vohidov and Wahldof Abdul Mokit) and another friend, identified only as Farad, “were recruited for service with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU),” described by the US authorities as “a Tier 1 counterterrorism target, defined as terrorist groups, especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests.”

He apparently said that the three of them “left Isfara by train destined for Russia to find work,” but “[w]hile they were at the train station in Dushanbe,” they “met a man by the name of Rostam who recruited them to join what they believed to be the Tajikistan military,” and “told them that they would be paid USD $300 a month in wages if they joined.” After they agreed, they went to Tavildara, also in Tajikistan, where they “arrived at an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) training camp.”

There, he said, there were about 200 soldiers, and, after he received a few days’ military training, “he stood guard at the main gate of the camp.” He and the others were then flown to Kunduz “in helicopters provided by the Tajikistan government,” although he “did not know where he was flying,” and was only told that “he was going to a warmer place.” He added that he believed he arrived in Afghanistan sometime after Ramadan in 2000.

When it came to the circumstances of his capture, it was stated that he traveled with other IMU fighters from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif,” but were told to surrender to Dostum’s forces just before arriving. The Task Force noted that he “was present at the Mazar-e-Sharif prison uprising,” and also noted that he stated that he “had his hands tied behind his back and was on his knees when fighting started in the prison.” He added that he “began to run and was wounded,” and “received three shrapnel wounds on his right foot.” It was also noted, “During the fighting, he went back to the house and went into the basement where there were many other Pakistani and Arabic-speaking prisoners. Only one of the prisoners in the basement had a Kalashnikov. [He] heard that Dostum’s forces threw a grenade into the house, [which] killed some of the prisoners in the basement and injured others. [He] spent about 5-6 days in the basement.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Detainee may be able to provide general to specific information on the training and relocation of Tajik youth into Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban [and] Detainee may be able to provide general to specific information on the unit that formed the Uzbek movement in Mazar-e-Sharif.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he had “admitted being an IMU member,” and assessed that he and Vakhidov “were both recruited to join the IMU prior to leaving their homes,” because, although both men “stated that they were headed for ‘Russia’ to seek jobs,” neither “had a specific destination in Russia.” It was also claimed that Sharopov “did not explain where they got finances to take the train,” and It was “much more likely that someone in their village recruited them and that ‘Rostam’ was scheduled to meet with them on the train and escort them to the Tajikistan training camp.”

This may have been so, but it still didn’t demonstrate that Sharopov was anything more than a simple foot soldier. The Task Force concluded that he was only “of low intelligence value,” and only posed “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” although officials also claimed that he had been “indoctrinated into the Islamic extremist ideology and knowingly joined the IMU for jihadist purposes,” which I do not believe had been established. It was also noted that his “overall behavior pattern ha[d] been compliant with spikes in aggression, with the most reports coming from harassment of the guard force.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood recommended his transfer to continued detention in Tajkistan, even though it was also noted that he was “a fugitive from Tajikistan and [was] wanted for violating Tajikistan’s laws and international orders,” which indicated that he would be treated very poorly if repatriated.

Sure enough, after his release, Sharopov and Muqit Vohidov (aka Tsabit Vakhidov) were tried and sentenced to 17 years in “high-security penal colonies” (aka labor camps) for “serving as mercenaries in Afghanistan” and aiding the Taliban by fighting for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and for taking part in “illegal border crossing.” After passing sentence, the Supreme Court judge, Musammir Uroqov, said that both men had maintained their innocence, and added, “In their last words, they said they didn’t expect such consequences for acts they committed.” However, according to RFE/RL, the judge was satisfied that “investigations carried out in Vohidov and Sharopov’s native Isfara region proved that both men [had] been involved with the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.”

In June 2010, as I explained here, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting revisited the story, explaining how the men’s families had been campaigning for a review of the verdict, and how prosecutors were possibly prepared to review the case. Although arguments were made that the sentence was justified because the men “committed acts that violate national law,” it was also noted that the time they served in Guantánamo was not taken into account during the sentencing.

Moreover, as I explained, other observers remained deeply critical, and their insights reflected badly not only on the Tajik authorities but also on the US government. As the IWPR article explained, Payam Foroughi, until recently a human rights officer with the OSCE in Tajikistan, “believes due process was not followed,” pointing out that the men “had not enough, or any, time to sufficiently and seriously discuss and properly prepare their case with a lawyer — and one of their choice — prior to their court hearing.” He also believed that the court “should have probed further into the allegation that Vohidov and Sharopov willingly became members of the IMU,” adding, “If anything, the evidence points to them having been victims of human trafficking.”

Criticism of the US came, inadvertently, from the judge in the men’s trial in 2007, who told IWPR, “We could not determine, even from the defendants, on what legal basis they were detained at and released from Guantánamo. We could not get hold of any documents. So we reached a verdict based on the documents that we had.” Highlighting this problem more explicitly, a local lawyer told IWPR that “the lack of documentation from Guantánamo was a recurring problem in countries to which detainees are repatriated.” He might have added that in most countries the authorities’ response was to let the men go.

In August 2011, RFE/RL reported that, for the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence, on September 9, 2011, human rights activists and lawyers were calling on the Tajik president to consider releasing the two former Guantánamo prisoners as part of an amnesty, noting, “Some 8,000 prisoners are expected to be set free to mark the occasion. Unofficial estimates suggest there are currently 13,000 people imprisoned in Tajikistan. There have been 11 amnesties in Tajikistan over the past 20 years. In the most recent, in November 2009, some 10,000 prisoners were released.”

The article stated, “Human Rights Watch, two prominent American lawyers, and a legal expert from Columbia University in New York have sent letters to Tajik President Emomali Rahmon making the case for Rukniddin Sharopov’s and Abdumuqit Vohidov’s release.” Chicago-based attorney Matthew J. O’Hara wrote, “It is my expert opinion that a great injustice has been done on the two.” He explained that it was probable that the two men “did not traverse the international border by will,” and, as RFE/RL added, “Sharopov and Vohidov maintain that they have never killed anyone, or been involved in terrorist activities or acts of violence.”

In their letter, Human Rights Watch stated, “Neither US, nor Tajik authorities provided any sound evidences of Sharopov’s and Vokhidov’s belonging to terrorist activity and crimes. We hope that the forthcoming amnesty law will also cover ex-prisoners of the Guantanamo Bay, who were accused of murder, and hope that Vokhidov’s and Sharopov’s appeals for amnesty will be carefully examined.” However, there has been no further news since August 2011.

Mehrabanb Fazrollah (ISN 77, Tajikistan) Released February 2007

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Mehrabanb Fazrollah, who was 39 years old at the time of his capture, was subjected to a particularly thin set of allegations in Guantánamo: that he traveled to Afghanistan in April 2001, that he “admitted to fighting with the Taliban,” and that he was captured with a Kalashnikov and ammunition.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Fazrollah  was an “Update Recommendation for Transfer to the Control of Another Country with Conditions (TWC), Subject to the Conclusion of an Acceptable Transfer Agreement,” dated August 28, 2005, in which he was also identified as Mehrabon Faizulloh Odinaev, and it was noted that he was born in October 1962, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, it was noted that he served in the Russian Army from 1981 to 1983 (but did not serve in Afghanistan), and then “received training as a bus driver and an auto mechanic,” but “also worked at an oil refinery, on a collective farm producing cotton, and in a fruit delivery business.” From 1992 to 1994, during the Tajik civil war, he lived in Afghanistan for three months, and then “became a refugee and moved to a refugee camp near the Kunduz airport.” After the civil war he returned to Dushanbe, and, in 2000, “sent his ten-year old son with a group of Tajik youths” to study at a madrassa in Karachi.

In March or April 2001, he said, he decided to visit his son. Traveling to Pakistan via Afghanistan, he spent a week with old friends, and “continued his travels with stops in Kunduz and Kabul.” After locating his son in May, he spent a month with him and then set off back for Tajikistan. However, he said that he was unable to find anyone to help him cross the river to get back to Tajikistan (which was a dangerous and illegal crossing), so he remained in an Afghan village until early November 2001, when he “decided to depart for Kunduz because the Northern Alliance arrived and were arresting people who did not have identification.” There, he said, he stayed in a refugee camp for ten days, but was then picked up by Northern Alliance troops.

They told him that “they would bring him and several others to a safe place,” but, instead, took them to Qala-i-Janghi, an ancient fort in the possession of the warlord General Rashid Dostum, where he survived the massacre that resulted after some of the hundreds of prisoners started an uprising, fearing that they were about to be shot. He was one of 86 survivors, who hid in a basement where they were bombed and flooded, but no mention was made of it in his file. He was then moved to Dostum’s prison at Sherberghan, before being transferred to US custody at the Kandahar detention facility. He was sent to Guantánamo on May 10, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: The prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif, Tajiki refugees residing in Afghanistan [and] A madrassa in Karachi, PK.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force provided a conflicting account to his own, noting that he was “assessed as a low-level member of the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan (IMT), which is allied with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU),” and also noting that he “admitted he fought alongside the Taliban against Northern Alliance forces and fled after the collapse of the Taliban.” The IMU was described by the US authorities as “a Tier 1 counterterrorism target, defined as terrorist groups, especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests,” but even so, he was regarded as not being of major significance.

The Task Force also claimed that he had “not been forthright during debriefings,” and regarded his story of visiting his son as “a cover story,” but in conclusion he was only assessed as being “of low 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 low threat from a detention perspective,” because his ”overall behavior ha[d] been non-hostile and compliant,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation for his “Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention” (dated May 5, 2004), recommended him for transfer with conditions, although he was not released for another year and a half.

Fahed Al Harazi (ISN 79, Saudi Arabia) Released September 2007

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Fahed al-Harazi, who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of travelling to Afghanistan in March 2001 and — with remarkable speed — becoming a trainer at Al-Farouq, the main training camp for Arabs, associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11.

in an article at the time of his release, I expanded on his story, noting that, although he had secured legal representation by the time he was released, he had refused to meet his lawyers, and had also refused to take part in either his tribunal or his review boards, so that the allegations against him went unanswered. While the first set of allegations — that he traveled to Afghanistan in March 2001 “to fight the jihad,” attended “an Al-Qaida affiliated camp,” fought on the front lines against the Northern Alliance, and was wounded in Qala-i-Janghi — seem plausible, the additional claims — that he was actually a trainer at Al-Farouq, and that his name was found on a document at the “Military Committee al-Mujahideen Affairs Office,” which contained “nominees for the Al-Qaida Trainers Preparation Center” — appeared more dubious.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Harazi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated June 19, 2007, in which he was also identified as Fahd al-Harazi, and it was noted that he was born in November 1978, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that he “completed at least 15 years of school,” although he “held no job after graduation, but spent his time with ‘non-religious’ friends.” However, he regularly “attended a masque next door to his residence in Mecca,” and there “met a Pakistani named Abdul Jalil who told [him] he needed to go and fight in jihad.” Another individual, named Majid, then “told [him] that they both could go to Afghanistan and then return to Saudi Arabia after only a short time,” and he “managed their travel, obtained Pakistani visas, and paid for all travel expenses.” In March 2001, they flew to Karachi, and then on to Quetta, Kandahar and Kabul.

In Kabul, he said, he and Majid “attended two weeks of military training, which consisted of instruction on small arms and grenades,” and were then sent to Kunduz. They “arrived at a Taliban guesthouse in Kunduz the first week in May 2001,” and al-Harazi said that “[b]etween five and 20 Taliban soldiers were resting at this guesthouse at various times.” After a week, he “and his two associates traveled to the second line, about three miles to the rear of the Taliban front lines.” He ”claimed he went to the front lines on five or six occasions with his AK-47 but never fired his weapon nor did he see any fighting,” and remained on the lines until he was instructed to retreat to Kunduz (he said this was late August 2001, but it was almost certainly November).

Two weeks later, the Taliban surrendered to the Northern Alliance, and he “was told they could surrender and were guaranteed safe travel through Mazar-e-Sharif, AF, to Herat, AF,” but Northern Alliance forces under the warlord General Rashid Dostum apparently captured him and others on November 24, 2001, and took them to Qala-i-Janghi, where a massacre of prisoners took place, after some of them staged an uprising, fearing that they were about to be shot.

As the Task Force described it in al-Harazi’s file, “After one night in captivity, the prisoners revolted leading to the deaths of members of the Northern Alliance forces and CIA officer Johnny ‘Mike’ Spann.” Al-Harazi “was shot in the arm during the uprising,” and he and 86 others that “survived the assaults hid in the basement until they were re-captured about a week later,” after the basement had been bombed and flooded. He was taken to General Dostum’s prison at Sheberghan, and was turned over to US control on approximately December 28, 2001. He was sent to Guantánamo on February 7, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban training capabilities, Training Course for Trainers at Al-Farouq Training Camp [and] Routes of ingress and egress from Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force decided that he was lying, although their reasons for doing so were questionable. One unreliable witness, Abdu Ali al-Haji Sharqawi (ISN 1457, still held, and also identified as Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj), is a victim of torture in Jordan and in secret CIA custody in Afghanistan, and there might therefore be doubts abut the truth of his statement that, after being shown a photo of al-Harazi, he “identified [him] as Hassan al-Makki, who attended the class at Al-Farouq Training Camp to become an instructor.” To back this up, it was noted that the same name, Hassan al-Makki, “was found on a list of participants for a course entitled “Training Course for Trainers,” held at Al-Farouq from September to December 2000,” in which it was stated that al-Makki “traveled to Afghanistan in 1999, attended the trainer’s course, and worked as a trainer at Al-Farouq.” It was also “indicated” that al-Makki “was residing in the airport complex for the duration of training,” which an analyst took to mean “the Al-Qaida guesthouse located at Kandahar airport.”

The problem with these claims, of course, is that it is by no means clear that the man from Mecca who adopted the alias Hassan was actually al-Harazi, even if that was an alias he used, as others from Mecca might also have chosen that name, and it is no more reassuring that David Hicks (ISN 2, released May 2007), “stated detainee went by the name Khalid and was a trainer of the basic training course at Al-Farouq,” because it is well-known that Hicks lied under pressure, and, in any case, although he allegedly identified al-Harazi as a trainer at Al-Farouq, presumably under prompting, he gave him the wrong name.

Also of significance is al-Harazi’s claim that he did not attend Al-Farouq and, instead, attended a camp outside Kabul, which he described as “not a typical training camp where many people attended, but rather a small residence utilizing very old, primitive weapons.” In an attempt to tie him to a loftier role than being a mere foot soldier, it was then stated that he was perhaps the Hassan identified by Ibrahim Bin Shakaran (ISN 587, a Moroccan released in July 2004 and also identified as Brahim Benchekroun), who “stated that an individual named Hassan was in charge of physical training at a privately-owned Libyan paramilitary camp located in Kabul.”

Obviously under pressure, another prisoner, Fahd al-Sharif (ISN 215, released in November 2007), described al-Harazi as his cousin, “as they are both named al- Sharif and both come from Mecca.” This was ridiculous, as al-Harazi was not called al-Sharif, but there was more. He also “reported that other JTF-GTMO detainees refer[red] to detainee as Abu Barak,” and “separately mentioned the name Abu Barak as a trainer in the poisons training course that [he] attended.” According to Fahd al-Sharif, “Abu Barak taught at the Derunta Camp, Khaldan Camp, and Abu Musab al-Suri’s Camp.” An analyst noted that Fahd al-Sharif was “the only source who ha[d] associated the names al-Sharif and Abu Barak to [sic] detainee,” and also noted that he “identified Abu Barak as an Egyptian, not a Saudi,” but went on to claim that, since al-Sharif “identified detainee and a poisons trainer with the same alias from approximately the same time period (1999 – 2000), it is possible detainee is the poisons trainer. However, no other information is available to corroborate this assessment.”

If this was not enough shallow innuendo, it was also noted that Yasim Basardah (ISN 252, released), a Yemeni well known as the most prolific and unreliable witness at Guantánamo, “stated detainee was a member of an Arab group fighting the Northern Alliance in Taloqan,” which no one else claimed, and John Walker Lindh (ISN 1, but never held at Guantánamo, because he is an American citizen) apparently “photo-identified detainee as Hassan,” under unknown circumstances, although, as the “American Taliban,” he was subjected to torture by his own countrymen before his trial in 2002, which makes his testimony worthless. Lindh apparently said he “first saw him during the retreat from the front lines,” and ”believed [he] was an administrator because he carried a walkie-talkie during the retreat and was responsible for keeping people in the rear motivated.” Despite there being no reason for believing this statement, an analyst noted that “possession of a walkie-talkie and role as a motivator indicate a leadership position among the fighters.”

In other dubious statements, Said al-Zahrani (ISN 204, released in July 2007) “stated detainee was known as Abu Hassan,” and said he “saw [him] at the front lines and in the ‘big kitchen,’ which another detainee described as a large dining area.” Al-Zahrani also apparently “indicated that detainee spent 10 days in a large house in Kunduz with 90 others during the retreat.” In another account, Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held), the most notorious torture victim at Guantánamo, “detainee [was] a mujahid from Jeddah” (he was actually from Mecca, as has been made clear) “who was involved with an unspecified Kandahar mujahideen group.”

In other dubious statements, Humud al-Jadani (ISN 230, released in July 2007), who is emerging in these files as another unreliable witness, “reported detainee was present at the Al-Farouq Training Camp, the frontlines, a Kandahar guesthouse, and the Hamza al-Ghamdi Guesthouse in Kabul in 2000.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force also noted that, “Prior to a 2002 visit to JTF-GTMO, Mabahith [the Saudi intelligence service] designated detainee as a high priority detainee,” stating that he “left Saudi Arabia on 29 October 1999, with Turkey listed as his final destination.” Mabahith also “indicated they had information indicating detainee received training at Al-Farouq,” and noted that he “was on the Saudi government’s “watch and arrest list” for his trip to Afghanistan.” An analyst also noted that Mabahith had “no record of detainee returning after his 1999 travel to Turkey.”

This may indicate that some of the information gathered by the US authorities was true, although much of it was emblematic of the desperation, which runs through the files, and which fuels attempts to prove, time and again, and often in conditions of abuse or torture, that prisoners were more significant than they appeared to be. In conclusion, the Task Force assessed al-Harazi 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.” He was also “assessed as a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been semi-compliant and sometimes hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, the commander of Guantánamo, updating a recommendation for his “Continued Detention with Transfer Language” (dated May 26, 2006), recommended him for continued detention without any discussion of transfer. Nevertheless, he was released just three months later, to be to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Muqit Vohidov (ISN 90, Tajikistan) Released February 2007

As I explained in an article after his release, Muqit Vohidov (also identified as Wahldof Abdul Mokit), who was born in 1981 (although the US authorities initially stated that he was born in 1969), said in Guantánamo that he had been tricked into joining the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a close ally of the Taliban in the fight against the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan. In his tribunal, he explained that he was unaware that he was being recruited to join the IMU, and thought that he was going to be joining the Tajik army instead. He added that the man who lied to him about it –- and to three others in his group –- was a man called Rostum, presumably the same man identified by his friend Rukniddin Sharopov (ISN 76, see above) as a regional leader of the IMU. He also said that he was not previously aware that there were any Uzbeks in Tajikistan, and added that his passport was taken away by a man called Zakir, who was surrounded by armed men who made it clear that they would shoot him if he asked too many questions, and was then flown by helicopter to Afghanistan in January 2001.

He said that he then spent time at three IMU offices in Afghanistan — including offices in Kunduz and Kabul — and wanted to escape but couldn’t, and added that he eventually found a teacher at a madrassa who told him that he would be able to escape from Mazar-e-Sharif, so he went there, spent three months trying to escape, and was then captured by General Dostum’s forces in November 2001. He admitted carrying a Kalashnikov when he was a guard at the madrassa, but denied an allegation that he fought against US forces. When asked how he was arrested, he said that he was in a room with three other people — two he did not know and one doctor — when “Somebody knocked on the door, I opened it and this person came and said, ‘Who are you?’ I told him I was a Tajik, and then he arrested me.”

He also called Sharopov as a witness, who confirmed his story about their recruitment, but was unable to verify what had happened to him after he had left the IMU. Sharopov added that he and Vohidov had survived the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, where hundreds of prisoners, held in a Northern Alliance fort run by General Rashid Dostum after surrendering, were killed after some of them staged an uprising, fearing that they were about to be shot. Sharopov also explained that both he and Vohidov were then held in a prison in Sheberghan that was also run by General Dostum, until they were transferred to US custody.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Sharopov was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated August 3, 2005, in which he was identified as Sobit Abdumukit Vitalikonovich Vakidov, Sabit Farad Tsabit Vokidov and Abdul Mochid Sobid Wahedof, and it was noted that he was born in September 1981, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account and mostly corresponding with what he told his tribunal at Guantánamo, the Joint Task Force noted that, “Prior to his recruitment into theIMU, [he] ran a distribution business.” Describing the events that led to his capture, it was noted that he and Rukniddin Sharopov (identified as Sharipov), described as “one of his best friends,” left Tajikistan and “were on a train to Russia to find better jobs when they met a man named Rustam, who offered them a military job in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.” He said that they “both accepted this offer,” although he added that he “believe[d] Rustam ‘tricked’ [them] because they thought they would be working with the government of Tajikistan’s Army and not the IMU.” An analyst described Rustam as “probably an IMU recruiter,” and it was noted that the IMU was described by the US authorities as “a Tier 1 counterterrorism target, defined as terrorist groups, especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests.”

Vohidov proceeded to explain that, in January 2001, he attended an IMU camp located in Tavildara, although he claimed he “did not receive any training at this facility,” and said that after ten days “helicopters ferried approximately two hundred IMU fighters to Afghanistan,” including he and Sharopov “who flew on separate helicopters.” They were taken to Kunduz, but Vohidov said he then “attended a Madrassa in Kabul for approximately five to six months,” where he met a man named Sharifullah “who offered to get [him] back to Tajikistan if [he] accompanied him to the IMU office at Mazar-e-Sharif,” where he “worked as a supply clerk in the office and was responsible for the food.” He was seized in Mazar-e-Sharif in November 2001 and taken to Qala-i-Janghi, described as the “site of the uprising in which CIA Agent Michael Spahn [sic] was killed,” even though he claimed he “was not at the prison during the uprising.” He was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Practice of bringing youths into Afghanistan from Tajikistan, Madrassa detainee attended [and] Non-governmental organization (NGO) DOSF.”

In assessing his story, the Task Fprce identified the “madraassa” that Vohidov said he attended in Kabul as being an IMU facility, and also claimed that in Mazar-e-Sharif he worked at the “intelligence office for Sharafuddin Sharafat, former Taliban Intelligence chief at Mazar-e-Sharif and the current ACM [anti-coalition militia] leader.” It was also claimed that Vohidov “met Sharafat during his five to six-month stay in Kabul.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of low 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 his behavior was “assessed as somewhat compliant.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood recommended his transfer to continued detention in Tajkistan, even though it was also noted that he was “a fugitive from Tajikistan and [was] wanted for violating Tajikistan’s laws and international orders,” which indicated that he would be treated very poorly if repatriated.

After his release, Vohidov — and Rukniddin Sharopov — were sentenced to 17 years in “high-security penal colonies” (aka labor camps) for “serving as mercenaries in Afghanistan” — where they were accused of aiding the Taliban by fighting for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) — and for taking part in “illegal border crossing.” After passing sentence, the Supreme Court judge, Musammir Uroqov, said that both men had maintained their innocence, and added, “In their last words, they said they didn’t expect such consequences for acts they committed.” However, according to RFE/RL, the judge was satisfied that “investigations carried out in Vohidov and Sharopov’s native Isfara region proved that both men [had] been involved with the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.”

In June 2010, as I explained here, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting revisited the story, explaining how the men’s families had been campaigning for a review of the verdict, and how prosecutors were possibly prepared to review the case. Although arguments were made that the sentence was justified because the men “committed acts that violate national law,” it was also noted that the time they served in Guantánamo was not taken into account during the sentencing.

Moreover, as I explained, other observers remained deeply critical, and their insights reflected badly not only on the Tajik authorities but also on the US government. As the IWPR article explained, Payam Foroughi, until recently a human rights officer with the OSCE in Tajikistan, “believes due process was not followed,” pointing out that the men “had not enough, or any, time to sufficiently and seriously discuss and properly prepare their case with a lawyer — and one of their choice — prior to their court hearing.” He also believed that the court “should have probed further into the allegation that Vohidov and Sharopov willingly became members of the IMU,” adding, “If anything, the evidence points to them having been victims of human trafficking.”

Criticism of the US came, inadvertently, from the judge in the men’s trial in 2007, who told IWPR, “We could not determine, even from the defendants, on what legal basis they were detained at and released from Guantánamo. We could not get hold of any documents. So we reached a verdict based on the documents that we had.” Highlighting this problem more explicitly, a local lawyer told IWPR that “the lack of documentation from Guantánamo was a recurring problem in countries to which detainees are repatriated.” He might have added that in most countries the authorities’ response was to let the men go.

In August 2011, RFE/RL reported that, for the 20th anniversary of Tajikistan’s independence, on September 9, 2011, human rights activists and lawyers were calling on the Tajik president to consider releasing the two former Guantánamo prisoners as part of an amnesty, noting, “Some 8,000 prisoners are expected to be set free to mark the occasion. Unofficial estimates suggest there are currently 13,000 people imprisoned in Tajikistan. There have been 11 amnesties in Tajikistan over the past 20 years. In the most recent, in November 2009, some 10,000 prisoners were released.”

The article stated, “Human Rights Watch, two prominent American lawyers, and a legal expert from Columbia University in New York have sent letters to Tajik President Emomali Rahmon making the case for Rukniddin Sharopov’s and Abdumuqit Vohidov’s release.” Chicago-based attorney Matthew J. O’Hara wrote, “It is my expert opinion that a great injustice has been done on the two.” He explained that it was probable that the two men “did not traverse the international border by will,” and, as RFE/RL added, “Sharopov and Vohidov maintain that they have never killed anyone, or been involved in terrorist activities or acts of violence.”

In their letter, Human Rights Watch stated, “Neither US, nor Tajik authorities provided any sound evidences of Sharopov’s and Vokhidov’s belonging to terrorist activity and crimes. We hope that the forthcoming amnesty law will also cover ex-prisoners of the Guantanamo Bay, who were accused of murder, and hope that Vokhidov’s and Sharopov’s appeals for amnesty will be carefully examined.” However, there has been no further news since August 2011.

Abdul Rauf Aliza (ISN 108, Afghanistan) Released December 2007

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, and in an article at the time of his release, I explained how Abdul Rauf Aliza was seized in November 2001 during the fall of Kunduz, the last Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan, and was held, with thousands of other men, in a filthy, overcrowded prison in Sheberghan run by General Rashid Dostum, one of the leaders of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. He was then transferred to the US prison at Kandahar airbase with nine other Afghan prisoners.

One of the nine, Jan Mohammed (ISN 17), a baker from Helmand province who had been forcibly conscripted by the Taliban, was one of the first prisoners to be released from Guantánamo in October 2002. After his release, he explained that the decision to transfer him to Kandahar came about because some of Dostum’s men “told US soldiers that he and nine others were senior Taliban officials.” “They came and took ten strong-looking people,” he told the journalist David Rohde. “Only one of those ten was a Talib.”

It’s probable that the solitary Taliban member transferred to Kandahar with Jan Mohammed was Abdul Rauf Aliza, who was, at some point, more accurately identified by the US authorities as Mullah Abdul Rauf, a Taliban troop commander. Although Aliza claimed that he was conscripted by the Taliban, who said they would take his land if he refused, and insisted that he only worked for them as a cook, several released Afghans explained to the journalist Ashwin Raman that Mullah Abdul Rauf was one of three Taliban commanders in northern Afghanistan held in Guantánamo. They told Raman that he had not been so cautious with his identity while detained in Camp X-Ray, when he “repeatedly pleaded with the Americans to let many of the detainees free,” saying, “These are no Talibs, I am the real Talib.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Abdul Rauf Aliza was an “Administrative Review Board Input,” dated October 26, 2004, in which Brig. Gen. Hood recommended to his military review board that he be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention (TRCD).”

In this document, it was noted that, according to the Task Force’s assessment, he was “associated with several Taliban commanders and leaders in Afghanistan (AF) including Mullah Agha Jon Akhund, Mullah Ubaidullah Akhund, and Muhammed A. Fazl” (ISN 7, also identified as Mullah Fazil, and described by an analyst as “the Chief of Staff for the Taliban, as well as military commander for 2500 to 3000 Taliban soldiers”). It was also noted that he “accurately identified Mullah Ubaidullah Akhund as the Taliban Defense Minister and logistics supervisor,” that he ”personally knew and accurately identified Taliban Commander Mullah Agha Jon Akhund,” and that, “[d]espite his claims of being a low-level Taliban foot soldier and food supplier, [he] managed to become closely associated with several senior level Taliban commanders and leaders.”

It was also noted that Shardar Khan (ISN 914, released in October 2006) “identified detainee” and former Taliban governor Khairullah Khairkhwa (ISN 579, still held) as “two cell block leaders attempting to instigate and influence the rest of the cell blocks to disregard orders, make noise, refuse food, and commit suicide,” to which an analyst again raised doubts, noting, “For a simple Taliban foot soldier and bread deliverer, detainee manage[d] to exhibit leadership qualities by conducting speeches and instilling fear into those who cooperate with JTF GTMO personnel.” The analyst also noted that Khairkhwa “identified the detainee as a possible military leader, military commander, or possibly even as a mayor of Khost.”

In other passages, it was stated that he had “admitted involvement in the production and sales of opium, as well as association with criminal elements within the Taliban and the Northern Alliance,” and it was noted that, although he had been “cooperative with his debriefers,” his accounts “remain[ed] vague and inconsistent when questioned on high-level Taliban leadership or topics of a sensitive nature,” to which an analyst added that, although he was “substantially exploited,” there were “several intelligence gaps that remain[ed] in his story, such as his involvement and knowledge concerning Taliban communications operations, associations with other JTF GTMO detainees, and his opium business.” It was also noted, “After serving three tours with Taliban, it does not seem plausible that the detainee was not promoted and given a more important duty than a mere bread deliverer.”

The last of these many major hints that Abdul Rauf Aliza was more than he appeared to be was a note that “[t]he name Mullah Abdul Rauf, detainee’s reference name, was located on a list of factions and leaders within the Taliban as a corps commander in Herat,” to which an analyst noted, “Several high level Taliban JTF GTMO detainees also identified detainee as a Taliban troop commander,” but added, “However, detainee does have similar physical characteristics to [Mullah Fazil], which may cause his misidentification.”

In conclusion, despite all the doubts highlighted above, it was also noted that, in his “Most Recent JTF GTMO Assessment, signed on 29 March 2004,” which also recommended his transfer to the control of another country for continued detention, he was assessed as being of low intelligence value and a medium threat,” even though it was also noted that, although he “ha[d] been generally cooperative, he ha[d] evaded answering questions regarding his role and leadership within the Taliban,” and even though, “due to recent findings that [he] may have had a more important role within the Taliban than previously thought, [his] intelligence value ha[d] been updated from low to medium.” Despite the recommendation for his transfer, however, he was not released for another three years and two months, and three years and nine months after he was first recommended for transfer.

In August 2010, Newsweek reported that Abdul Rauf Aliza had escaped from prison on his return, had rejoined the Taliban, and was threatening collaborators with the US and the Afghan authorities in Kabul. As the article described it, “One short handwritten note, shown to Newsweek, said: ‘We have made a decision for your death. You have five days to leave Afghan soil. If you don’t, you don’t have the right to complain.’ The screed, written on the letterhead of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s defunct Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, bore the signature of Abdul Rauf Khadim, a senior Taliban official and former inmate at the American lockup in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who had been released into — and subsequently escaped from — Kabul’s custody last year.”

In April 2011, Newsweek reported that Khadim (described as Maulvi Abdul Rauf Khadim) “commanded Mullah Omar’s elite mobile reserve force,” until his initial capture, “fighting regime opponents all over Afghanistan.” After he “convinced his jailers that he wanted only to go home and tend his farm,” and was repatriated, he {e]scap[ed] from house arrest in Kabul, [and] fled to Pakistan.” The article continued, “Today he’s the shadow governor of southern Uruzgan province and a potential rival to [Abdul Qayyum] Zakir ([ISN 8] who was freed from Gitmo at the same time) for the insurgency’s top slot, with a loyal following of fighters at the heart of the US military surge in neighboring Kandahar and Helmand provinces.”

Abdul Aziz Al Oshan (ISN 112, Saudi Arabia) Released September 2007

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Aziz al-Oshan (also identified as Abdul Aziz al-Khaldi), who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, said in Guantánamo that he was a student who went to Afghanistan to rescue his brother, but was seized by the Northern Alliance, and was one of hundreds of prisoners sent to Qala-i-Janghi, a fort near Mazar-e-Sharif, where he survived a massacre that took place after some of the prisoners staged an uprising, fearing that they were about to be shot. When asked in his tribunal about the “uprising,” he said, “You are talking about the uprising. They called it an uprising and it’s not; it’s some kind of massacre. I was even wounded while I was there.”

in an article at the time of his release, I explained how he had recently come to prominence when a poem he had written was included in Poems From Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, an anthology of Guantánamo prisoners’ poetry compiled by law professor Marc Falkoff, who was the attorney for a number of Yemeni prisoners, and he had also written a perceptive and critical analysis of the library facilities at Guantánamo, which revealed how he was gentle, softly-spoken, literate and with a wry sense of humor that five and a half years in Guantánamo could not extinguish. I also told more of his story, based on his account — which began with an explanation of how, after taking his final exam at university, he went to Afghanistan to find his brother Saleh (who was also captured, but released in July 2005), in order to persuade him to return to Saudi Arabia.

Caught up, in late November 2001, in the fall of Kunduz, the last Taliban bastion in the north of Afghanistan, he was “tied down and taken with other detainees” to Qala-i-Janghi. In Guantánamo, he explained to his tribunal that, although he had not been involved in any kind of military training and had not raised arms against either the Northern Alliance or the US-led coalition, he was afraid of being tortured, because he had previously been tortured in Afghanistan.

“When I was first captured,” he said, “it was the Afghani police there. They were threatening me and torturing me. If I didn’t say that I was from Al-Qaida or Taliban I was tortured. I went to Kandahar and I was tortured there. The guy was speaking English saying ‘Al-Qaida? Taliban? Al-Qaida? Taliban?’ Evidence of the torture is that they broke my tooth which was fixed here.” He added, “Once I arrived here, things were a little better. There was no torture or things like that but, because of what happened in the past I was dwelling on the fact that, are these people treating me good and they are going to come back and torture me again?”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Oshan was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated June 19, 2007, in which he was identified as Abd al-Aziz Sad Muhammad Awshan al-Khalidi, Abdul Aziz Bin Saad, and Abdul A. Mohammed, and it was noted that he was born in September 1979, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that he was “one exam away from finishing his four-year college degree” in Islamic studies at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in his hometown of Riyadh, when he decided to travel to Afghanistan. The Task Force also noted that he “was not married and lived with his parents through college,” and that he “received a stipend of 800 Saudi riyals (SAR) per month from the Saudi government for attending the university,” and also that, because he “was the only student with a car, he charged people money to take them places,” and “also received money from his parents.”

The Task Force further explained that he “was still in Saudi Arabia when the 11 September 2001 attacks occurred,” and that he “believed the attacks violated Islamic ethics because the Koran states it is wrong to kill innocent people.” This seemed to be particularly important, as did a statement that he “was not personally recruited, but heard from friends about fatwa (religious decrees) urging young men to fight abroad,” and also “overheard other Saudis talking about the conflicts in Chechnya and Afghanistan, and read newspaper articles detailing the suffering of Muslims in those countries.” It was also noted that he read a well-known fatwa “calling on people to ‘defend the Muslims and Islamic nations’ against the Northern Alliance (NA) troops of Massoud and Dostum.”

In spite of noting that he “was not personally recruited,” the Task Force claimed that, in November 2001, he “decided to travel to Afghanistan,” not only “to find his brother,” but also “to fight the jihad.” Al-Oshan apparently “financed his own trip,” which was unusual, as most jihadists traveled with the assistance of facilitators, who made their arrangements for them, and traveled via Syria and Iran (rather than flying to Karachi and then traveling via Quetta, as was typical for jihadi recruits).

When they reached the border, the border guards “instructed a taxi driver to take them to a guesthouse in Herat,” and gave them contact details. After one night in Herat, they apparently traveled to Kabul, where, it was claimed, they “stayed at an unidentified guesthouse for about a week because ‘the front lines were full,’” even though it was not even remotely likely that new arrivals would have been allowed to travel immediately to the front lines on arrival.

He then reportedly traveled to Kunduz with two other men, staying at an unidentified guesthouse, where, it was claimed, he was shown how to use an AK-47, and then traveled to the front line, where he stayed for six days “without seeing any combat action since the mountains acted as a buffer between them and the NA [Northern Alliance].” He and the others then retreated, and walked back to the guest-house in Kunduz. He then apparently “left during the night with a group of others going to Mazar-e-Sharif,” presumably to surrender, but “Dostum’s troops apprehended them and took them to the Qala-i-Janghi Prison.”

Based on his account, the Task Force described the uprising as follows: “On 25 November 2001, shooting erupted within the walls of the prison, and detainee was shot in his thigh and back. Other prisoners dragged him into the basement of the prison. Dostum’s forces pumped gasoline into the basement and ignited it; they later flooded the basement with water. After about one week, the Red Cross arrived and transported all the surviving prisoners to Sheberghan Prison.”

From Sheberghan, US forces took him to their prison at Kandahar, and he was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Training and tactics of front line Taliban fighters.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force focused primarily on his family ties, rather than on any information corroborating the claims that he had been on the front lines in Afghanistan, which, as I noted above, drew only on his own statements, possibly extracted under duress. One of his brothers, Isa (aka Eissa al-Aushan), was described as “the deceased leader of a Riyadh Al-Qaida cell responsible for the.kidnapping and murder of a US contractor, Paul Johnson, Jr.,” and “was killed in a July 2004 gunfight with Saudi security forces.”

It was also noted that he was “assessed to have an uncle named Saud Muhammad Abd al-Aziz al-Awshan,” described as “a Saudi-based terrorist financier associated with the Philippines-base Moro Islamic Liberation Front,” although whether either of these connections actually impacted on him was not provable, and was certainly not sufficient to justify an analyst’s claim that, because “Al-Qaida recruitments often occur within family groups,” his “close relationships with several Al-Qaida members likely exposed him to Al-Qaida propaganda, and possibly to direct recruitment.” The analyst also claimed that “[t]hese relationships likely also indicate a high level of loyalty toward Al-Qaida.”

When it came to the most relevant relationship, with Salman Mohammed (ISN 121, released in December 2006, and also identified as Sulaiman al-Oshan), who was the brother he traveled to rescue, the Task Force described Mohammed as “a mujahid with the 55th Arab Brigade,” and noted that he “was on a list of thirty-seven detainees whom the Saudi Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Investigations (Mabahith) designated as high priority before a Saudi delegation visit to JTF-GTMO in 2002.”

This, again, was nothing more than guilt by association, and despite their best efforts, interrogators could also not get Mohammed to incriminate his brother. What was reported instead was that, although Mohammed “corroborated detainee’s approximate date of arrival at the front lines,” he “provided conflicting accounts as to why detainee traveled to Afghanistan, first claiming that he did not know, and later stating that detainee came to retrieve [him].”

The most relevant passage in the file did not involve how his brothers were perceived by the Saudi authorities, but how he was regarded, and it was noted, “In July 2002, a delegation from Saudi Arabia visited JTF-GTMO and interviewed detainee. Detainee 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. Furthermore,the Saudi delegation indicated that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of detainee for possible prosecution as soon as the US determined it no longer wanted to hold him.”

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,” which seemed like an exaggerated assessment, especially as he was also “assessed as a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harry H. Harris Jr., the commander of Guantánamo at the time, updating a recommendation for continued detention with transfer language (dated March 31, 2006), recommended him for continued detention without transfer language, although no reason was given. Even so, he was released three months later, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Yousef Al Shehri (ISN 114, Saudi Arabia) Released November 2007

In a footnote to Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Yousef al-Shehri, who was just 16 years old at the time of his capture, was seized between Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz with 120 other suspected fighters. I also explained how his cousin, Abdul Salam al-Shehri (ISN 132, released in June 2006), who was just 17 years old at the time of his capture, and who had hidden in the basement during the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, thought he was dead. He was then transported to a prison in Sheberghan run by the Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum, where he spent six weeks in horribly overcrowded conditions, surrounded by the dead and dying, before being transferred to US custody.

Although al-Shehri — like the other juveniles at Guantánamo (at least 22 in total) — should have been rehabilitated rather than punished, according to America’s obligations under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which the US ratified on December 23, 2002, only three juveniles were ever treated differently from the adult prisoners (as described in “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Ten of Ten)”).

As I explained in an article at the time of his release, al-Shehri’s suffering at Guantánamo became particularly pronounced when he took part in a prison-wide hunger strike, involving as many as 200 prisoners, in the summer of 2005. In July 2005, and again in January 2006, his weight, which had been 141 pounds when he arrived at Guantánamo in February 2002, dropped to just 97 pounds, and his lawyers, who visited him in October 2005, said that he was “emaciated and had lost a disturbing amount of weight,” adding that he was “visibly weak and frail” and “had difficulty speaking because of lesions in his throat that were a result of the involuntary force-feeding” to which he had been subjected.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Shehri was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated July 21, 2006, in which he was identified as Yusif Muhammad Mubarak al-Shihri, and it was noted that he was born in September 1985 (and was therefore just 16 at the time of his capture), and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that he left school sometime in 2000, and then “sold fruit, vegetables and honey from a cart on the side of the road for approximately two months in Riyadh, Jeddah and Mecca” until a man named Muhammad al-Qosi convinced him to go to Pakistan. There he met another Saudi, Abdul Aziz, and reportedly spent two and a half months in Karachi with him, at a mosque, until Abdul Aziz told him that “it was their duty to participate in jihad with the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

In April 2001, they “traveled to Kabul, where they spoke with the Taliban and stated they wanted to fight,” and “were given directions to a Taliban guesthouse,” where they were separated. Al-Shehri then traveled with three Arabs and approximately 30 Afghans to a compound in Kunduz, commanded by Mullah Thacker, and then, with seven Afghans, he was sent to an Arab unit on the front lines at Khawaja Ghar, where he “spent approximately four or five months at a support center close to the front.” Although his commander, Abu Muath, gave him “one day of training on grenades and the Kalashnikov,” he reportedly “transported food and bullets to the front line and helped bury the dead.”

After the US-led invasion, when “the fighting on the front lines became intense” (in November 2001), al-Shehri and his group were instructed to withdraw from the front lines to Kunduz. After two weeks, his commander informed him that “Mullah Thaker had ordered a withdrawal to Kandahar,” and he and others “traveled in cars and trucks to Mazar-e-Sharif, AF, where Northern Alliance commander Dostum’s men stopped the trucks and ordered the fighters to surrender their weapons.” They were then taken to Qala-i-Janghi, where he survived the massacre, and he was then taken to Dostum’s prison at Sheberghan, where he was held for a month and a half. He was then taken to Kandahar by US forces, and was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Personalities and replacement operations of the Arab element that supported the Northern Taliban forces (assessed to be referring to UBL’s [Osama bin Laden's] 55th Arab Brigade).”

In assessing his story, the Task Force stated that he was “historically uncooperative during debriefings, and his truthfulness [was] often in doubt.” It was also claimed that there were unexplained holes in his timeline, which “afforded him the opportunity to attend training at Al-Farouq [the main training camp for Arabs], which he probably completed prior to supporting the Taliban and al-Qaida on the front lines.”

Whether or not he was anything more than a basic foot soldier was actually open to question, as the Task Force was preoccupied by his “familial ties to a significant Al-Qaida member”; namely, “his older brother Saad Muhammad Mubarak al-Shihri aka Abdul Rahman al-Najdi aka Abu Uthman al-Shahri” who was apparently “an official spokesman for Al-Qaida and on Saudi Arabia’s most wanted list in November 2005.”

The Task Force also noted that he had “shown his willingness to martyr himself while at JTF-GTMO,” adding, “Should he be released, he would probably seek the opportunity to do so,” and explaining that he had “sent a letter to his family telling them of his wish to be a martyr.” It was also noted that, on May 18, 2006, he had tried to commit suicide — or, as the Task Force put it, had “committed self-harm by attempting to overdose on prescribed medication.” The fact that suicide was not even remotely regarded as a form of martyrdom by jihadists appeared to have eluded the Task Force.

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.” He was also “assessed as a moderate threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been non-compliant and sometimes hostile with the guard force and staff.” Providing specific details, the Task Force noted that, on December 10, 2004, “he became violent during an interview session,” when he “threw books at his interviewer, flipped a table, and attempted to head butt a guard,” and that, on August 18, 2005, “while assigned to the detainee hospital, [he] was denied a request to be unrestrained during prayer call,” and “[h]e and the other detainees became upset and began pulling out their IV’s and brandishing them as weapons, throwing thermometers, and grabbing med packs containing syringes and anything else that could be used as a weapon.”

As a result of the above, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation that he retained in DoD control (dated June 10, 2005), recommended him for continued detention, although, crucially, it was also noted, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to [al-Shehri] and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).” It took another 16 months for that agreement to be reached, when he was released.

After his release, al-Shehri was processed through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program, but in February 2009 he was included as one of eleven former Guantánamo prisoners in a list of the Saudi government’s 85 most wanted militants, all of whom had allegedly left Saudi Arabia and in October 2009 it was reported that he and another man, Raed al-Harbi, had been killed in a shootout with Saudi authorities after they entered the country from Yemen, disguised as women, and “planning to carry out attacks.”

Bijad Al Atabi (ISN 122, Saudi Arabia) Released July 2007

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Bijad al-Atabi (also identified as al-Otaibi), who was 30 years old at the time of his capture, was accused of being an assistant commander in Al-Qaida’s Arab Brigade, and I added more information in an article at the time of his release, in which I explained that, in Guantánamo, he was accused of stating that he traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, that he was trained at a camp near Kabul, and that he fought on the front lines until ordered to surrender to Northern Alliance commander General Dostum at Mazar-e-Sharif.

He was then imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a fort where hundreds of men were killed in a massacre, after some of them started an uprising against their captors, fearing that they were about to be killed. He was one of 86 men who survived in the basement of the fort for a week, despite being bombed and flooded.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Atabi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated January 22, 2007, in which he was identified as Bijad D. al-Atavi and Bajad Dhayfallah Hawaymal al-Ruqi al-Utaybi, and it was noted that he was born in August 1971, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, based largely on his own account, the Joint Task Force noted that at the age of eight, his father died and he began working on the family farm while also attending school. From 1988 to 1997, he “worked as a guard with the Saudi National Security Force, where [his] duties included guarding movement sponsored television, telecommunication, electric, and food processing facilities.” He said that he “did not receive and firearms training, but was armed with a Belgian rifle.” From 1997 to 1999, he “returned home to work on the family farm.”

He was, he said, “inspired to fight jihad” after listening to a fatwa issued by a well-known sheikh, but spoke to another sheikh who told him that Osama bin Laden “was not a good Muslim and to avoid Al-Qaida.” Nevertheless, he then spoke to an Afghan who gave him information about how to get to Afghanistan and where to stay,” and, on May 25, 2000, “traveled alone to Jalalabad,” via Dubai and Peshawar. There, he said, he was taken to the university, where he stayed with the brother of an individual he had met while traveling from Peshawar to Jalalabad. After a few days, he went to Kabul, where he “stayed in the Wazir Akbar Khan area at a Taliban guesthouse” for a week, and was then taken to the front lines outside Kabul, where he “received training on the AK-47 rifle and hand grenades for approximately two to three weeks at a small unknown Taliban training camp.” He said that he “never fought during his time on the frontlines,” and also said that “Al-Qaida attempted to recruit [him], but [he] refused.”

Al-Atabi further stated that he was on the frontlines until late July or early August 2000, but added that, during one of his regular trips from the frontlines to the Taliban guesthouse (“for rest”), he “was injured in an automobile accident and taken to a hospital in Kabul,” where he remained for up to six weeks. In October 2000, approximately, he was transferred to a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, where he “received additional surgery and physical therapy on his hand.” He also explained that the Taliban “paid for some of [his] medical bills, and [he] paid the balance.” He then “remained in Lahore at a Taliban guesthouse until approximately  February 2001, when he returned to Kabul and stayed in a guesthouse for about a month, and then traveled to Qarabagh, where he stayed at another guesthouse until approximately mid-April 2001.

He then “traveled to and fought in the Khawaja Ghar region of Afghanistan” until he “was told the Taliban reached an agreement with General Dostum” of the Northern Alliance. This was described as being “approximately mid-October 2001,” although it was actually in November. He then “traveled to Mazar-e-Sharif in a convoy where he was detained on approximately 23 November 2001 by Northern Alliance (NA) forces and taken to the Qala-i-Janghi prison.” Al-Atabi’s comments about the massacre were not noted, but an analyst stated, “Over 70 JTF-GTMO detainees surrendered to General Dostum’s troops in late November 2001. Dostum’s forces took the prisoners to the Qala-i-Janghi prison located outside Mazar-e-Sharif, on 24 November 2001. After one night in captivity, the prisoners revolted leading to the deaths of NA forces and CIA operative Johnny ‘Mike’ Spann. Detainee and other JTF-GTMO detainees, who survived the revolt, withdrew to a basement in the compound until they were recaptured , approximately one week later.”

On December 29, 2001, after being held in Sheberghan prison, also run by Dostum, for four weeks, al-Atabi was transferred to the US prison at Kandahar airport. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban organization, leadership, equipment and procedures [and] Taliban training camp in the vicinity of Taloqan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force described him as “a member of Al-Qaida and a sub-commander in [Osama bin Laden]‘s 55th Arab Brigade,” and while the former was the normal exaggerated description of any Arab fighting the Northern Alliance, the latter claim came only from one witness, Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111, released in January 2009), who was well-known within Guantánamo circles as an unreliable witness. Al-Tayeea apparently identified al-Atabi as Abjad Dhaif Allah (aka Abu Umar), and also “photo-identified [him] as Abu Omar al-Nejdi, but stated [his] real name [was] Bujaad Daif Allah,” which an analyst regarded as “a variant of [his] name.” He claimed that al-Atabi “was an al-Qaida explosives and weapons expert who received extensive training,” and “was a mid-level commander, well known to Al-Qaida fighters,” who “fought on the Kabul and Khawaja Ghar fronts,” and also claimed he “was on the North Line for a long time and was Abu Tarub’s sub-commander in the Bilal Group of the Arab Brigade.”

Furthermore, with reference to Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, (described as having “primary operational command of the former 55th Arab Brigade, [and] serving as [Osama bin Laden]‘s military commander in the field”), al-Tayeea claimed that al-Atabi “knew Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi very well because [he] always went to al-Iraqi’s office.” He added that he “saw [al-Atabi] twice with al-Iraqi and also saw [him] with information needed on the North Line,” and “believe[d] detainee was a very important person.”

Even if al-Tayeea was correct to identify al-Atabi as a sub-commander, it did not follow that he was “a very important person,” but what made al-Tayeea’s statement dubious was not only his track record, but also the fact that there was no other reliable verification for his story. Muhammad al-Adahi (ISN 33, still held), apparently “also photo-identified detainee as Abu Omar al-Najdi, a sub-commander to Abu Turab,” but this smacks of a coerced statement, or one produced simply to make life easier, as al-Adahi, a Yemeni who accompanied his sister to Afghanistan for her marriage, never went anywhere near the front lines where al-Atabi was reportedly a sub-commander.

Others recognized al-Atabi, but none of them claimed that he had a command position. Abd al-Rahman al-Umari (ISN 199, a Saudi who died in Guantánamo in May 2007, and was also identified as Abdul Rahman al-Amri) “identified detainee as Abu Omar who was at the Rabei position in Kabul,” Said al-Zahrani (ISN 204, released in July 2007) “identified detainee as Abu Omar who fought on the frontlines”) and correctly “believed [he] was wounded in a castle near Mazar-e-Sharif”), and John Walker Lindh (ISN 1, although he was never held at Guantánamo, because he was a US citizen), “thought the detainee depicted in a photograph shown to him was Abu Umar, a Saudi from Najd, SA.” Lindh apparently also “said Abu Umar had been in Afghanistan for a long time, ‘maybe even in the 80s, fighting against the USSR,’” and “recalled seeing detainee on the backlines near Takhar, AF, and Kunduz, AF, after the retreat.” He added that he “thought detainee had been killed.” An analyst noted, “If detainee is the individual identified by Lindh, [he] has withheld details of his background story,” but it seems more likely that it was Lindh, presumably under duress, who was making things up.

The Task Force also noted that “[v]ariations of detainee’s name and aliases ha[d] been recovered in Al-Qaida associated documents,” recovered during house raids, but this kind of claim is particularly dubious. More significant was a note stating that, “Prior to the Saudi delegation visit in 2002, the Saudi Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Investigations (Mabahith) provided information on 37 detainees whom they designated as being high priority. Detainee was eighteenth on the list.”

Mabahith also “noted detainee was on the Saudi movement’s ‘watch and arrest’ list due to information they received reporting detainee’s death in Mazar-e- Sharif and the possibility of someone else using detainee’s passport,” which, of course, was nothing to do with him, but what was most significant was that, “After the Saudi delegation visit, detainee was assessed by Mabahith” not as being “high priority,” but “as one of the 77 Saudi nationals of low intelligence or 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.”

In conclusion, 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.” It was also noted that he was “assessed to be a medium threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and hostile toward the guard force and staff.” As a result, Rear Adm. Harris, updating a recommendation for his continued detention (dated October 24, 2005), repeated that recommendation, without any acknowledgement of the Saudis’ description of al-Atabi as being “of low intelligence or law enforcement value to the US Government.” However, six months later, he was released, to be put through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program.

Also see Part One 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 22 of the 70-part series. 282 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). For further information, also see Part One, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine and Part Ten.

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.

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

Ibrahim Al Sehli (ISN 94, Saudi Arabia) Released May 2006

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Ibrahim al-Sehli, who was 36 years old at the time of his capture, worked as a guard for the Taliban, and was later diagnosed with dementia and released. He was one of nine prisoners in this article (out of eleven in total), along with four profiled in Part One (and others in earlier articles), who survived what has become known as the Qala-i-Janghi massacre. This 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 were killed in the massacre.

In Guantánamo, speaking about his recollections of the massacre, al-Sehli said, “They handcuffed us and put us in a court, a big open space, and there were explosions behind us. Shrapnel from that explosion hit me.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Sehli was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated October 15, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in October 1965, and in which he was also identified as Ibrahim al-Suhali, and it was stated that he had “a previously fractured right forearm, had an appendectomy performed, and [was] carrying the Hepatitis B virus,” but was otherwise “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he “worked at the Ministry of Health in Medina, SA, from 1992 to 2001 as a clerical worker,” and was persuaded to travel to Afghanistan “to assist the Taliban in its fight to protect Muslims in Afghanistan” by a sheikh at a mosque he began attending in 2000, who also told him that “the Taliban was building a purely Islamic society in Afghanistan.” Al-Sehli said he “wished to see this himself,” and so he traveled to Afghanistan via Iran in late September 2001, ending up in Kunduz, where he spent 22 days “working as a security guard at a Taliban supply warehouse near Khawaja Ghar,” and where, he said, he “was given an AK-47 with five rounds of ammunition, but insist[ed] he was never given any training on how to use a weapon.”

He then “fled” from Khawaja Ghar back to Kunduz, but “Northern Alliance forces captured [him] when he was en route to Mazar-e-Sharif.” He was then “present at the Qala-i-Janghi prison riot,” and was then transferred to Sheberghan “until he was turned over to US forces in Kandahar.” He was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, allegedly because he “was assessed to be able to provide information on the Taliban camp that stored food and supplies near Kunduz, AF, and the Qala-i-Janghi prison riot at Mazar-e-Sharif, AF.”

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 a senior interrogator who worked in Afghanistan explained in a book that he wrote about his experiences (The Interrogators, mentioned above), 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.

There was, to be honest, little more about al-Sehli that was extracted by the authorities. One of his fellow prisoners, Abdul Aziz al-Baddah (ISN 264, released in June 2006), apparently described him as a “Religious Thinker” on the cellblock, and said “‘Religious Thinkers’ tell other detainees to remain strong and faithful and to use their religion to help them withstand the interrogations and not answer any more questions,” and the Task Force also noted that, for some reason, “Prior to February 2004, [his] overall behaviour had been compliant and generally non-aggressive,” but that, “Since February 2004, [he] has had numerous non-compliant behavior incidents.”

In conclusion, he was assessed as “a committed jihadist that traveled to Afghanistan following September 11, 2001, answering a fatwa … encouraging Muslims to assist the Taliban in its fight to protect Muslims in Afghanistan.” He was also 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 it is not clear where this came from, as this same assessment involved an assertion that he “was likely a low-level fighter serving with Al-Qaida’s Arab Brigade.”

To ramp up his significance, the Task Force drew on al-Baddah’s unsubstantiated comments, describing al-Sehli as “a religious zealot,” who “would use his religion to justify his means to conduct hostile actions against the US,” and who, if released, “would pose a significant threat directly supporting or participating in a terrorist attack against US interests.” This appeared to be major scaremongering, although Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “retained under DoD control,” even though the Criminal Investigative Task Force “assessed [him] as a medium risk on 14 June 2004.” However, “In the interests 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.”

Abdul Rahman Al Ghamdi (ISN 95, Saudi Arabia) Released May 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Abdul Rahman al-Ghamdi (also identified as Abdul Rahman Uthman Ahmed), who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

In Guantánamo, al-Ghamdi admitted being an “Arab fighter,” but complained, “I was fighting with some of the Pakistanis and Afghans who were here and they have been released and sent home. I don’t understand what the difference is between them and me.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Ghamdi was an “Update Recommendation to 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 1975, and was “in good health,” although it was also noted that he had “a history of resolved adjustment disorder with anxiety.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he “worked as an accountant for the port authority in Riyadh,” and was encouraged to travel to Afghanistan through a fatwa. Traveling in July 2001 with a friend, they were taken to the front lines in Kunduz, where they joined Osama bin Laden’s 55th Arab Brigade, “assigned to a 16-man Arab position, which was a part of the 150-man Arab unit.” According to al-Ghamdi, they “stayed in this defensive position approximately two and a half months,” and then the Taliban “withdrew without telling the Arabs,” although they “finally called the rear units and told them the Northern Alliance was headed directly for them and they should retreat.”

“The withdrawal,” he said, “led to an agreement between [Northern Alliance commander General Rashid] Dostum and the Taliban,” which “was for the Taliban to turn in their weapons to the Northern Alliance,” who “would let them retreat to Kandahar, AF, unmolested.” However, the Northern Alliance “put the Taliban in trucks, approximately 50-70 people in each truck, and started to transport them to Kandahar,” but then they “drove to the Qala-i-Janghi prison in the Mazar-e-Sharif area instead of Kandahar,” where there were “approximately 450 prisoners.”

Although they were told, falsely, that “they would proceed to Kandahar the next morning,” the uprising occurred when the prisoners feared they had been tricked and would be executed, and, as al-Ghamdi’s file stated, “those prisoners surviving surrendered on the eighth day,” and “were loaded into trucks to be transported to the Sheberghan prison,” where he was held “for approximately one and a half months, then handed over to US forces.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the events at Mazar-e-Sharif and types of hand-held radios used by the Taliban Forces.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force was clearly delighted to have been given clear information regarding the various military commanders in northern Afghanistan, although it was difficult not to notice that few of them — if any — were in Guantánamo. As for al-Ghamdi’s role, one untrustworthy witness, the Iraqi Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111, identified as Ali Badul Motalib Awayd Hassan, and released in January 2009), claimed that he “attended training at Al-Qaida’s Al-Farouq training camp,” but there was no reason to believe this, especially as trainees tended to hand over their passports for safekeeping, whereas al-Ghamdi stated that “he had his passport with him the whole time he was in Afghanistan,” and it was only “taken at his time of capture.”

It was also noted that, during the transfer of prisoners to Qala-i-Janghi, “mujahideen did not hand over all their weapons.” This was true, although it is unknown how the Task Force came up with its assessment that al-Ghamdi “was one of the individuals still carrying a small pistol and/or two hand grenades,” and how, “After reviewing documentation from open sourcing, it [was] assessed [he] was more involved with the fighting than he ha[d] admitted.”

In conclusion, it was assessed that al-Ghamdi was only “of low intelligence value,” and had also been generally well-behaved in Guantánamo, where his behaviour had only been “slightly aggressive and non- compliant.” In addition, he was regarded as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Brig. Gen. Hood recommended his transfer to continued detention in Saudi Arabia. What was particularly noticeable was that he had been previously assessed, on September 27, 2003, as a prisoner to be retained in DoD control, but that was because he “was previously thought to be suspected terrorist Samir Al- Hada; however, that connection has since been disproved.”

Mohammed Al Utaybi (ISN 96, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Mohammed al-Utaybi (also identified as Muhammad al-Utaybi), who was 18 years old at the time of his capture, was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

In Guantánamo, al-Utaybi, who was one of several Saudis who claimed that he had gone to Afghanistan to rescue a brother, told his tribunal, “When the shooting happened, I hid underground. I stayed there for days. There were people dying and starving to death during that time. After that, we were told to get out and no one would be killed. Me and the other people hiding underground got out. A lot of them were injured.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Utaybi was a “Recommendation to Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),” dated March 8, 2006, in which it was stated that he was born in July 1977, and he was additionally identified as Mohammed S. Ataby and Muhammad al-Utaybi. It was also noted that he had “a history of latent TB with a normal chest x-ray but refused treatment,” that he had “a history of dental caries, which were evaluated and treated,” that he had “a history of lumbago in August 2004,” and that he “was on hunger strike in October 2004 and July 2005.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he had studied, from 1997 onwards, at the University of Fine Arts in King Saud University, but, in 2000, was persuaded by his “elders” that it was “his duty to go to Afghanistan during his summer vacations and fight against the Northern Alliance.” Instead, he “met Abu Omar, a Pakistani, at a furniture store in his neighbourhood,” who “talked to [him] about training in Pakistan and the Kashmir Region,” and provided him with contact details. “Using money he saved from his University stipends and charitable collections,” he traveled to Lahore, via Karachi, located the office of Lashkar-e-Tayiba (the militant group particularly concerned with the conflict in Kashmir) and then traveled to “the mountain training camp at Al-Aqsa,” where he undertook basic training for eight weeks.

After training, he said, he was planing to return home, but his visa had expired. He traveled to Islamabad to renew it, but there he met two individuals from the camp who discussed traveling to Afghanistan,” and he “decided to accompany them.” He ended up in Kabul, on the Taliban lines, for three and half months, where he “was told they were fighting the Massoud [Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader, assassinated on September 9, 2001]; however, he claimed he did not fight.”

He then returned to Saudi Arabia, and stated that “he restarted his academic program,” but was then contacted by “a distant relative,” Abdallah Abu Utaybi (a cousin), who was trying to discover information about his brother, Fayhan al-Utaybi, who was in Afghanistan. “[N]oting his relative’s concern,” Mohammed al-Utaybi “offered to return to Afghanistan to look for Fayhan.”

Via Quetta, Kandahar, Kabul and Kunduz, al-Utaybi located his relative in a guest house in Taloqan, on the front lines in the north, where, he said, He “was asked to hand over his passport and money for safekeeping,” which he did, although he said that he “attempted multiple times to regain possession of his property and return to Saudi Arabia.”

Caught up in the Taliban’s retreat, he and a group of other men “were attacked by Dostum’s forces and taken to Qala-i-Janghi prison where they were bound and taken to an underground room.” The rest of his experiences of the massacre was described as follows: “The next day, they were taken from the room to a square where an uprising occurred. Detainee was taken back to the underground room where he remained for approximately five days. He was subsequently turned over to US forces.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on January 17, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Training and recruitment of Arab fighters in Kashmir, PK.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force concluded that he was “of low intelligence value,” and it was also noted that he was “assessed as a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff.” It was also noted that he was assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was “assessed to be a jihadist who traveled to Afghanistan (AF) and possibly participated in hostilities against coalition forces as a member of Osama Bin Laden’s (UBL) former 55th Arab Brigade,” and it was also regarded as noteworthy that he trained with Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Pakistan, and that he was reportedly “related to deceased Al-Qaida operative and Arab Brigade leader Abu Turab al- Nejdi,” who reportedly died in Qala-i-Janghi.

The Task Force claimed that al-Nejdi was Mohammed al-Utaybi’s cousin, Fayhan al-Utaybi, the one he had traveled to Afghanistan to rescue, but little information was available to corroborate this, and although eight prisoners reportedly identified al-Utaybi, from various locations on his journeys, only one, an unreliable Iraqi witness named Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111, released January 2009), mentioned al-Nejdi, claiming that al-Utaybi was “a Saudi who is associated with many of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi’s associates, including Abu Turab al-Nejdi, who is well connected and knows all the people in charge,” and that he “came to the Sheberghan prison with a group of Saudis. and that [he] was the nephew of Abu Turab.” The only other suspicious allegation came from torture victim and CIA “ghost prisoner” Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016), who, when shown al-Utaybi’s photo, said he “recognized detainee, but was unable to recall details,” which, of course, means nothing at all.

In approving the change in his designation from “Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention(TRCD),” on June 10, 2005, to “Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),” which Maj. Gen. Hood approved in this assessment, the major contributing factor was probably the following:

In July 2002, a delegation from Saudi Arabia visited JTF GTMO and interviewed detainee. He was identified to be of low intelligence and law enforcement value to the US, and unlikely to pose a terrorist threat to the US or its interests. Furthermore, the Saudi delegation indicated that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of detainee for possible prosecution as soon as the US determined it no longer wanted to hold him.

Adnan Al Saigh (ISN 105, Saudi Arabia) Released May 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Adnan al-Saigh (also identified as Adnan Mohammed Ali), who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

In Guantánamo, al-Saigh did not mention being injured. He said that he had looked after the Taliban’s horses, and explained that he went to Afghanistan to help fight the Russians, whom he regarded as interchangeable with the Northern Alliance, an understandable misconception, largely based on the shifting allegiances of one of the Northern Alliance leaders, General Dostum, who had been a Russian ally. The following is an exchange from al-Saigh’s CSRT:

Detainee: “The Massoud” [a reference to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, who was assassinated two days before 9/11], is he one of your allies?
Tribunal President: Yes.
Detainee: When did he become your ally or coalition partner?
Tribunal President: I think officially after September 11, 2001.
Detainee: I never fought after [September 11,] 2001.

In a cheeky coda, al-Saigh asked the Tribunal President, “I was wondering how ‘The Massoud’ became one of your allies?” which prompted the reply, “I don’t have that information. That is above my pay grade and not available to me.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Saigh was a “Recommendation to Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),” dated March 18, 2005, in which he had numerous alternative names listed, and it was noted that he was born in January 1978, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he was a librarian, who had traveled to Afghanistan in January 2001 after hearing a fatwa. It was noted that he had “not accounted for his travels during his first two months,” when, it was assessed, he had “received military training” at the Al-Farouq camp. He then went to Kabul, where he “traveled to the Office of the Ministry of Defense [and] turned over his passport for safekeeping.” In Kabul, he “received training on horseback riding and the care and maintenance of horses,” and then “spent the next six months in the Khawaja Ghar area working with horses,” and “was assigned with the Arab fighters on the front lines.”

As the Northern Alliance drew nearer, those on the Taliban front lines were ordered pull back to Kunduz, where “a surrender was agreed upon by the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.” In al-Saigh’s account, “The Taliban fighters were loaded onto trucks and taken towards Mazar-e-Sharif,” but “[s]omewhere on the way, General Dostum’s forces intercepted the convoy, and the Taliban fighters were disarmed and detained,” and taken to Qala-i-Janghi,where “an uprising took place and a number of prisoners were killed” (an understatement for a massacre in which approximately 360 out of 450 prisoners died).

As al-Saigh described it, the survivors “were transferred to containers and moved to Sheberghan on 2 December 2001,” and he was “turned over to US forces on 28 December 2001.” He was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the Taliban and Taliban personnel located at the front lines near Khawaja Ghar, AF.”

In assessing al-Saigh, it was noted that, although it was recommended that he be retained in DoD control on January 10, 2004, it was now recommended that he be “Transferred to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” which Brig. Gen. Hood approved. This decision was apparently “[b]ased upon information obtained since detainee’s previous assessment,” but it was unknown what that information was.

What was clear was that al-Saigh 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,” primarily because he was “assessed as a low-level Al-Qaida fighter and a member of Osama Bin Laden’s (UBL) 55th Arab Brigade.” Very little information about him came from other prisoners, and the most seemingly significant were actually untrustworthy, as they came from the Iraqi prisoner Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111), who was well-known in Guantánamo for his false stories about his fellow prisoners, and from the American torture victim John Walker Lindh.

Al-Tayeea, who was himself assessed as “possibly being affiliated with the former Iraqi regime and may be an Iraqi Intelligence Officer,” identified al-Saigh as “going by the alias Abu Malik,” adding that he “was acquainted with Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a senior Al-Qaida member [ISN 10025, a senior military commander in Afghanistan, held at Guantánamo and a former CIA "ghost prisoner"] and Al Salaam [probably Abu Salam al-Hadrami, a secondary troop commander in the Kunduz area]” and Lindh apparently identified him “as going by the alias Ibn Ul Mubarak,” adding that he “worked with the LeT [the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Tayiba], giving a briefing about Kashmir, and being responsible for issuing and controlling weapons at the front lines.”

While these allegations (and Lindh’s in particular) are unconvincing, other information was more difficult to evaluate. It was noted, for example, that al-Saigh had “admitted that should he be called upon to perform jihad, he would do so without hesitation.” That means little, as many Arabs would regard it as unthinkable to turn down a fatwa issued by a religious leader, but more troubling, from the US point of view, was al-Saigh’s general lack of cooperation. It was noted that he had “remained unresponsive to questions posed during investigations,” and that “[n]inety percent of [his] debriefings ha[d] resulted in no intelligence gathered.” Even so, although it was also noted that he had “many discipline reports for failing to comply with guards and possession of contraband,” he did not “exhibit aggressive acts,” and had not been seriously disruptive. In four years of detention, the Task Force noted that he had only been “forcefully extracted from his cell on four different occasions,” that “he spit on a guard on 18 March 2004,” and that he had “a number of instances of banging on his cell.”

After his release, al-Saigh was processed through the Saudi government’s extensive rehabilitation program, but in February 2009 he was included as one of eleven former Guantánamo prisoners in a list of the Saudi government’s 85 most wanted militants, all of whom had allegedly left Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Gazette reported that, after completing the rehabilitation program, al-Saigh (described as Adnan al-Sayegh) “left Taif for Bahah with his wife and his five-month-old son to visit relatives and friends there Jan. 25, his brother Ramadan said. He stayed three days in Bahah after which he disappeared.” The Gazette added, “His brothers-in-law tried to contact him, but he never answered their calls. Last Sunday, Adnan called his brother Ramadan saying that he was enjoying the weather in Bahah and would arrive in Taif the same night. But he never made it. The suspect shocked the family when he appeared on the most wanted list, his brother said.” It was also noted that al-Sayegh was “married to the sister of a Guantánamo returnee, Othman al-Ghamdi [ISN 184, released in June 2006] who is believed to have run away with al-Sayegh.”

Nothing more has been heard about him since this report on February 7, 2009.

Yusef Al Rabiesh (ISN 109, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Yusef al-Rabiesh, who was 20 years old at the time of his capture, said in Guantánamo that he went to Afghanistan to rescue his brother. He was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

Speaking of his recollections of the massacre, he said, “We were taken out two by two. We were handcuffed and seated in a big field … We sat there for about two to three hours. There was a demonstration and then the Northern Alliance started shooting at us … We were handcuffed when the shooting started. The only people who had weapons were the Northern Alliance, and they were shooting at the detainees.” He added, “I got shot and lost consciousness and my brother was killed. He was handcuffed when he was killed.”

In Chapter 8, I also mentioned how al-Rabiesh claimed that he was tortured in the Northern Alliance prison in Sheberghan, prior to his transfer to US custody, where he was made to adopt his brother’s story of jihad, instead of sticking to his own story about traveling to rescue him:

I had to use the fake story to stop the torture and the pain they were forcing on me. My health was getting worse and worse. I was later given to the American forces and was transferred, in a very bad way, to the prison in Kandahar. The treatment was the same as before. The torture remained the same. I am ready to tell you, but I feel bad telling you, the treatment by the Americans was not as good as it was with the Northern Alliance.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Rabiesh was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated January 6, 2006, in which he was also identified as Yusef A. Salah and it was noted that he was born in 1981. It was also noted that he had an extensive medical history at Guantánamo.

The Task Force stated that he had “a history of GSW [gunshot wound] to mid-back at axillary line causing chronic right thorax pain,” and that he “was given a back brace for additional back support.” It was also noted that an orthopaedic surgeon “diagnosed [him] with rib malunion secondary to GSW,” and that al-Rabiesh “preferred conservative therapy to nerve block.” It was also noted that he had “a history of GERD [Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease aka Acid Reflux or Heartburn], hemorrhoids, otitis extemae [otitis externa, aka "Swimmer's ear," an inflammation of the outer ear and ear canal], and nonbacterial prostatitis [a urinary infection],” and that he had been seen by ENT (probably ear, nose and throat specialists), who “performed laryngoscopy confirming diagnosis of GERD,” and that urology had also “evaluated [him] and diagnosed prostatadynia [aka prostatitis] and treated with flomax and naproxen.” It was also noted that he had “a history of panic attacks,” and that he “went on hunger strike in July 2005,” and at the time of the assessment it was noted that he was on aciphex, multivitamin, Ensure, lidoderm, flomax and ultram.

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he “did not complete his high school education,” and had “worked at an automotive repair garage” in 1999. In March 2001, after his brother, Abdul Malik, traveled to Afghanistan, he called home, telling Yusef that he “would assist in his travel to Afghanistan,” and providing him with instructions “during a subsequent phone call.” In May, Yusuf set out for Afghanistan, via Pakistan, to join his brother, although he maintained that “his purpose in traveling to Afghanistan was to convince his brother to return to Saudi Arabia because both his mother and father had medical problems.”

After meeting his brother in Quetta, the two traveled to Kabul, and, after approximately two weeks, took a flight to Kunduz, and then a taxi to a Taliban guesthouse in Taloqan, where they “received four weeks of training,” which “consisted of assembly and disassembly of the weapons, as well as live firing.” They then traveled back to Kunduz and then on to Khawaja Ghar, and a location identified as “Jabal 4 (Mountain Four),” where, with four other men and a Pakistani leader, their mission “was to guard the two valleys on either side of their position.”

As the Northern Alliance advanced, they were told to return to Kunduz, where “the Taliban agreed to surrender to the Northern Alliance and the Taliban fighters were loaded onto trucks.” However, as Adnan al-Saigh also noted (and I had not known previously, despite extensive research), “During the trip to Mazar-e-Sharif, Dostum’s forces intercepted the convoy and the fighters were relieved of their weapons.” As the Task Force explained, the convoy then “resumed its journey” to Qala-i-Janghi, and provided the following explanation of al-Rabiesh’s experiences of the massacre:

At the prison, detainee and the others were searched and placed in an underground holding area. The following morning, detainee and others were led out of the basement into the yard and were seated on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs. A short time later, detainee stated he heard gunfire and quickly laid down to avoid being hit. However a, bullet or shrapnel injured him on his back that caused significant bleeding and resulted in detainee lapsing in and out of consciousness for the next several days. After the shooting had subsided, detainee and others were again led out into the yard and then transferred to Sheberghan prison.

After being transferred to US custody at Kandahar, he was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban organization, strength, equipment, and procedures [and] Taliban training camp located in the vicinity of Taloqan, AF.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that al-Rabiesh had “provided two very diverse accounts of his activities in Afghanistan” — one outlined above, and the other, provided to a Saudi delegation in 2002, and only repeated in US custody in 2004, in which he “denied any type of military training, denied staying in Taliban guesthouses, ands denied ever picking up a weapon in Afghanistan.” The Task Force noted, “To explain the change in accounts, [he] claimed that he had lied during his initial interrogations,” and, as he stated in Guantanamo, “claimed that while in the custody of Afghani forces after the prison uprising, he observed others being beaten for denying a role in jihad,” and, “[t]o avoid harm to himself, he reportedly offered scraps of information from the account his deceased brother allegedly told him while in Qala-i-Janghi prison.” He added that he “continued this account while in US custody to avoid being labeled a liar.”

To the Task Force, the previous version of his story was “deemed more credible,” and it was noted that al-Rabiesh had “admitted to providing false information during his debriefings.” Nevertheless, he was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and as being “of moderate value from a detention perspective,” as his “overall behaviour” had been “non-compliant,” but “rarely hostile.” He was also assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and was identified as “an assessed Al-Qaida member who fought in support of the Taliban,” and “was probably a member of Osama Bin Laden’s (UBL’s) former 55th Arab Brigade that was operating in the vicinity of Kunduz.”

Although Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for continued detention, it was noted, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).” It was also noted, “A visiting Saudi delegation indicated that the Government’ of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of [him] for possible prosecution.”

Abdul Rahman Juma Kahm (ISN 118, Afghanistan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Rahman Juma Kahm was a Taliban conscript. He said in Guantánamo, “I joined the Taliban by force not by choice. Everyone in Afghanistan knows if the Taliban asks you to go with them you cannot say no … Our area was under Taliban control, so we could not fight them. We were so poor I could not move my family, that’s why I stayed in the area.” Held in a compound in Kunduz, he said that he was not obliged to fight, but added that he expected he would have been shot if he tried to escape.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Juma Kahm was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated June 3, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1969, and it was stated that he was “followed by Behavioral Health for the following mental health diagnoses: Schizoaffective disorder, Depressive Disorder, [and] Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic features.” It was also noted that he was “currently on Effexor SR daily, Haldol Decanoate injections every month and Cogentin twice a day.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he was a father of six children, who lived in Sangin city, in Helmand province, where he had “owned a shop in a grocery store for 15-20 years prior to his capture.” He stated that “[t]wo men forced their way into [his] home and took [him] at gunpoint to fight for the Taliban,” and the Task Force acknowledged that the Taliban “would conscript men in this manner for one to six months,” and that he “had no prior military training prior to conscription into the Taliban.”

In October 2001, he said, he and 24 other conscripts were taken to an official building in Sangin, where there were approximately 300 conscripts altogether, and where he was taught how to use an AK-47. Three or four days later, all the conscripts left in a caravan, traveling via Kandahar and Kabul to Khenjan, in Baghlan province. From there, half the men, including Juma Kahm, “continued north to the city of Kunduz, AF, to fight coalition forces while the other half of the group remained to fight coalition forces in Khenjan.”

As was also explained (essentially repeating what Juma Kahm said in his tribunal), he “stayed at the same house for approximately six weeks waiting to be called to fight,” when the leader of the conscripts informed them that “they were not needed for fighting yet, but when they were needed they would be called.” It was also noted that all the men “carried an AK-47 but they did not have ammunition.”

Turning to the circumstances of his capture, it was noted that, in December 2001, he “and all the conscripted men surrendered to General Rashid Dostam and the Northern Alliance forces,” and were taken to Yanghareq, near Kunduz. From there they were taken to Sheberghan, on what is known as “the convoy of death,” because hundreds, or probably thousands of those being transported died, mainly through suffocating en route, although that was not mentioned in his file.

He was then transferred to US custody, and was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban organization in and around Sarvan Kolah [probably Sarwan Qala], AF, Taliban training site located in Sangin, AF [and] Taliban camp in Kunduz, AF.”

In assessing his story, leading to Brig. Gen. Hood’s recommendation for his transfer to continued detention in Afghanistan, the Task Force described him as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” This was because he was “assessed as a probable member of the Taliban,” who “may have been involved in military action against coalition forces” (although he always denied that), and also because “[f]ormer high-level ministers of the Taliban regime identif[ied] detainee as a Talib.”

This latter claim was particularly dubious, as the alleged witnesses were Mullah Mutawakil, the “former Foreign Minister for the Taliban,” who was identified as ISN 548, even though he was only held in Afghanistan, and was never sent to Guantánamo. Mutawakil allegedly “identified.detainee from a picture as a man who worked for the Ministry of Defense,” even though that was patently untrue. The other witness was Abdul-Haq Wasiq (ISN 4, still held), the “former Deputy Intelligence Chief for the Kabul area,” who apparently “identified detainee as a bodyguard for Qari Ahmadullah and accompanying [sic] Ahmadullah to a Taliban safe haven in December 2001″ (even though Ahmadullah was killed in a bombing raid on December 27, 2001 in Paktia province), which also seems highly unlikely.

The saddest comment about Juma Kahm came in a passage describing his conduct, in which it was noted that he “had committed self-harm by banging his head against the cell wall and crying very loudly.”

Salman Mohammed (ISN 121, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Salman Mohammed (also identified as Sulaiman al-Oshan), who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

Mohammed, who did not take part in his tribunal or the following review board, was accused of arriving in Afghanistan in June 2000, and fighting with the Taliban near Kabul and Khawaja Ghar until his capture, and was also described as being “present at the prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif where Northern Alliance forces wounded him.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Mohammed was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated April 21, 2006, in which he was also identified as Sulayman Sa’d Muhammad Awshan al-Khalidi, born in January 1982, and it was noted that he was “in good health,” even though he “sustained a gunshot wound to his right thigh prior to detainment,” had “a history of myopia and astigmatism” and “of intermittent abdominal pain,” and even though he “went on a hunger strike once in July 2005.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that, in 2000, after Mohammed “graduated high school and then helped his brother (a teacher at the high school) with data entry for five to six months,” he traveled to Afghanistan, inspired by a friend who had spent six months there, in response to a fatwa “dictating that Muslims should fight with the Taliban against the Massoud [Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance] and Russians.”

In Afghanistan, Mohammed said, he was flown from Kandahar to Kabul, and, specifically, to “a small house in the rear of the front line,” where he “received three days of Kalashnikov training,” and was then assigned to the front line, where, although his unit “received mortar fire approximately every two weeks, he claimed he never fired a weapon.” After eight months, he and the other Arabs in the unit were transferred to Khawaja Ghar on the front lines in northern Afghanistan, where, he said, his squad was “moved to a bunker located at the second line of defense on the front lines,” which was “a small house that stored food.” There, he said, his unit “was responsible for guarding food and supplies for front line troops.”

He reportedly stayed in this position for seven months, until, in early November 2001, his brother, Abdul Aziz al-Oshan (ISN 112, released in September 2007, and identified as Abd al-Aziz Sad Muhammad Awshan al-Khalidi) arrived, apparently seeking to secure his return to Saudi Arabia (although this was not mentioned). Soon after, he “was in the city center when he witnessed Taliban forces retreating by car and on foot,” who told him that the Northern Alliance “had broken through the front line.” He then awaited orders in a Taliban house in Kunduz, until he was told to regroup at the house of Mullah Thaker, the senior military commander, where “there were approximately 400 to 500 Taliban waiting.”

They then traveled to Mazar-e-Sharif, where they were told to surrender to General Dostum’s forces, and to hand over their weapons.  This was the Task Force’s description of his account of the uprising and the massacre:

On approximately 25 November 2001, detainee’s group was searched, their hands bound, and the prisoners moved to the Qala-i-Janghi courtyard and into the basement. The next day, they were led from the basement back out into the courtyard. Shortly thereafter, detainee heard an explosion and the prisoners scattered. Gunfire erupted and detainee was struck in the leg. He lay on the courtyard ground for sometime before another prisoner helped him to the basement. Detainee remained in the basement for seven days before the Red Cross took control of the prison.

On December 2, 2001, he was transferred to Dostum’s prison at Sheberghan, with most of the other survivors, and was then transferred to Kandahar. He was sent to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Training and tactics of frontline Taliban fighters.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force admitted that, although he “readily admitted fighting for the Taliban,” he “denied any involvement with Al-Qaida,” which was not inexplicable, of course. The Task Force added that he had “adopted an attitude of non-compliance since initial interrogations, making it difficult to identify his true affiliation with the Al-Qaida network,” even though there may have been none, although the authorities were concerned that, “Prior to the Saudi delegation visit in 2002, the Mabahith [Saudi Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Investigation] provided information on thirty-seven detainees whom they designated as high priority. Detainee was thirty-sixth on that list, and identified as using the alias Hussam Akida.”

Without the list for reference it is unclear whether it actually referred to Salman Mohammed, and, similarly, there were also problems with claims that he had “strong familial ties to Al-Qaida.” As reference, the Task Force cited his brother, Abdul Aziz al-Oshan (aka Abd al-Aziz Sad Muhammad Awshan al-Khalidi, see above), who, as noted, was only in Afghanistan for a short time, and said he came to rescue his brother. The Task Force also mentioned his cousin, Saleh al-Oshan (ISN 248, released in July 2005), as discussed here, who was found not to be an “enemy combatant” by a military tribunal at Guantánamo and released.

To be fair, there were other more troubling allegations about his family: primarily, that another brother, Isa Awshan [aka Eissa al-Aushan], “killed in a July 2004 gunfight with Saudi security forces,” was “the leader of the Riyadh Al-Qaida cell responsible for the kidnapping and execution of American citizen Paul Johnson.”

If true, this is deeply troubling, but, again, the information may not be reliable. Nor is there any greater reliability to allegations made by other prisoners: a claim by Saad al-Zahrani (ISN 204, described as Sadi Ibrahim Ramzi al-Zahrani, and released in July 2007), who “commented on detainee’s photo stating he believed [he] might be a Saudi named Husam who worked in the center where they kept the horses,” although he “was not completely sure of this because Husam wore glasses and detainee was not wearing any in the photo.”

This was a very vague state of affairs, and, even if true, seemed to demonstrate Mohamed’s insignificance rather than anything else. In addition, another strikingly vague, and seemingly unreliable statement was extracted under unknown circumstances from torture victim and former CIA “ghost prisoner” Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016, still held), who “stated that he may have seen detainee at the Al-Zubayr Guesthouse, but he was unable to provide any further information.” It was also noted that Mohammed “provided mixed responses when confronted with this recognition,” and “later (contradicting his earlier interview) denied knowing who Abu Zubaydah was,” and “claimed not to have recognized a picture of Abu Zubaydah,” even though this was entirely understandable, as Abu Zubaydah was the Pakistan-based gatekeeper for a training camp that no one alleged Mohammed had even visited.

In assessing Mohammed, the Task Force concluded that he was “of medium intelligence value,” and noted that his “most recent interrogation session occurred on 11 February 2006,” and also that he was “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interest and allies,” and was “a member of Al-Qaida who traveled to Afghanistan to participate in jihad.” He was also “assessed as a moderate threat from a detention perspective,” whose “overall behavior has been mostly compliant and rarely hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, as a result, Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended him for continued detention, although he was freed just eight months later.

Muhammad Hussein Ali Hassan (ISN 123, Morocco) Released February 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how, in Guantánamo, the allegations against Hassan, who was 34 years old at the time of his capture, consisted of just four statements: that he went to Afghanistan in 2000 “to fight jihad,” that he was trained to use a Kalashnikov “for 1-2 weeks” and was then moved to a Taliban fighting position, that he “was in the rear in Kabul and advanced as Taliban forces advanced,” and that he surrendered to coalition forces at Mazar-e-Sharif. He did not take part in his tribunal, and there was no mention of him being a survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, but it is probable that he was.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Hassan was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated November 29, 2003, in which it was noted that he was born in November 1971. In telling his story, the Task Force claimed that he “stated he became interested in Jihad in the early 1990s while traveling in various countries in Europe, including Spain, France and Germany,” where, he said, he lived “for ten years and spent almost four years in a German prison because of various crimes, including drug possession.” After he was freed in 1997, he reportedly was encouraged to become involved in Jihad, “specifically Jihad in Kashmir, Pakistan,” at a mosque in Frankfurt.”

He also apparently claimed that in 1999, after he traveled to Pakistan with a false French passport, intending to fight in Kashmir, he “changed his mind and decided to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan,” which he did “until his capture by Northern Alliance forces in late December 2001.” If this date is correct, then he was not held in Qala-i-Janghi, but the dates in the files are often unreliable. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his affiliation with the Taliban as a foreign fighter and possible membership in Al-Qaida.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he had “not been cooperative or forthright while in detention,” and had been “a defiant leader in his cellblock.” Despite this, it was claimed that “sensitive reporting” identified him as “a confirmed member of Al-Qaida,” who was “assessed to have a great deal of information concerning Al-Qaida’s operations in Europe,” whose “affiliations and contacts,” moreover, were “thought to extend to several European countries including France, Spain and Germany.” It was also noted that he had “several relatives still living in these countries,” although it was conceded that “little information ha[d] surfaced concerning their involvement or activities.”

Two suspicious claims were unsubstantiated — firstly, that he had been “identified as running a guesthouse in the Kandahar, AF area,” and secondly that he was “a close associate of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi” (ISN 10025, still held), who was described as “a senior al-Qaeda operative,” and who was evidently a senior commander of Arab forces in northern Afghanistan — but even though both had the ring of false confessions extracted from other prisoners, they clearly contributed to the Task Force’s assessment of Hassan as “a member of Al-Qaida,” who was “of intelligence value to the United States,” and posed “a high threat to the US, its interest or its allies.” As a result of this assessment, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended him for continued detention. No further files were made available that covered the next two years and three months until his release, so it is unknown how the decision was reached to release him, although it is clear that Morocco had been a close ally in the “War on Terror,” having hosted a secret prison for “high-value detainees,” as part of the CIA’s program of torture and extraordinary rendition.

In November 2006, Hassan and the other two Moroccans released with him in February 2006 — Najib Lahcini (ISN 75, see Part One of this series), and Mohammed Laalami (ISN 237, also identified as Suleiman al-Alami, see Part Four 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 Hassan (identified as Mohamed Ouali) and Lahcini (identified as Najib Houssani) “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.”

However, in May 2007, Laalami (described as Mohamed Slimani Alami) had his sentence quashed, and was acquitted of all charges, and Hassan and Lahcini had their sentences reduced to one-year suspended sentences, casting doubt on the jihadist narrative conjured up by the authorities at Guantánamo.

Toufiq Al Marwa’i (ISN 129, Yemen) Released December 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Toufiq al-Marwa’i (aka Toufig al-Marwai), who was 20 years old at the time of his capture, was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

In Guantánamo, al-Marwa’i said that he answered a fatwa and served the Taliban as a cook, although he regretted it. Asked about his experiences of the massacre — and if he “had an opportunity to leave the prison” after a few days — he said, “No, I could not. When the problems start[ed] on the first day I went down [to the basement]. I did not want to go outside because I did not want to die. I stayed down [in the basement]. I did not know what happened up there.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Marwa’i was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated January 7, 2005, in which it was noted that Marwa’i, born in 1976, had been diagnosed with latent tuberculosis, in common with many of the prisoners, and also had “a history of malaria,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

Al-Marwa’i was one of six Yemenis released in December 2006, and, it should be noted, was therefore one of the lucky Yemenis, as only 23 have been released throughout the prison’s history, primarily because of institutional fears regarding security in Yemen, and as a result over half of the 171 prisoners who remain at Guantánamo at the time of writing are Yemenis.

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, after high school, he “worked odd jobs, such as selling clothes from a cart on the streets of Hadida, YM,” but “wanted to leave Yemen to get out of Hadida and find work,” settling on Afghanistan, even though, he said, a sheikh “encouraged [him] to not get involved in the fighting taking place in Afghanistan.” Flying around September 11, 2001, he arrived in Pakistan, traveled to Quetta by taxi, and then “took a taxi to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border where he changed into traditional Afghan dress and walked across the border, no questions asked.” He then traveled to a guesthouse in Kabul, via Kandahar, where he “was asked if he wanted to fight jihad and he agreed.” He then stayed at this guesthouse, which was also known as the Taliban Center, for four months, and “became the house cook in return for room and board.”

He then moved north, claiming that this was either “to avoid the fighting,” or because he was “sick with malaria,” with five other men, known to him only as Aziz, Omat, Yaser, Safwan and Muthana, who, he said, all died in the Qala-i-Janghi massacre. They stayed at an unidentified house in Kunduz for three weeks, where he “remained in charge of the cooking,” and then moved on to Khawaja Ghar, where they stayed in the Omar Saif guesthouse, which, he said, was “a deserted house” by that time, where “he cooked for the front lines, but never took part in any fighting.”

He then apparently decided that he wanted to return to Yemen, and traveled back to Kunduz, where he was stuck for a month and a half, until the city fell to the Northern Alliance and he “and hundreds of others surrendered to General Dostum’s troops.” None of his experiences of the uprising and the massacre were reported in his file, and, instead, it was noted only that he was eventually transferred to US control and held at Kandahar, and was then sent to Guantánamo on June 12, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban leadership in northern Afghanistan, Taliban guesthouses [and] Qala-i-Janghi and Sheberghan Prison Facilities.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force concluded that he was “in direct support of the Taliban and affiliated with Al-Qaida’s global terrorist network,” adding that, even though he “[did] not admit to training or participating in hostilities against the US or allies,” nevertheless “directly provided logistical support by functioning as a cook at numerous Taliban safehouses as part of a jihad.” It was noted that he “does not appear to be a senior leader or have direct ties to senior leadership,” but it was assessed that, through being recruited in Yemen, he “may be vulnerable to recruitment for terrorist groups in the future,” although it probably helped that he stated that he regretted his decision.

The Task Force also noted that it believed that al-Marwa’i had been “truthful in his claims,” but that there was “still intelligence left to exploit.” He was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and it was also noted that, “While formerly aggressive, [he] has a recent history of passive behaviour,” and “[h]is only disciplinary problem in the past year has been failing to comply with guards.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood recommend him for transfer to continued detention, updating a previous recommendation whose date was unknown. It still took nearly two years for him to be released, but that, again, meant that he was one of the more fortunate Yemenis, as others cleared for release in 2004 are still held in Guantánamo.

Abdul Salam Al Shehri (ISN 132, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Abdul Salam al-Shehri was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, after hundreds of prisoners surrendered as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz. 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.

As I also explained, in my articles, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo,” and “WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo,” al-Shehri was only 17 years old when he went to Afghanistan in search of his cousin, who, he said, was killed by a mine on the way from the front lines at Khawaja Ghar to Kunduz. As such, he was a juvenile at the time of his capture, and should have been rehabilitated rather than punished, and held separately from the adult prisoners, according to the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which the US did not ratify until December 23, 2002, but which should then have dictated its policy regarding juvenile prisoners, although it didn’t, except in the case of three Afghan boys profiled here.

In Guantánamo, when al-Shehri was asked if he took part in the Qala-i-Janghi uprising, he said, “When at the castle, they sent us downstairs. How am I going to fight? With my fingers? I didn’t have [a] weapon. When they took us to the court the second time, when the conflict started, they took us down to the cave … Everybody that was upstairs stayed upstairs. To prove that I wasn’t fighting [you can see that] I don’t have any scars. I wasn’t hurt because I was downstairs.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Shehri  was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated June 26, 2005, in which he was also identified as Abd al-Salam Ghaytan Murayyi al-Shihri and And al-Salam Bin Ghaythan al-Shahri, and it was confirmed that he was born on December 14, 1984, and was, therefore, just 16 when he was seized, weeks before his 17th birthday.

It was also noted that he had “several chronic medical conditions,” and had been “diagnosed with depressive disorder and an eating disorder,” as well as having “chronic abdominal pain,” and was “being followed for low weight.” Whether he had been a hunger striker or not was not mentioned, although elsewhere it was noted that he was “willing to hurt himself through forcing himself to vomit after meals, not eating or drinking water,” and in “Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation,” a report I compiled in 2009, based on weight records released by the Pentagon in 2007, I noted that he weighed 141 pounds on arrival at Guantánamo, but that his weight then plummeted, and on two occasions, in July 2005 and January 2006, he weighed just 97 pounds.

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he failed to graduate from high school “due to his dislike of school and poor grades,” and decided instead to work with his father, a retired Saudi Arabian Army officer, who was a mechanic and owned a business. He “worked in his father’s photography shop until it was sold around July 1999,” and then, in November 2000, his father “helped him get a produce stand where he sold fruit and vegetables.” He then agreed to accompany a cousin to Pakistan, so that he could have laser eye surgery, and got his father’s permission, as he was only 16. This cousin was identified as Marif (or Zaydan Muhsin Murif al-Zaydan al-Shehri), and was not the same cousin that he later claimed he had traveled to Afghanistan to rescue.

In telling this revised story, al-Shehri said that his cousin’s surgery was delayed for two weeks, but that, while the two were in a market shopping for Pakistani clothes, they were recruited to travel to Afghanistan for jihad. They then followed a well-worn route to Quetta and on to Kandahar, via Spin Boldak. In Kandahar, they stayed in a guesthouse for two weeks, where they were “required to turn over their passports, money, and personal belongings,” and were then taken to Kunduz, via Kabul, where, according to al-Shehri, they stayed for two weeks and then returned to Pakistan.

Four days after arriving in Quetta, the 9/11 attacks took place, and al-Shehri said that he and his cousin “heard that the Pakistani Army would kill any Arab that they captured,” and claimed that “he and Marif were advised to return to Afghanistan.” After returning the way they came, they were sent from Kunduz to Khawaja Ghar, described as “a small deserted village,” where they ended up at a Taliban center, and where “an unidentified Arab told them that this was the second line in the war with the Northern Alliance,” and “[t]he two were trained and sent to the front lines to fight.”

Al-Shehri proceeded to explain that, “[w]hen the Northern Alliance broke through the lines approximately one month later, [he] and Marif fled with the other fighters,” but that, ‘[d]uring the escape, the fleeing fighters were ambushed and Marif was killed.” The Taliban then instructed al-Shehri and others to travel to Mazar-e-Sharif, although he “was again ambushed and surrendered to Dostum’s forces.” He was then taken to Qala-i-Janghi, where all that was reported in the file about his experiences was a brief but harrowing statement that he “went to an underground room where fellow prisoners were dying from being burned or drowned.”

He added that, “[o]n the seventh day, the remaining prisoners were told to come out and were then taken to Sheberghan prison where they were checked over by the Red Cross,” and that he was “one of several transferred to the Kandahar Detention Facility and placed in the custody of the US.” He arrived at Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, although it was noted that his file “does not indicate why he was sent to JTF GTMO.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force described him as being only “of low  intelligence value,” although he was also assessed as being “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” The “Update Recommendation” for his transfer updated a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control, dated January 24, 2004, although the reasons Brig. Gen. Hood approved his transfer were not explicitly spelled out, as he was “assessed as a low-level fighter for Al-Qaida,” or, elsewhere, as “a jihadist and member of the Al-Qaida associated network,” who “fought for the Taliban, and is a possible member of Al-Qaida.”

In truth, there was nothing to mark out al-Shehri as anything more than an insignificant foot soldier. His story about the reasons for his travel to Afghanistan may have been a cover, but his experiences in Afghanistan seem clear, and there is no reason to trust a claim made by Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111, an Iraqi released in January 2009, who was known as an unreliable informant in Guantánamo), that he “attended the Al-Qaida-run Al-Farouq training camp,” when it seems apparent that he did not.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of his detention was its effect on his young mind, as a sharp example of why juveniles in detention should be rehabilitated rather than punished. Al-Shehri was clearly susceptible to the direction of others when he traveled to Afghanistan and was trained and sent to the front lines, and it is difficult to fathom how traumatic his experiences of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre must have been. In Guantanamo, he was clearly damaged by his experiences, as the Task Force noted that his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant, disruptive, and self injurious in nature.” His records showed “only two infractions in which he was hostile towards the guards,” but many other reports showing not only that he was “willing to hurt himself through forcing himself to vomit after meals, not eating or drinking water,” as noted above, but also through “trying to physically hurt himself.”

Mubarak Hashem (ISN 151, Bangladesh) Released December 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (9) – Seized in Pakistan (Part One),” I explained how many of the stories of the prisoners seized in Pakistan demonstrated that both the Pakistani and the American authorities were adept at inventing or otherwise eliciting stories of militancy from the prisoners they captured at this time, as there was, for the most part, very little raw material with which to work. The story of Mubarak Hashem, the only Bangladeshi held in Guantánamo, who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, was particularly illuminating in this regard.

The only allegations that surfaced against him were that he traveled from Karachi to Kabul via Quetta, Spin Boldak and Kandahar in December 2001, that he was arrested in Peshawar by the Pakistani authorities “for not having any identification,” and that he “provided a false identity to Pakistani authorities.” These allegations were so thin that it must have taken considerable effort to fill in the gaps that were required to construe him as a militant: that, because he had been in Afghanistan, he must have been fighting, and that, because he had no passport, he must have attended a military training camp.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Hashem was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country (TR),” dated March 25, 2005, which updated a previous transfer recommendation dated September 13, 2003. In this document, it was noted that he was born in 1978, and that he was “in good physical health,” and had “no psychiatric history,” although it was also noted that he “went on a hunger strike one time.” It is unclear when this was, although, in “Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation,” a report I compiled in 2009, based on weight records released by the Pentagon in 2007, I noted that he weighed only 97 pounds on arrival at Guantánamo, but that, although he then gained weight, he weighed just 100 pounds at one point in December 2004.

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that, in 1999, he left Bangladesh to study at a Koranic school in Karachi, Pakistan, and was then employed as an Imam at a mosque. Hashem also said that, in November 2001, a fellow student invited him to travel to Kabul “to pay homage to the graves of the disciples of the Prophet Mohammed,” and that, after visiting Kabul via Quetta, Spin Boldak and Kandahar, and staying for four days, he was robbed of his belongings en route to Jalalabad. However, in another version of this story, he apparently “hired a taxi driver to drive him from Kabul to Peshawar,” and traveled with three other people he did not know, but, after safely crossing into Pakistan, was seized in a mosque in Peshawar, while praying, “by plain clothes Pakistan Police Officers who arrested [him], since he looked like a foreigner and did not have any identification.” He was later “turned over to the Pakistan Military who transferred him into US custody,” and he was sent to Guantánamo on January 17, 2002, although his file “does not indicate why he was sent to JTF GTMO.”

There were obviously holes in Hashem’s story — not least the improbability of traveling to Kabul on a religious pilgrimage as the Taliban regime was falling, and Afghanistan was consumed by war — but it was rather excessive of the Task Force to assess him as “a probable Islamic extremist with possible ties to Al Qaida and it’s [sic] global terrorist network,” drawing on a claim that all his debriefers and analysts had concurred that his cover story was “not plausible” and that the he was “extremely deceptive during interviews,” and had been “uncooperative, aloof and his responses ha[d] been devoid of any mention of Al-Qaida, the Taliban, training camps, safe houses and confiscated documents.”

It was also noted that his “religious training and the circumstances surrounding his entry and exit from Afghanistan ha[d] not been properly exploited at this time, due to [his] uncooperative nature,” but while these holes may well have been problematic, filling them with unsubstantiated allegations was not a satisfactory response. The Task Force claimed that “[t]he fact that a senior Al-Qaida lieutenant was familiar with the detainee indicates that, at a minimum, [he] probably utilized Al-Qaida safehouses while entering/exiting Afghanistan.” This may have looked good on paper, but the fact was that the “senior Al-Qaida lieutenant” was actually torture victim and former CIA “ghost prisoners” Abu Zubaydah (still held), who only “stated that detainee looked familiar to him, [but] was unable to recall his name or nationality.” An analyst then attempted to claim that Zubaydah knew Hashem because, “[d]uring the months of November and December 2001, Zubaydah was chiefly occupied with moving mujahideen who were fleeing Afghanistan due to the US offensive from safehouses in Afghanistan to safehouses in Pakistan.”

What made the above appear particularly alarmist was the fact that Hashem was regarded as being “of low intelligence value,” and the Task Force had also determined that he posed “a low risk, as he is unlikely to pose a future threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and had also not been a major problem in Guantánamo, where he had “a history of passive aggressive behaviour and minor failures to comply with regulations.” As a result, it was actually rather dispiriting to note that it took three years and three months for him to be released, after his transfer was first recommended, and one year and nine months after Brig. Gen. Hood signed the memo approving his transfer.

However, what I found most alarming about Hashem’s file was an analyst’s note regarding the spur for Hashem’s travel to Afghanistan, when it was noted, “His parents probably contacted him and encouraged [him] to jihad in Afghanistan. This is quite probable since his father has been an Imam in Bangladesh for years and conducting jihad in perceived defense of Islam is mandatory.” If it were mandatory, as the analyst noted, a few billion Muslim men would, at any time, be engaged in the armed defense of Muslim lands, which is clearly ridiculous, but it reflects the “clash of civilizations” mentality that was pushed at Guantánamo.

Also see Part One, Part Three, Part Four, 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