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

This is Part 15 of the 70-part series.

In late April, WikiLeaks released its latest treasure trove of classified US documents, a set of 765 Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) from the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Compiled between 2002 and January 2009 by the Joint Task Force that has primary responsibility for the detention and interrogation of the prisoners, these detailed military assessments therefore provided new information relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba throughout its long and inglorious history, including, for the first time, information about 84 of the first 201 prisoners released, which had never been made available before.

Superficially, the Detainee Assessment Briefs appear to contain allegations against numerous prisoners which purport to prove how dangerous they are or were, but in reality the majority of these statements were made by the prisoners’ fellow prisoners, in Kandahar or Bagram in Afghanistan prior to their arrival at Guantánamo, in Guantánamo itself, or in the CIA’s secret prisons, and in all three environments, torture and abuse were rife.

I ran through some of the dubious witnesses responsible for so many of the claims against the prisoners in the introduction to Part One of this new series, and, while this is of enormous importance in the cases of many of the men still held (and also in the cases of some of those released), it is not particularly relevant to the overwhelmingly insignificant prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004, whose detention was so pointless that the authorities didn’t even bother trying to build cases against them through the testimony of their fellow prisoners.

As a result, the stories of these prisoners are particularly important in demonstrating how many innocent men or insignificant foot soldiers for the Taliban, engaged in combat with the Northern Alliance before the 9/11 attacks, and unconnected with international terrorism, were held at Guantánamo (and specifically how this latter category included many unwilling Afghan recruits).

What is also worth bearing in mind (and which is not spelled out in these documents) is that many prisoners were pointlessly rounded up because the Bush administration ordered the military not to screen the prisoners on capture, leading to a dragnet of “Mickey Mouse” prisoners, as was noted by Maj. Gen, Michael Dunlavey, a commander of the prison in 2002, and also offered substantial bounty payments for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects to the US military’s Afghan and Pakistani allies.

In a five-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo,” I began analyzing, transcribing and condensing the stories revealed in the documents released by WikiLeaks, looking at 84 stories of prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004 that had never been told before. The work of extracting information from the files and presenting it in edited form, with commentary based on my extensive research and experience, is a project that will take up the rest of the year. The next step is this ten-part series revisiting the stories of the 114 other prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004. That was the point at which the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) began, a military review process that, in turn, led to the first official release of documents relating to the prisoners in 2006, providing the material that I analysed and transcribed for my book The Guantánamo Files.

While this ten-part project is underway, I also propose to begin examining closely the files relating to the 171 prisoners still held, supplementing the series of articles that I produced last fall, entitled, “Who Are the Remaining Prisoners in Guantánamo?” This is important not just because the remaining prisoners have largely been abandoned by the mainstream media, even though 89 of the 171 have been cleared for release, and only 36 were recommended for trials by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, but also because, in the US, attorneys for the prisoners have only just won the right to look at the files (and not to download, save or print them), and the media in general is unwilling to subject them to much scrutiny because of how they became public in the first place.

So with thanks to WikiLeaks — and whoever leaked these documents — the final part of my ten-part analysis of the 114 prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004 (in addition to the 84 stories covered in my previous series) is below. When lies and distortions are covered up on this scale, and an experimental prison built on torture and abuse remains open, even under a Democratic President who promised to close it, everyone who believes in justice should publicize what has been revealed, and, if you agree, I hope that you will share this information widely. Also see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five,  Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight and Part Nine of this series. Coming up next will be analyses of the prisoners released as a result of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals in 2004-05.

WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Ten of Ten)

Peta Muhammed (ISN 908, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I told the story of a group of 30 prisoners rounded up after a raid by US Special Forces, in December 2002, on a compound in Musawal village, near Zormat, in Paktia province in Afghanistan, which was owned by a warlord called Samoud Khan. Eight of the 30 were subsequently transferred to Guantánamo, even though they appeared to have had nothing to do with the supposed anti-coalition activities of their boss, and were (according to testimony recorded at Guantánamo) treated brutally in a US base in Gardez and at Bagram, where they were abused until they admitted attacking US forces. Only four of these stories were available at the time I wrote The Guantánamo Files, but they were deeply shocking, as they revealed that, of the four, two (Asadullah Rahman and Naqibullah, see below) were only 13 or 14 years ofd when they were seized.

Mentioned briefly in my articles, “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (12) – The Last of the Afghans (Part Two)” and ” The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo,” Peta Muhammed, also seized in the raid, was also possibly a juvenile (defined as those under 18 at the time their alleged crimes took place), as he was born in 1985, according to the prisoner list released by the Pentagon in May 2006 (PDF), which included, where available, the dates and places of birth of the prisoners.

However, in Muhammed’s Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 23, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” his date of birth was recorded as 1984, which, if correct, would mean that he was almost certainly 18 at the time of his capture.

Elsewhere, the file confirmed that he was essentially insignificant, and had not raised arms against US forces. It was noted that he “stated that he worked as a cook” for Samoud Khan (erroneously described as “a known Taliban supporter”), “who had recruited him to do menial work around his compound.” He also “stated that while working around the compound he heard the Americans were coming but he believed they were not coming to attack but to form an alliance.” He “did note that several key figures fled the compound but he denie[d] being told to stay behind and fight the Americans.”

He explained that he and “about a half dozen others stayed behind and when the Americans came they rounded everyone up and loaded them [onto] trucks and took them to prison.” A “Field note” added that “[o]ther detainees arrested in this same raid advised that they were ordered to ‘fight’ the Americans while the leaders fled the compound however no firefight occurred.”

It was also noted that he was sent to Guantánamo “around 5 August 2002″ (that should be 2003) “because of his knowledge of Samoud Khan’s compound,” which was only partly true, because, 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 Joint Task Force stated that, “Based on current information, detainee [908] is assessed as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention, though he has not been completely forthcoming concerning his association with individuals affiliated with the Taliban. Based on all the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Muhammed himself added that he “wishe[d] to return to Afghanistan and would like to work for Americans there.”

Abdul Samad (ISN 911, Afghanistan) Released September 2004

Another of the eight prisoners seized in December 2002 during a raid by US Special Forces on a compound in Afghanistan that was owned by a warlord called Samoud Khan, Abdul Samad was probably a juvenile at the time of his capture. As I noted in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (12) – The Last of the Afghans (Part Two),” the Pentagon recorded his date of birth as 1982, but when representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross met Guantánamo’s commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, on October 9, 2003 (PDF), they noted that he was actually born in 1987.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 23, 2003, which was also a “Transfer Recommendation,” his date of birth was recorded as 1986, meaning that he was just 15 or 16 years old when he was seized. In an account that was largely similar to that of Peta Muhammed, it was noted that he was hired by Samoud Khan to work in his compound near Gardez (which was described as “Takar compound”), “doing menial laborer jobs including security.” He also “stated that as he worked in the compound, people started talking about the Americans and that they were coming to the compound,” but “he did not fear the Americans and did not believe they were going to attack the compound.” Like Peta Muhammed, he stated that “several people fled the compound, fearing being arrested,” adding that, “When the Americans arrived, they took all the guns and arrested [him] with about six others.” Crucially, he added, “there was no shooting by either side.” He also noted that “he had only been at the compound for about 25 days before being arrested.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on February 6, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of personality information on Samoud Khan, personalities associated with Samoud Khan, and the Partak and Shirwakala compounds and their activities.”

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that, “Based on current information, detainee [911] is assessed as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee is of no intelligence value to the United States. Based on the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US, its interests and its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Asadullah Rahman (ISN 912, Afghanistan) Released January 2004

One of three well-known juvenile prisoners released in January 2004 (also see Naqibullah and Mohammed Ismael Agha, below), Rahman, like Naqibullah, was one of eight prisoners seized in December 2002 during a raid by US Special Forces on a compound in Afghanistan that was owned by a warlord called Samoud Khan. The eight also included two other juveniles, or probably juveniles — Peta Muhammed and Abdul Samad (see above).

As I explained in Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, drawing on an article in the Guardian that was published in March 2004, Rahman, who was described as being 12 years old at the time of his capture, was originally from Logar province, but moved to Paktia with his family when he was eight, after a feud over land, and had been working for Samoud since he was ten, when his uncle found him paid work serving food and washing dishes. Repeatedly kicked and beaten in his first five days in custody at Gardez, he was missing for seven months before his father found out that he was still alive.

This was an adequate précis of some of the key elements in the Guardian article, but other details were also included, and other information surfaced for the first time in the first article about Rahman written after his release, which was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on February 13, 2004. In that article, Sonia Verma stated that Rahman told her that “[h]e was just 10 years old when American soldiers stormed the compound of the local Afghan commander who was holding him captive,” although she added that, based on medical tests, US military officials said that they believed Asadullah was “older than he claim[ed], perhaps 13 to 15.” She added that Naqibullah and Mohammed Ismael Agha, released with him, said “he was about 13 when he was freed.”

Verma added:

As proof of his youth, Asadullah points to a Polaroid hanging on his bedroom wall, too fresh to have faded, taken just before he was captured. In the photo, he looks like a child — standing, flanked by his cousin and older brother, in a field of wildflowers. Today he is 5 feet tall and mostly muscle, with a tired smile, dense lashes and old-man eyes.

Rahman told Verma, “They should have arrested al-Qaeda, not me. I was just innocent.” To the Pentagon, however, he was “a trained gunman conscripted to fight in an anti-US militia.” Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Burfeind, a Pentagon spokesperson, told her, “The Taliban leadership directed younger members to counterattack the US forces in the area. The juveniles were removed from the battlefield to prevent further harm to US forces and to themselves.”

In contrast, however, Asadullah maintained that “he was sold into sexual slavery” to Samoud Khan, described as “a militia leader with a reputation for terrorizing surrounding villages.” As Verma described it:

“I was brought there to service the commander’s men,” Asadullah says in a quiet voice. During the day, he served food and washed dishes. At night, he was asked to do other things he is too ashamed to utter.

Verma also explained, “By his 10th birthday, he had spent about a month with the militia and knew his way around an AK-47,” but added that, according to his own account, he “never pulled a trigger.” He also said that, although Samoud had many enemies, “Americans weren’t among them. ” As he put it, “He wasn’t Taliban, but he was a criminal.” Mohammad Sabir, the military commander of the district police force, agreed with Asadullah’s assessment, explaining that Samoud and his 30 men (or boys) “were not Taliban but an armed band that often extorted money from local villagers.”

Describing his capture, Asadullah told Verma that Samoud and his entourage “were sitting down to dinner when around 50 American soldiers stormed the compound.” He added, “They said they were looking for al-Qaeda and Taliban soldiers.” Those captured — who did not include Samoud himself — were taken to the US base in Gardez, where, according to some accounts, they were treated brutally, although Asadullah stated, “At Gardez, I was beaten. But I wasn’t beaten too much. There was some kicking, nothing more.” He was then transferred to Bagram, where he believed he was held “for four or five months,” and was then transferred to Guantánamo, where, he said, his interrogators “seemed shocked” when they asked him how old he was and he told them. “I was the youngest person they had ever arrested,” he said.

In the Guardian, Asadullah Rahman explained how his interrogation became what James Astill described as “a predictable affair.” “I said, ‘Look, I don’t anything about the Taliban,’” Asadullah said. “But anyway, the Taliban were the government so lots of people worked with them. Just because you were Taliban it doesn’t mean you’re a criminal.”

Asadullah also explained that “[t]he first sign his family received that [he] was alive came in a letter delivered by the International Committee of the Red Cross more than a year after he went missing,” and his mother showed it to Sonia Verma, who described it as “creased and tear-stained and bear[ing] the stamp of military clearance.” In it, Asadullah wrote, “All of the greetings from my heart I convey to the family. I keep my hope alive by the grace of Allah. Please send me a letter when you can. Please don’t cut the connection, write soon.”

In addition, Asadullah told Verma about the circumstances in which he, Naqibullah and Mohammed Ismael Agha were held after the US military recognised that they were juveniles — in Camp Iguana, separate from the main prison population. “From his bedroom,” she wrote, “he could see the ocean.” In Camp Iguana, the boys were allowed to play football, sometimes with the soldiers guarding them, and Asadullah also learned to play chess. They were also “taught to read and write English,” which “was the first time they had attended anything resembling school,” and Asadullah “was also given books in Pashto and a copy of the Koran.” As he also explained, “Sometimes we were allowed to watch television. I liked to watch movies.”

As he also told Verma, “Guantánamo was like home if you compare it to Bagram.” He added, however, “I wished I was more independent, more free. I wished I was not like a prisoner.” In the Guardian, Asadullah expanded this theme. “I was very sad because I missed my family so much,” he said. “I was always asking, ‘When can I go home? What day? What month?’ They said, ‘You’ll go home soon’, but they never said when.” Nevertheless, he noted that “the soldiers assigned to guard them became friends,” stating, “They were so kind to us.” When they were released, one of the guards “gave him a football and a chessboard to take back to Afghanistan.” “The guards gave me a big hug and said, “Be good. Go to school,’” Asadullah added.

Back in Afghanistan, the boys were met by a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who escorted them to the Interior Ministry in Kabul, where they received identity papers before being taken to be reunited with their families. Asadullah’s mother said, “We did not expect to see him alive. Everybody was crying.” She also said, as Sonia Verma put it, that she “barely recognized her son. His voice had changed. He had whiskers and a sprinkle of acne.”

The Guardian article also expanded on Asadullah’s mother’s concerns, noting how she cried “every night thinking about my son,” and said, “I prayed to God, I asked, ‘Where is my son?’ He was just a boy, much too young to disappear on his own.”

The Guardian added that Asadullah “was gone for seven months before his parents discovered his whereabouts. For the first two months, his uncles and cousins were afraid to tell his elderly father, Abdul Rahman, that he was missing, believing the shock might kill him.” James Astill added, “Almost the entire male population of Khoja Angur, a fortified mud-village, snowbound and ringed by icy peaks, downed tools and went searching for the boy. ‘They went to Bagram, but the Americans said they didn’t know anything about him,’ said Abdul Rahman, white-bearded and heavy-breathing. ‘They went to Logar and Gardez, even to Kandahar, but no one knew about him.’”

On his return to his home village of Khoja Angur, the elders “ruled that the matter was closed” after accepting his explanation that he had been treated well.  For his father, however, “the matter [was] not closed,” because he had “borrowed several thousand dollars to support his relatives’ families while they looked for his son,” and, to raise the money, had been “forced to forfeit his land” and was fending off creditors whom he was unable to repay. He explained how his eldest son, a shopkeeper in Kabul, had had to cancel his engagement because of a lack of money, and also stated, “I thank God that my son has come back, but he has changed. He is impatient and refuses to listen to his elders. He has grown disobedient.” There seemed to be some truth to this, in Asadullah’s words to James Astill, while he was in Kabul, seeking help from the UN to continue the education he had received in Guantánamo. “There is no electricity and no clinic in my village,” he said. “It’s a bit boring, nothing new happens there.”

Interestingly, Sonia Verma’s account noted that US military officials refused to acknowledge that there had been anything wrong with detaining the three boys. They said they “had provided useful intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States.” What was not discussed were the other juveniles — at least 19 in total, as I explained most recently in my article, “WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo” — who were not held separately from the main prison population, and rehabilitated rather then punished, as stipulated in the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which rather undermined comments made by Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Burfeind, who said, “We recognize the special needs of juvenile detainees and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding their young lives. Every effort was made to provide them a secure environment free from the influences of older detainees.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 23, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was described as Asad Ullah, and his date of birth was given as 1988, the disputed American claim that some of those seized “advised that they were ordered to ‘fight’ the Americans while the leaders fled the compound” resurfaced, although crucially it was also conceded that no violence actually took place. As described in the file, he reportedly “stated that when US and allied forces raided [Samoud's] compound … he and several others were ordered to stay behind. The Taliban members at the compound were forewarned of a pending raid and departed the area but directed the younger members to wait and attack the US forces when they arrived.” The important addition was that “[he] and others surrendered without fighting and that [he] was not captured with any weapons.”

He was sent to Guantánamo in December 2002 on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban and Al-Qaida activity in the Paktia province and their probable connection to Chinese weapons suppliers.”

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that he was “assessed as being a child soldier who was forced by the Taliban into conscription,” and that, “[t]hough [he] may still have some remaining intelligence, it’s been assessed that that information does not outweigh the necessity to remove this juvenile from his current environment and afford him an opportunity to ‘grow out’ of the radical extremism he has been subject to.”

The Task Force also noted that, based on the information collected about Asadullah, “it must be assessed that [he] is of low intelligence value to the United States at this time. Based on the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US, its interests and allies and he has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to an approved organization with a program that can provide assistance to help [him] become a productive member of his society.”

Naqibullah (ISN 913, Afghanistan) Released January 2004

Another of three well-known juvenile prisoners released in January 2004 (also see Asadullah Rahman, above, and Mohammed Ismael Agha, below), Naqibullah (also identified by the US authorise as Naqib Ullah), like Rahman, was one of eight prisoners seized in December 2002 during a raid by US Special Forces on a compound in Afghanistan that was owned by a warlord called Samoud Khan.The eight also included two other juveniles, or probable juveniles — Peta Muhammed and Abdul Samad (see above).

As I explained in Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, drawing on an article that was cross-posted on the Cageprisoners website, Naqibullah, described as being 13 years old at the time of his capture, was not even part of Samoud’s group. The local imam’s son, he was arrested after stumbling on the US raid while cycling home from a friend’s house. Subjected to brutal interrogation in Bagram, he also said that his first ten days in Guantánamo were the worst ten days of his life.

In a Guardian article published in March 2004, James Astill explained how Naqibullah, located in “his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan,” described life in Guantánamo as “good,” explaining that “[t]he food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind.” In his own words, “Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them. If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America.”

Nevertheless, describing his time at Bagram, he confirmed that it had been arduous. “It was terrifying, I didn’t know what was happening to me,” he said. “There were many of us in a small cell. Some men were screaming to be let free.” He said that he was interrogated every day. “They kept asking me, ‘Do you know the Taliban? Do you know al-Qaida? Have you given them shelter? Have you given them food?’ I told them, ‘I don’t know these people, and I am too young to give anything to anyone without my father’s authority.’”

In Guantánamo, where he was sent after two weeks in Bagram, and where, as I mentioned previously, he regarded his first 10 days as “the worst of his life,” he was held “in a tiny cell with a single slit-window as his interrogation continued.” He also discussed how “everything changed” after he “was taken to an American general who said, ‘We will educate you and soon you will go home.’”

Providing further information about how he, Asadullah Rahman and Mohammed Ismael Agha were treated prior to their release, James Astill explained how they were “moved into one large room, which was never locked, ” and “were taught Pashto (their own language), English, Arabic, maths, science, art and, for two months, Islam.” Naqibullah said, “The American soldiers ate pork but they said we must never do that because we were Muslim. They were very strict about Islam.”

As well as playing football, as noted by Asadullah Rahman, Naqibullah said that they also sometimes played basketball and volleyball with their guards. He also revealed to James Astill the first letter he had sent home from Guantánamo, as facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross:

“My greetings to beloved family, to my beloved father, to my beloved uncles, to my beloved cousins, to my beloved brothers. I am in good health and happy. I am in Cuba, in a special room, but it is not like a jail. Don’t worry about me. I am learning English, Pashto and Arabic.” The next two lines of the letter were scrubbed out by the Guantánamo censor. Asadullah said he couldn’t for the life of him remember what they said.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 23, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which it was stated that he was a Pakistani national, “born in approximately 1988″ in Zargary Camp, a refugee camp (meaning, to my mind, that he was not a Pakistani national, but an Afghan refugee born to Afghan parents), it was also noted that he “stated that he was kidnapped while doing an errand for his father by 11 men who belonged to a group called ‘Samoud’s people,’” who “abducted him, forcibly raped him at gunpoint and he was taken back to their village encampment as a prisoner and forced to do manual work.”

He added that “he had been at the camp around 3 days when US forces conducted a raid.” As with Peta Muhammed and Asadullah Rahman, the disputed American claim, alleging that some of those seized “advised that they were ordered to ‘fight’ the Americans while the leaders fled the compound” resurfaced, although crucially it was again conceded that no violence actually took place. In Naqibullah’s DAB, it was stated, “The group had been forewarned of the pending raid and they ordered [him] and some others to stay behind and fight the Americans.” It was also noted that Naqibullah “was captured in possession of a weapon but it had not been fired.”

He was sent to Guantánamo in January 2003 on the spurious basis that it was “because of his possible knowledge of Taliban resistance efforts and local leaders.”

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that he was assessed as “a kidnap victim and a forced conscript of a local warring tribe, affiliated with the Taliban,” and that, “[t]hough [he] may still have some remaining intelligence, it’s been assessed that that information does not outweigh the necessity to remove this juvenile from his current environment and afford him an opportunity to ‘grow out’ of the radical extremism he has been subject to.”

The Task Force also noted that, based on the information collected about Naqibullah, “he has no further intelligence value to the United States.’ It was also noted that he has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention” and was “considered [a] low threat to the US, its interests and its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to an approved organization with a program that can provide assistance to help [him] become a productive member of his society.”

Mohammed Ismael Agha (ISN 930, Afghanistan) Released January 2004

The last of three well-known juvenile prisoners released in January 2004 (also see Asadullah Rahman and Naqib Ullah, above), Mohammed Ismael Agha, as I explained in Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, was 14 years old when he was seized with another 14-year old, Abdul Qudus, who was not released until April 2005. The two, according to their own accounts, were sold to the Americans by Afghan soldiers. Agha said they had been looking for work, and ended up spending the night at an Afghan militia post in Gereshk. The following morning, Qudus said that the soldiers wanted to give them weapons and make them fight, and when they refused they were put in a car, delivered to the Americans, and accused of being with the Taliban.

Speaking to the Associated Press after his release, in “a relative’s general store at the bazaar in Naw Zad, a market town about 300 miles southwest of Kabul,” which was near to his home village, Agha, described as being 15 years old, and identified as Mohammed Ismail Agha, said, “At first I was unhappy with the US forces. They stole 14 months of my life.” He explained that US forces had interrogated him at Bagram asking him “whether he was a Taliban supporter,” but that, in Guantánamo, “there were few questions, only schooling, prayer, and good food.” “[T]hey gave me a good time in Cuba. They were very nice to me, giving me English lessons,” he said.

Explaining, “I’m not Taliban, it’s not true. I’m innocent,” Agha reiterated his story about traveling with a friend to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, in late 2002 in search of work, stating, as the AP described it, that he and his friend — identified as Mohammed Wali rather than as Abdul Qudus — “were standing outside a shop in a town along the way when they were detained by Afghan militiamen.”

“They said, ‘Come and join us,’ but we told them we are poor people, jobless, and we don’t want to join the militia, we want to earn money,” Agha said. “Then they said, ‘You are Taliban.’”

Handed over to US soldiers, he said that he was taken first to Kandahar, where he “lost track of his friend” and had “not seen him since,” and then to Bagram, “where he was held in solitary confinement.” “They were interrogating me every day, and in the first three or four days giving just a little food and giving punishment,” he said, explaining that, as the AP put it, “[h]e was not beaten but was made to sit on his haunches for three or four hours at a time, even when he wanted to sleep.”

He also said that his family “feared he was dead,” because they did not receive a letter from him until ten months after he was first held.

Asked to comment on Agha’s case, US officials refused to speak directly about him, “saying that identifying the youths could put them in danger,” but they did state that one of the three juveniles freed “told of being conscripted into an anti-American militia group. A second said he was abducted by the Taliban and forced to train and fight, while the third was studying in an extremist mosque and captured while preparing to obtain weapons.” As with Asadullah Rahman’s case, it was also noted that military officials said that they “had provided viable intelligence but had no further value and were no longer a threat to the United States.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 23, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that his name was Mohammed Ismail, and that he was born in 1988. Despite the date the file was compiled, it was stated that, as a result, he was 16, even though that was impossible, and he was either 14 (if born after August 23) or 15 (if born before August 23).

In relating his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he had “worked since childhood with his father constructing buildings and houses, when [until] a lack of employment forced him to search for work elsewhere.” He then traveled to neighbouring towns and villages in Helmand province, including Lashkar Gah, looking in vain for work, and then, with his friend Mohammed Wali, who he talked about after his release (but who was here described as Mohammed Whali), he “traveled to Gereshk and stayed in a hotel on the outskirts of town.” There, he essentially told the same story he told after his release, although with some new details.

“Soldiers in the vicinity were working on an irrigation ditch known as a ‘Khali,’” he said, “so [he] thought he might find work on the project. [He] and Whali woke a soldier sleeping in a nearby tent and requested work, but were denied. Instead the soldier offered the pair a chance to join the Taliban and fight against Americans. Whali accepted the offer for both of them, but detainee was apprehensive, stating that he wanted to find construction work instead.” Both boys were then betrayed, as the soldiers “planned to go into Gereshk city the next day and offered to take the detainee and Whali with them. However, instead of taking them to Gereshk, the soldiers turned them over to a commander” who “put them into another vehicle and took them to jail.” There, according to Agha’s account, “interrogators allegedly told [him] that Whali would be released because he admitted that he was Taliban, so he admitted it also.”

Instead, he was transferred to Bagram, and was sent to Guantánamo on February 7, 2002 (actually, 2003) on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of possible plans to attack American forces in Afghanistan, as well as ingress and egress routes in Afghanistan.”

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force failed to mention his age, noting only that he was “assessed as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government,” although it was also noted that, although “JTF Guantanamo notified the Criminal Investigative Task Force of this recommendation on 17 June 2003, [o]n 16 July 2003 the CITF Assessment Board met and determined that [he] be recommended to be retained in DoD control because CITF ha[d] not fully assessed his case.”

Four years after his release, In a fact sheet entitled, “Former GTMO Detainee Terrorism Trends” (PDF), issued by the Pentagon on June 13, 2008, it was claimed that he “was recaptured four months [after his release] in May 2004, participating in an attack on US forces near Kandahar. At the time of his recapture, Ismail carried a letter confirming his status as a Taliban member in good standing.”

It is not known whether there is any truth to this claim, or, perhaps more importantly, whether, if recruited, Agha did so willingly. When he was first interviewed after his release, the Associated Press noted that officials in Naw Zad, where he was interviewed, “sent a messenger to summon Agha from Durabien village, where he lives, to talk to reporters, warning that there were Taliban in the hills where he lived,” and it is easy to imagine that these men would have targeted Agha for recruitment, whether willingly or not, because of his status as a former prisoner of America.

Haji Naim Kuchi (ISN 931, Afghanistan) Released September 2004

As I explained in Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, “Having failed to round up a single Taliban leader throughout 2003, only one of the 90 men captured in this period was flagged as a significant catch — and even he turned out to be nothing of the sort. 62-year old Haji Naeem Kochi, a tribal elder of the nomadic Kochi tribe, was the object of a manhunt from the earliest days of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom,’ when the Americans bombed numerous locations in an attempt to kill him. Human Rights Watch reported that defense department officials told them that he ‘was a former Taliban official and a “scumbag” involved in smuggling arms over the Pakistani border,’ but when he was finally captured by US forces, on his way to meet President Karzai to discuss a tribal dispute on January 1, 2003, his reputation seemed to vanish like a mirage. Instead of validating the Americans’ concerns, this frail, unthreatening man, who suffered from diabetes and wore a surgical belt after one of his kidneys was removed, was so insignificant that he was released from Guantánamo in September 2004.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated January 3, 2004, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” in which he was identified as Haji Niam Kuchi, born in 1940, the only medical problem noted was his diabetes. In relating his story, the Joint Task Force confirmed that he was seized on January 1, 2003, “while traveling with his nephew in Kabul,” and “due to suspected affiliations with the Al-Qaida and Taliban [sic].”

He was sent to on Guantánamo on March 22, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was “due to the probability that [he] would be able to provide information on the escape of Arab Al-Qaida members into Pakistan as well as Afghan politics, ground forces, and personalities that have and will provide leadership in Afghanistan.”

However, the Task Force also claimed that he “was a key logistical facilitator for subversive activities throughout Afghanistan with direct and strong ties to Al-Qaida, Taliban, Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate [ISI] and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) operatives,” and that he “possesses knowledge of Taliban and Al-Qaida operations and was involved in the smuggling of weapons.” In addition, the Task Force stated that he was “purported to have information concerning Taliban, Al-Qaida, and Chechen operatives and their actions during Operation Enduring Freedom,” and “has strong ties with senior level operatives in several terrorist organizations and support networks to include Al-Qaida and the HIG.”

This was quite a list, and reasons for doubting it are described below, but it is of interest not just because of its purported scope (which, if true, would surely have led to Kuchi’s ongoing detention), but also because US forces were interested in monitoring the activities of the ISI, Pakistan’s largest intelligence service, and, theoretically, one of the Americans’ closest allies during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, although, in reality, of course, the US has never quite comprehended the extent to which parts of Pakistan’s establishment have their own distinct agenda, involving, in some cases, explicitly backing the Taliban.

In its assessment, the Task Force insisted on maintaining Kuchi as a high-level threat, noting that he was assessed as “a key logistics facilitator and supporter of terrorism in Afghanistan,” who “has the capability to continue to do so.” He was also described as being “of high intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a high threat to the US, its allies and interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “[r]etain[ed] under DoD control,” although it was also noted that the Criminal lnvestigative Task Force had evidently disagreed with this assessment. It was stated that, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that the detainee poses a high threat.” As a result, CITF may well have played a part in reevaluating Kuchi’s significance, leading to his release eight months later.

After his release, Kuchi was mentioned in a front-page story in the Guardian in February 2008, which I analyzed in an article entitled, “Expelled UN official criticizes Afghan policy re: Taliban – and defends ex-Guantánamo detainee.” In that article, Michael Semple, an Irish UN official expelled from Afghanistan, along with British EU official Mervyn Patterson, for posing a threat to national security by making contact with the Taliban (despite being described by the British Ambassador to Afghanistan as a man who “speaks fluent Pashtu, and understands the grain and granularity of Afghan society better than almost any other foreigner”) spoke about the case of Haji Naim Kuchi (described as Haji Naeem Kochi), as a successful example of “official policy to bring people in from the cold.”

“Take Haji Naeem Kochi, someone I have known for a very long time in Afghanistan,” Semple said. “After 9/11 and the invasion he ended up doing time in Guantánamo Bay. When he came back … I met up with him. The first thing I asked him was did he learn any English and he replied: ‘Yes, but all I learned was sit up and sit down from the American guards.’ Yet despite doing time in Guantánamo he is now a member of the peace commission aimed at reconciling all Afghans.”

Abdurahman Khadr (ISN 990, Canada) Released November 2003

In the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, Abdurahman Khadr’s was one of 14 missing files, as I noted in my article, “WikiLeaks and the 14 Missing Guantánamo Files.” In that article, I stated that, “Of the 14 missing stories, just two are overtly suspicious,” and one of those was that of Abdurahman Khadr. The brother of the former child prisoner Omar Khadr (ISN 766), he was persuaded to work as a spy, as I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files:

Abdurahman was captured by Afghans in Kabul in November 2001, when he was 20 years old, and was then handed over to the Americans. Describing himself as the “black sheep” of the family, who saw no value in the radical beliefs of the rest of his family, Abdurahman agreed to work as a spy for the CIA in Kabul, and then in Guantánamo, but was told that, to protect his cover, he would have to be treated like all the other prisoners. He said that his imprisonment at Bagram — where he was stripped, photographed naked and subjected to an anal probe — was the start of “the longest and most painful ordeal of his life,” and that he “had no idea what he was getting into.”

After ten days at Bagram, he was flown to Guantánamo, where, he said, he arrived “a broken man,” and was then kept in isolation for a month before being moved to a cell near other prisoners. The plan, as he described it, was that “they could put me next to anyone that was stubborn and that wouldn’t talk and I would talk him into it. Well, it’s not that easy — lots of people won’t talk to anyone because everybody in Cuba is scared of the person next to him. I couldn’t do a lot for them.” Unable to cope with his situation, he spent the rest of his time in Guantánamo in a “luxurious” private cell, and was then sent to Bosnia, where his mission was to infiltrate radical mosques and gather information on al-Qaeda’s activities.

When the CIA wanted to send him to Iraq, however, he decided that he couldn’t take the pressure any more, and after resigning from the agency he returned to Canada, where his most salient comments concerned the prisoners in Guantánamo. He said that he told the CIA that the vast majority of the prisoners were innocent, and that it was “a huge mistake for the US military to offer large cash rewards for the capture of al-Qaeda suspects when they first arrived in Afghanistan.”

Haji Mohammed Wazir (ISN 996, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

In the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, Haji Mohammed Wazir’s was one of 14 missing files, as I noted in my article, “WikiLeaks and the 14 Missing Guantánamo Files.” In that article, as I explained, all that was known of him was that he was a 60 year old farmer from Helmand province, who was released in March 2004 with 22 other Afghans after spending a year in Guantánamo and being held for two and half years in total. Speaking briefly to reporters on his release, he said, “I’m a poor and innocent man. I was in my home, unaware of Taliban and al-Qaeda, when I was caught. If I’m a Taliban or al-Qaeda I want to be punished. If I’m not, then they should compensate me. The two-and-a-half years that I have spent in pain and soreness — who is going to pay?”

Bashir Ahmad (ISN 1005, Pakistan) Released September 2004

As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,” Ahmad’s story was only known before WikiLeaks released the Detainee Assessment Briefs because he had been interviewed in 2008 by Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers for a major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners.

25 years old when he was seized, he admitted that he “was fighting for the Taliban,” but as Tom Lasseter noted, although he had “little training and no concept of the structure or detail of al-Qaeda or the Taliban,” and seemed, therefore, “to have known nothing of much value to US interrogators,” his story indicates that “American military officials had a hard time distinguishing between foot soldiers and jihadist leaders.”

Ahmad was one of dozens of Guantánamo prisoners seized in November 2001 after the fall of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, the last stronghold of the Taliban, who first had to survive the journey from Kunduz to a Northern Alliance prison in Sheberghan run by the Afghan Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum. The prisoners, who surrendered in their thousands, were transported to Sheberghan in container trucks, when hundreds — or even thousands — of prisoners died of suffocation, or by being shot through the sides of the containers by Northern Alliance soldiers, in what has become known as “the convoy of death.”

Ahmad said that ten to 15 men survived in his container. “There was a mini-revolt in the container” he explained, “which caused Dostum’s men to fire. Many died of bullet wounds; many suffocated. When the door opened, suddenly there was light. All the bodies fell out. They sprinkled water on the bodies and felt their pulse to see if they were alive.” Held for 16 to 17 months at Sheberghan, he recalled some examples of extraordinary brutality. “The Northern Alliance soldiers were very cruel,” he said. “They asked a Taliban commander to shave his beard. He refused. They took him off and chopped off one arm, and then another, and then they killed him.”

When he was finally picked out from the dwindling population of Sheberghan, he was taken to the US prison at Bagram airbase, where he was held for 40 days. “When I was taken to interrogation and then taken back to our area, they (guards) would kick me and slap me,” he said. “Sometimes three guards would come take me to a separate room and tie my hands to a chain that was hanging from the ceiling. They would pull the chain tightly so that I rose up in the air. Sometimes they did it the other way, pulling me up by my feet. And then they would punch me or hit me with a wood rod they used to carry.”

His life did not improve in Guantánamo, where he was subjected to regular assaults by the team of five armored guards responsible for quelling the most minor infringements of the rules. “Five soldiers would come with bulletproof jackets and weapons to my cell, to my cage,” he said. “One of them would spray me in the face. My eyes would burn and water. They would come in and punch and kick me until they were satisfied.”

Unable to endure “the beatings, the fear, the loneliness, the hunger strikes, the anger,” he said that he tried to commit suicide by hanging himself. When he awoke in the prison hospital, a psychologist asked him why he had tried to kill himself. “I had lost all hope in life,” he said. “I decided to die instead of living in that hell.” He added, “What can I say about my mental health? My friends say I am half-mad.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 10, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Ahmad Bushir, born in 1976, it was clear how, as Tom Lasseter noted, “American military officials had a hard time distinguishing between foot soldiers and jihadist leaders.” It was also apparent, reading between the lines, how Ahmad had refused to cooperage with his captors, and why, as a result, he had been subjected to regular violence, although to my mind this demonstrates, above all, how, when confronted by a superpower in brutal overdrive, those subjected to it had only a few options which tended to define their experiences — to fight back, as Ahmad did, to shut down, or to cooperate, either to a major or a minor degree.

Whereas he spoke honestly to Tom Lasseter, he maintained, with the Joint Task Force, that he was “working as a cook at the Taliban school” in Kunduz, when “he received orders to surrender to Dostum’s Northern Alliance forces in early November 2001.” It was noted that he was thern taken to Sheberghan, and that he was sent to Guantánamo on May 8, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was “because he was suspected of being a mid-level Taliban commander who was closely associated with Mullah Omar.”

To the Task Force, Ahmad had “refused to be forthright concerning his activities.” He told his interrogators that he worked as a cook for one month prior to surrendering, but the Task Force regarded it as “probable” that he was “training at the Dasht-e-Archi training camp near Kunduz,” which, it seems, he mentioned vaguely at some point while being interrogated. The Task Force “also believed that [he] may be a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) member because of his affiliations with several known members at the training camp but that information cannot be confirmed.” Nevertheless, his “suspected affiliations and his unexplained attendance at the training camp contribute to [his] assessment as a possible Islamic extremist.”

Although he was also “assessed as not being a member of Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader,” and was regarded as being “of low intelligence value to the United States,” he was designated as “a medium threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended him for “[t]ransfer to the control of another government for continued detention.” Noticeably, however, the Criminal Investigative Task Force disagreed with this assessment, having assessed him as “a low threat.” However, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that the detainee poses a medium threat.”

Mohammed Irfan (ISN 1006, Pakistan) Released September 2004

As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,” Ahmad’s story was only known before WikiLeaks released the Detainee Assessment Briefs because he had been interviewed in 2008 by Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers for a major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners.

When Lasseter met him, he was working, fixing equipment at a sugar mill. Interviewed in Islamabad, he explained that he had traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 as a volunteer medic, but was then seized by General Dostum’s troops with “hundreds of other men” outside Kunduz. He claimed not to be a combatant, but the reporter noted that, while describing what happened at Kunduz — “a broken treaty, then a standoff between Dostum and the Taliban” — he “said things like ‘when a skirmish broke out between us and Dostum’s men’ and ‘we should fight for our lives,’ which suggest that he was armed at the time, as was almost everyone around him.”

He was then taken to Sheberghan, where he was held for a year and half, in abysmal conditions. Once a week, he said, the prisoners were taken from their cells to be counted, and every time “he stood in a courtyard and shook because he knew what was about to happen: A guard would walk up and begin beating him with a plastic garden hose filled with dirt or with a stick, until he fell to the ground in pain. Then they’d beat him some more.” He added that “he knew of at least 30 other Pakistanis who died of starvation” during his time at the prison.

Astonishingly, however, he said that the 40 days that he subsequently spent at the US prison in Bagram airbase, before his transfer to Guantánamo, were even worse. “Bagram was the worst,” he said. “I was never treated so badly anywhere else as I was at Bagram.” The reporter explained that “while the violence at Sherberghan was more intense, it came only once a week,” whereas at Bagram, “he was beaten almost every day.” What’s particularly disturbing about this account is that the period Irfan was at Bagram, in early summer 2003, was around six months after two prisoners had been killed by guards, and indicates that there was no improvement in the conditions at the prison. “We were told we were being taken for a shower,” Irfan said. “But they would take pictures of us, laugh at us; they would beat us to the ground and then drag us around naked. When they took us to the interrogation room, they would punch us, kick us and knee us and push our head into the wall. They did this on the way to interrogation and in the interrogation room.”

After Bagram, Irfan said, his transfer to Guantánamo was “almost a relief,” although he stressed that he was still subjected to violence. “The guards still punched him occasionally,” the reporter noted, “and when he asked, in broken English, why they did, they laughed and punched him some more.” For the most part, however, he was left alone. Because he “didn’t participate in hunger strikes and usually kept to himself, he spent most of his time sitting in his cell, waiting for the next meal.” He added that he was only interrogated “a handful of times,” and spent his last six months in Camp Four, the communal camp at .Guantánamo, reserved for cooperative prisoners. “It wasn’t great,” he added, “but at least it wasn’t Bagram.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 30, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which it was noted that he was born in 1979, his story about being a medic was not mentioned, Instead, the recruitment story perceived by Tom Lasseter was discussed explicitly, with the Joint Task Force noting that Irfan had stated that, in November 2001, he heard a speech at his town hall in which a preacher “encouraged all men to travel to Afghanistan (AF) to help with Jihad.” While there, he met a man named Mohammed Ahmed and the two “befriended each other,” subsequently traveling to Kunduz, where he stayed in a house for ten days and trained on a Kalashnikov rifle, and then stayed in another house for eight days until his group was ordered to surrender to Northern Alliance forces.” A survivor of the notorious “convoy of death,” when thousands of soldiers and civilians who surrendered were suffocated or shot en route to General Dostum’s prison at Sheberghan, he said, as the Task Force put it, that they “were put in containers for a day and then transported to Sheberghan,” indicating that, if he had discussed the horrors of the journey, they were not mentioned in the report. According to the Task Force, he was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, “because of his affiliation with the Taliban as a foreign fighter.”

“[A]ssessed as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader,” Irfan was also regarded as being “of low intelligence value to the United States,” and of being “a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and, as a result, Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III of the US Army, who signed the memo, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Walid Al Qadasi (ISN 1014, Yemen) Released March 2004

In Chapter 16 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Walid al-Qadasi was one of ten men seized in Iran and handed over to Afghan forces as part of a prisoner exchange in early 2002. The men were then handed over to US forces, and sent to Guantánamo after being held in secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, although as one of them, Aminullah Tukhi, an Afghan, explained, although ten prisoners in total were transferred from iran — six Arabs, two Afghans, an Uzbek and a Tajik — only six ended up in Guantánamo, and it is not known what happened to the other four.

As I wrote in The Guantánamo Files (and in an article in April 2009 entitled, “CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months Before DoJ Approval“), drawing on a case sheet produced by Amnesty International in August 2005, al-Qadasi was rendered to Afghanistan in January 2002. Describing his time in a prison that he identified as the “Dark Prison” near Kabul, but which was probably another secret prison instead, he said, “The Americans interrogated us on our first night which we coined as ‘the black night.’ They cut our clothes with scissors, left us naked and took photos of us before they gave us Afghan clothes to wear. They then handcuffed our hands behind our backs, blindfolded us and started interrogating us … They threatened me with death, accusing me of belonging to al-Qaeda.”

After this initial interrogation, he said, “They put us in an underground cell measuring approximately two meters by three meters. There were 10 of us in the cell. We spent three months in the cell. There was no room for us to sleep so we had to alternate … It was too hot in the cell, despite the fact that outside the temperature was freezing (there was snow), because the cell was overcrowded.” He added that they were only fed once a day, that loud music was used as “torture,” and that one of his fellow detainees “went insane,” and pointed out that, when Red Cross representatives were allowed to visit, the most severely disturbed prisoners were secretly moved to another cell that was off-limits.

In documents released by WikiLeaks, al-Qadasi’s was a “Recommendation [for] Release or transfer to Another Country.” In this document, dated February 27, 2004, in which he was identified as Walid Mohammed Shahir, born in 1979, it was noted that he claimed that “he illegally entered Saudi Arabia in 1999 to look for work,” but that, in 2001, “when Saudi Arabia began to crack down on illegal workers, [he] contacted a smuggler to take him to Italy.” However, in May or June 2001, he succeeded only in being smuggled to Iran, via Iraq, where he and the smuggler “remained for five months.”

In December 2001, he was arrested by Iranian police, and, after spending three months in prison, was “transported to Afghanistan as part of a prisoner exchange between the two countries.” In this analysis, it was stated that the Iranian authorities, rather than the US, “considered [him] an Al-Qaida operative,” and that the secret prison in which he was held was not run by the CIA. The Task Force claimed that he “was held in an Afghanistani prison for about a year before being turned over to US Forces.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was because of his “possible connections to Al-Qaida,” and because his “travel route [was] suspicious.”

In assessing the reasons for his release of transfer, the Task Force noted that, “As a suspected Al-Qaida member, [he] had more value in the prisoner exchange,” but the Iranian police had provided “[n]o documentation or corroborating information” regarding his status as an Al-Qaida member.” It was also noted that JTF GTMO “found no information that directly link[ed him] to Al-Qaida,” and that, although his “circuitous travel route to Italy seems suspicious, no other information is available to contradict [his] story.”

JTF GTMO determined that he was “of low intelligence value due to his knowledge of Local smuggling routes between Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran,” and he was assessed as posing “a low risk as he is unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “released or transferred to the control of another country as appropriate,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force “ha[d] not completed an assessment and [we]re unable to supply a threat at this time.”

Following his return from Guantánamo, al-Qadasi was imprisoned by the Yemeni authorities for two years, first in a prison in his hometown of Tai’z and then in Sana’a, attracting attention from Amnesty International and lawyers at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who visited him in prison in 2005 and highlighted the fact that he was still being held without trial.

He also attracted the attention of the United Nations. In November 2005, the Special Rapporteur on torture drew on these allegations in a letter to the US government. The Rapporteur noted, “In its response, the Government of the United States reiterated its earlier announcements that no Government agency was allowed to engage in torture and that its actions complied with the non-refoulement principle.” This note was included in a mention of al-Qadasi’s story in a UN report on secret detention, for which I was a major contributor, which was published in 2010. The report is available here, and the section dealing with the US was also cross-posted on my website in three parts, the relevant section being, “UN Secret Detention Report (Part Two): CIA Prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

In 2009, he was interviewed by Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star for a feature on Guantánamo’s Yemeni prisoners. Shephard wrote:

He says his wife has just left him and he can’t find a job. Any job. He says he doesn’t care what he does … Now 29 and married, he has two children, the youngest just 10 days old at the time of the Star‘s interview [in August 2009]. He depends on his father-in-law for support. Slumping listlessly, he answers most questions in short sentences. “My wife says she will not return until I get a job,” Al-Qadasi says. He shrugs. “There are no jobs.”

Wassam Al Ourdoni (ISN 1018, Jordan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 16 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Wassam Al Ourdoni (identified as Wisam Ahmed) was one of ten men seized in Iran and handed over to Afghan forces as part of a prisoner exchange in early 2002. The men were then handed over to US forces, and sent to Guantánamo after being held in secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, although as one of them, Aminullah Tukhi, an Afghan, explained, although ten prisoners in total were transferred from iran — six Arabs, two Afghans, an Uzbek and a Tajik — only six ended up in Guantánamo, and it is not known what happened to the other four.

As I wrote in The Guantánamo Files (and in an article in April 2009 entitled, “CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months Before DoJ Approval“), drawing on an article entitled, “Abandoned to their fate in Guantánamo,” which was written by Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, and published by Index on Censorship in 2005, Wisam Ahmed ran a clothes shop in Jordan and traveled to Pakistan every year with a religious group. After getting married in 2000, he decided to take his wife and their newborn child to Pakistan for his visit in August 2001. In December, they were on a bus, traveling home, when they were stopped at a checkpoint in Iran, and Ahmed — under suspicion “because they associated [my] headdress with al-Qaeda and must have overlooked the fact that it was also my national dress” — was taken into custody.

Rendered to Afghanistan on March 1, 2002, he was held in the “Dark Prison,” in what he described as “unimaginable conditions that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society,” and spent 77 days in a room that “was so dark that we couldn’t distinguish nights and days. There was no window, and we didn’t see the sun once during the whole time.” He was then moved to another secret prison — “Prison Number Three” — where the food was so bad that he lost a significant amount of weight, and was then moved to Bagram, where, in the 40 days before his transfer to Guantánamo, he was threatened by dogs, made to watch torture videos, and intimidated in other ways: “they used to start up an electric saw and while they were sawing we would hear cries of agony. I thought they would cut me into pieces sooner or later.”

In 2008, he was interviewed by Tom Lasseter for a major report by McClatchy Newspapers on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners, in which he was described as Wissam Ahmad. Lasseter’s article began with a harrowing account of “Ahmad’s first night in the small jail in Kabul,” where was held after being transferred from Iran. Lasseter noted:

[H]e trembled with fear. Nine other men were crammed around him in the cell, he said, and he heard one of them, an elderly Afghan, wailing in the darkness. The old man screamed a lot. He had hallucinations of men whispering threats in his ear, and he often urinated on himself. He was going mad, Ahmad said.

The guards who beat the prisoners with small rubber hoses were Afghans, but the interpreters and soldiers in the building next door were Americans, he said.

Ahmad said he’d been taken next door with a sack over his head and thrown to the floor of the interrogation room. When his body hit the floor, he said, the sack over his head rose just enough for him to see the first American combat boot flying at his body.

The sack was removed, he said, and he was hoisted onto a chair. There were U.S. soldiers behind him, he said, and an American man and woman were sitting in front of him, wearing civilian clothes and calm expressions. Ahmad said he assumed that they were with the Central Intelligence Agency.

“Then the interrogator shouted at me. He told me, ‘Either admit that you are a part of al Qaida, or we will send you to a room full of dogs,’ ” Ahmad said.

Ahmad said that he wasn’t a part of al Qaida. In fact, he told the two interrogators, he’d never been to Afghanistan before in his life. About 10 minutes later, he was taken back to his cell.

Wissam Ahmad told his story at a mosque in Amman, where he was the imam. As the report explained, “When he began to talk about being punched or kicked, he shooed his 5-year-old daughter, Yaqeen, and 3-year-old son, Obaidah, out of the room.”

Repeating what he had said to Clive Stafford Smith, he confirmed that “he was detained on a bus at a routine checkpoint outside Zahedan, Iran, in January 2002,” and elaborated on how he had become a preacher, explaining that he had joined the vast missionary organisation Jamaat al-Tablighi, “after meeting members in a mosque in his hometown of Zarqa, about an hour north of Amman.” As the McClatchy report noted, “He was 22 and working at a clothing store in the town, which is known as a bastion of conservative Sunni Islam. His life had had little direction — he wasn’t interested in a career in the army, like his father — and the group’s call to return to the basic tenets of Islam, as it saw them, appealed to him. Ahmad said he was 26 when he went on his first mission for Tablighi Jamaat, to Pakistan in January 2002.”

In Zaheran, however, where his life changed so horribly, although the police asked him “to come with them for routine questioning,” he was not questioned. He said that the Iranians “held him for about a month without ever interrogating him or telling him why they were holding him.”

After his transfer to Afghanistan, and that first grim night, Ahmad said, Americans, who were “in the building next door,” questioned him two months later. They “asked his name, his affiliation with al-Qaida, his reasons for being in Iran — and he gave the same answers.” He also reiterated that he was held for 77 days and then moved to “another jail in Kabul,” where “he had his own cell.” He also said that “he was interrogated once during his first month by Americans in plainclothes who again demanded to know about his relationship with al-Qaida,” and “was interrogated a few more times during the next year, but mostly he just sat in silence.”

He also spoke about being taken to Bagram, in spring 2003, where, he said, he was asked the same questions about al-Qaida, and was subjected to three days of sleep deprivation, when “he wasn’t allowed to sleep for more than two hours or so,” and “was put in a small space on the floor, fenced off by concertina wire, and kept in the shackles, mask, goggles and earmuffs. He was moved then to a small plywood cell, he said. The goggles were taken off, along with the mask and earmuffs. A guard outside hit the walls of his cell periodically to keep him awake.”

After about three weeks of interrogations, he said, “guards took him to a room, lifted his arms above his head and tied his handcuffs to the ceiling, leaving him standing on his tiptoes. He was kept that way for a week, he said, let down only for a couple of hours a day to eat and rest.”

Afterwards, he said, he was taken back to interrogation, and “[a]n American man was there, smiling. Now, he said, what do you have to tell us about your connection to al-Qaida?” Ahmad explained that “he shook his head warily and said that, God help him, he didn’t know anything about al-Qaida,” but what was most revealing about this was how torture was directly linked to the manufacture of false confessions, if prisoners did not have the resistance of Ahmad or others like him. A week later, he added, he was sent to Guantánamo.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 20, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was described as Osam Abdul Rahman Ahmed, born in 1975, his own story was confirmed. It was stated that “he arrived in Pakistan in August 2001 from Jordan,” although the Task Force could not resist throwing doubt into the narrative, noting that he was “claiming he was there to do Muslim missionary work for the poor.” The Task Force added that he “was in Pakistan for approximately four months before deciding to return to Jordan with his family,” but that, shortly after arriving in Iran, his bus “was stopped, searched, and he was arrested under suspicion of being an Al-Qaida member.” It was also noted that his family “was not detained and they returned to Jordan,” and that he “was held by the Iranians and the[y] turned him over to the Afghan government, who transferred [him] into US custody.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 8, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his suspected affiliation with Al-Qaida,” even though it must have been known at the time that he was not. In an interesting note, the Task Force stated that His “enemy combatant (EC) status was reassessed on 29 Aug 03,” and that “[h]e remains an EC as we have no factual basis to change the original determination made prior to his arrival at Guantánamo Bay.”

This is an extremely useful note for confirming how the prisoners were all judged as “enemy combatants” before their arrival at Guantánamo, even though there was no official process involved in this assessment — nothing more, in fact, than being regarded as an “enemy combatant” without any rights whatsoever based solely on ending up in US custody — and it rather overshadows the rest of the file, in which it was noted that he was “assessed as being neither a member of Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader,” and was also regarded as being “not of intelligence value to the United States,” and as posing “a low risk as he is unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies.”

As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended him for “[r]elease or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention,” and the Criminal Investigative Task Force, which had evidently not assessed his case, stated that they would assess him on December 23, 2003. This could have been the end of the story, leading to his release just three months later, but in the documents released by WikiLeaks there was a second document relating to Ahmed, which follows up on the discussion about his status as an “enemy combatant” in his DAB.

This second document was an Annual Enemy Combatant Review, dated January 31, 2004, which, as I have mentioned previously, was a type of document that was evidently used to specifically assess the status of all the prisoners as “enemy combatants,” although the only ones I have seen previously were in the cases of the Iranian Bakhtiar Bameri (ISN 623, see Part Seven) and the Tajik Muhibullo Umarov (ISN 729, see Part Nine).

In Ahmed’s Annual Enemy Combatant Review, as with the other two examples cited, it was noted, crucially, that, “Although he was assessed as an enemy combatant at the time of his transfer to GTMO, on-going assessment and determination of his status as an EC is required by the Implementing Guidance for Release or Transfer of Detainees under US Department of Defense Control to Foreign government Control, dated 11 December 2002 and approved by the Secretary of Defense on 26 December 2002.” As I have mentioned previously, a version of this document, relating to Bagram and issued on December 10, 2002, is available here. In it, as I previously noted in connection with Bameri and Umarov:

Enemy combatant is defined by the above guidance as “any person that US or allied forces could properly detain under laws and customs of war.” For purposes of this conflict, an enemy combatant includes, but is not necessarily limited to, a member or agent of al-Qaida, the Taliban, or another international terrorist organisation against which the United States is engaged in armed conflict.

In describing how he ended up in US custody, the Task Force reiterated that he “was turned over to US control by Afghanistan forces in February 2003,” adding, in an analysis that repeated the dubious claim that US forces had nothing to do with his detention prior to this time, “He had been detained in Afghanistan since April 2002, having been held in Iran for approximately 4 months.”

It was also stated that he “was originally detained and assessed as being a possible Al-Qaida member based on the information available at the time.” Crucially, however, the Task Force added, “Since his arrival at GTMO, no further information has developed to support the possibility that he is a member of Al-Qaida. Furthermore, no information has developed to support his determination as an EC under any other aspect of the EC definition above. Therefore, after reviewing all relevant and reasonably available information, it is GTMO’s assessment that [he] is not an enemy combatant.” The memo concluded by noting that his case was being “processed by the Department of Defense Detainee Assessment Team for release.”

This is notable for two reasons: firstly, because it is only the third mention I have seen of the existence of a Department of Defense Detainee Assessment Team responsible for processing the prisoners for release; and secondly, because it is almost unprecedented for a prisoner to be designated as “not an enemy combatant.” The terminology, when the Combatant Status Review Tribunals began in the summer of 2004, was that those whose release was recommended (38 out of 558 prisoners whose cases were reviewed) were not judged as “not an enemy combatant,” but as being “no longer an enemy combatant.”

In 2010, Ahmed’s story was included in a United Nations report on secret detention, for which I was a major contributor. The report is available here, and the section dealing with the US was also cross-posted on my website in three parts, the relevant section being, “UN Secret Detention Report (Part Two): CIA Prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Also see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight and Part Nine 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.

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

This is Part 14 of the 70-part series.

In late April, WikiLeaks released its latest treasure trove of classified US documents, a set of 765 Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) from the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Compiled between 2002 and January 2009 by the Joint Task Force that has primary responsibility for the detention and interrogation of the prisoners, these detailed military assessments therefore provided new information relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba throughout its long and inglorious history, including, for the first time, information about 84 of the first 201 prisoners released, which had never been made available before.

Superficially, the Detainee Assessment Briefs appear to contain allegations against numerous prisoners which purport to prove how dangerous they are or were, but in reality the majority of these statements were made by the prisoners’ fellow prisoners, in Kandahar or Bagram in Afghanistan prior to their arrival at Guantánamo, in Guantánamo itself, or in the CIA’s secret prisons, and in all three environments, torture and abuse were rife.

I ran through some of the dubious witnesses responsible for so many of the claims against the prisoners in the introduction to Part One of this new series, and, while this is of enormous importance in the cases of many of the men still held (and also in the cases of some of those released), it is not particularly relevant to the overwhelmingly insignificant prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004, whose detention was so pointless that the authorities didn’t even bother trying to build cases against them through the testimony of their fellow prisoners.

As a result, the stories of these prisoners are particularly important in demonstrating how many innocent men or insignificant foot soldiers for the Taliban, engaged in combat with the Northern Alliance before the 9/11 attacks, and unconnected with international terrorism, were held at Guantánamo (and specifically how this latter category included many unwilling Afghan recruits).

What is also worth bearing in mind (and which is not spelled out in these documents) is that many prisoners were pointlessly rounded up because the Bush administration ordered the military not to screen the prisoners on capture, leading to a dragnet of “Mickey Mouse” prisoners, as was noted by Maj. Gen, Michael Dunlavey, a commander of the prison in 2002, and also offered substantial bounty payments for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects to the US military’s Afghan and Pakistani allies.

In a five-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo,” I began analyzing, transcribing and condensing the stories revealed in the documents released by WikiLeaks, looking at 84 stories of prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004 that had never been told before. The work of extracting information from the files and presenting it in edited form, with commentary based on my extensive research and experience, is a project that will take up the rest of the year. The next step is this ten-part series revisiting the stories of the 114 other prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004. That was the point at which the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) began, a military review process that, in turn, led to the first official release of documents relating to the prisoners in 2006, providing the material that I analysed and transcribed for my book The Guantánamo Files.

While this ten-part project is underway, I also propose to begin examining closely the files relating to the 171 prisoners still held, supplementing the series of articles that I produced last fall, entitled, “Who Are the Remaining Prisoners in Guantánamo?” This is important not just because the remaining prisoners have largely been abandoned by the mainstream media, even though 89 of the 171 have been cleared for release, and only 36 were recommended for trials by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, but also because, in the US, attorneys for the prisoners have only just won the right to look at the files (and not to download, save or print them), and the media in general is unwilling to subject them to much scrutiny because of how they became public in the first place.

So with thanks to WikiLeaks — and whoever leaked these documents — the ninth part of my ten-part analysis of the 114 prisoners released between 2002 and September 2004 (in addition to the 84 stories covered in my previous series) is below. When lies and distortions are covered up on this scale, and an experimental prison built on torture and abuse remains open, even under a Democratic President who promised to close it, everyone who believes in justice should publicize what has been revealed, and, if you agree, I hope that you will share this information widely. Also see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight and Part Ten of this series.

WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Nine of Ten)

Din Mohammed Farhad (ISN 699, Afghanistan) Released September 2004

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (9) – Seized in Pakistan (Part One),” I mentioned how Din Mohammed Farhad, who was 25 years old at the time of his capture, “fitted into [a] category of blank slates to be filled with whatever allegations the authorities thought they could get away with.” He had run a grocery shop in Kabul before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, and, while in US detention in Afghanistan, told the British prisoner Moazzam Begg that he had been sold to the Americans as an al-Qaeda sympathizer after he fled to Pakistan. He added that he thought that he had aroused suspicion because many of his customers — like Begg, who had visited his shop on a regular basis while living in Kabul — had been foreigners.

During a visit to Pakistan in September 2010, Moazzam Begg met Farhad (whom he described as Farhad Mohammed) at the house of Dr. Ghairat Baheer, the son-in-law of the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and a former CIA “ghost prisoner.” Begg wrote, “The last time I saw him was in Bagram. He’d suffered terrible beatings at the hands of the Pakistanis who’d then handed him over to the Americans. The reason: Farhad was a shop-keeper who ran a store on the famous Chicken Street in Kabul where Arabs used to do their shopping. I remember my disbelief at seeing him in Bagram as I used to shop there too. Farhad returned home after four years in Guantánamo to his mud house in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated April 26, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Din Mohammed, born in 1975, it was stated that he had been working at a supermarket owned by an Arab, Abu Isa, and that when he decided to leave the job, Abu Isa “gave him a cell phone and told him to call a man named Abu Mahaz who might offer him a job.” Abu Mahaz duly gave him a job as a courier, “delivering packages to and from Lahore and Sargodha” in Pakistan.

On one occasion, he and a man named Abu Kassam were supposed to deliver a package to a man named Akhram, but were unable to contact him. However, they were “stopped at a police checkpoint where Kassam attempted to evade arrest by running away,” and he then “discovered that the package contained red, green and brown passports.” Kassam was then captured, and when both men were in custody Mohammed “asked Kassam why he ran away,” and “Kassam told [him] that he had been transporting illegal documents for the Arabs.”

Mohammed stated that the “Pakistani authorities told [him] that if he paid a fee, he could be released. [He] stated that all he had was 5,000 Pakistani rupees. The Pakistani authorities stated that amount was not enough, so [he] remained incarcerated until he was turned over to US forces.” For some reason, however, “Kassam was never turned over to US forces.” Mohammed, however, was sent to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of Arab safe houses in Kabul, AF, Karachi and Sargodha, PK, his placement and access to movement of passports by Arabs through Pakistan, possible knowledge of Arab facilitators of movement out of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and corruption of Pakistani authorities.”

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, 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 Joint Task Force stated that it “consider[ed] the information obtained from and about him as not valuable or tactically exploitable,” and added, “Based on current information, detainee [699] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on all the above, detainee does not pose a future threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government.”

Mohammed Al Ghazali Babikir (ISN 700, Sudan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Babikir was one of five workers for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, a Kuwait-based NGO, with branches around the world, who were seized in house raids in Peshawar, Pakistan in May 2002 but subsequently released (along with other charity workers and teachers seized at the time) because there was no evidence whatsoever that they had been involved in any kind of wrongdoing. The stated aim of the RIHS was “to improve the condition of the Muslim community and develop an awareness and understanding of Islam amongst the non-Muslim communities, by concentrating on youth and education,” but in January 2002, the Pakistani and Afghan offices were blacklisted by the US Treasury, ostensibly because they had some sort of connection to terrorism.

Prior to the release of the Detainee Assessment Briefs by WikiLeaks, all that was known of Babikir was that he was an accountant for the RIHS, and that he was 28 years old at the time he was seized.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated June 21, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Muhammed al-Ghazali Babaker Mahjoub, born in 1973, it was noted that he worked for the Saudi Red Crescent from 1992 to 1997, first as an Arabic teacher, then as the Manager of Orphan Schools, and then as the Education Department Duty Manager. He began working for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society in August 1997, working as an Arabic teacher until June 1999, when he was promoted to the role of Indoctrination Division Chief, with duties including “overseeing the teaching staff and book printing.” In September 2000 he took the position of Orphanage Division Chair, where his duties included “providing shelter, clothing, rations and supplies for the orphans,” and where he was “responsible for orphanages in Pakistan and six additional orphanages in Afghanistan.”

After setting the scene, the Task Force jumped to the circumstances of his arrest without providing any explanation, noting that he was working as Orphanage Division Chair on May 26, 2002, when “several members of the Pakistan police entered [his] home,” and “[h]e was arrested and his home was searched.” The Pakistani officials “confiscated his diplomas, identification papers and passport. He was asked if he wanted these items returned to his wife because he would be taken in for two to three months of interrogation. [He] requested that all of his documents be returned to his wife except his passport, which he opted to keep with him.”

He was then taken to Bagram for approximately two months, and was sent to Guantánamo on June 4, 2002, on the basis that it was “because of his knowledge of the composition and organisational structure of the RIHS and Red Crescent NGOs which are currently operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan; because of his knowledge of personalities associated to [sic] the RIHS and Red Crescent NGOs who may have connection to the Al-Qaida financial network; and his knowledge of population characteristics of displaced persons in and around Pakistan and Afghanistan.” This was not as spurious as many of the other reasons given for transferring prisoners to Guantánamo, as it was clearly why he and other NGO workers were seized, although it is depressing to realize how nakedly he and others were sent to Guantánamo just in case they may have had any information about the charities’ suspected connections with al-Qaeda.

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that it “consider[ed] the information obtained from and about him as not valuable or tactically exploitable,” and added, “Based on current information, detainee [700] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on all the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Hassan Hamid (ISN 711, Jordan) Released November 2003

In Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Hamid, another of the five workers for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society seized in house raids in Peshawar, Pakistan in May 2002, was one of two Jordanian prisoners released in November 2003 — along with Ayman al-Amrani (ISN 169) — who were approached in 2005 by Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve. Stafford Smith was on a fact-finding mission in Jordan, but he reported, in an article entitled, “Abandoned to their fate in Guantánamo,” published by Index on Censorship in 2005, that neither man consented to meet him and noted, “they were afraid that speaking out would only make their lives more difficult.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated June 21, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Hassan Khalil Muhammed Abdul Hamid, born in 1961, it was stated that, like many of the prisoners, he had been “diagnosed with latent tuberculosis,” although “treatment was successful,” and it was noted that he “may possibly have asthma,” although he was “otherwise in good health.”

It was also stated that, after being unable to find a job in Jordan from 1988 to 1992, he “expanded his search to include other locations,” ending up working for as a geography teacher in Peshawar, Pakistan through the support of the Islamic International Relief Organization. In June 1995, he found a new job with the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society as “a supervisor of an orphan college preparatory school” near Peshawar, where “[h]is duties included acting as the teacher, counsellor, and social worker” and he “was in charge of such logistics duties as providing rations, clothing, and shelter for the children enrolled.”

In June 1999, he was “promoted to Director of the Mosque Department,” and moved to the RIHS Peshawar office “where five separate departments of RIHS were housed: Oversight, Mosques, Education, Orphanages, and Financial,” and where he “received contracts for the main office in Kuwait” and gave permission “to build new mosques and find suitable sites for them.”

As with Mohammed al-Ghazali Babikir, the Task Force then jumped to the circumstances of his arrest without providing any explanation, noting that, “After a typical day at the office, [he] was relaxing at home with his wife and four children using their computer’s television function in May 2002, in Peshawar, Pakistan,” when “[a]pproximately six Pakistani intelligence officers and two US officers entered his home by force and arrested [him].” The police then searched his house, and Hamid “saw his personal computer the next day in Bagram, so he [knew] that [his] equipment was confiscated.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of the efforts of foreign-based NGOs to exert influence within Pakistan and of the activities of the Islamic Heritage Revival Society [sic] within Pakistan.” As with Babikir, it was clear that he and others were sent to Guantánamo just in case they may have had any information about the charities’ suspected connections with al-Qaeda.

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that it “consider[ed] the information obtained from and about him as not valuable or tactically exploitable,” and added, “Based on current information, detainee [711] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on all the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.” It was also noted that he had asked to be returned to Jordan, and had stated that, although he realized the unemployment rates were high, he “might try and open a candy store called 7/11 if he couldn’t find a teaching position.”

Rashid Ahmad (ISN 714, Sudan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained (via a Cageprisoners article) how Ahmad was another of the five workers for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society seized in house raids in Peshawar, Pakistan in May 2002. 36 years old at the time of his capture, and married with four sons, he did not speak publicly about his experiences after his release, but his wife described the circumstances of his arrest. She said that Pakistani soldiers, accompanied by Americans, “attacked the house in a terrifying manner, scaring the two children … A female Pakistani soldier that was with them attacked her in an attempt to remove her hijab, in order to ascertain her identity. She refused to uncover her face in front of the men. All of this happened in front of her children’s eyes. He [Ahmad] had never been in Kabul or Kandahar, yet he was not safe from suspicion or capture.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated June 21, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Al Rachid Hasan Ahmad Abdul Raheem, born in 1965, it was noted that, in  common with many of the prisoners, he had been “diagnosed with latent tuberculosis, although current chest x-rays read clear,” and he was “otherwise in good health.”

It was also noted that, in 1997, he worked first for the Islamic International Relief Organization as the sports director at a school, and then as a teacher at the Sudanese School in Peshawar, and then, until 2000, worked as “the education supervisor, teacher and counsellor for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society at its school for orphans in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, but “left the RIHS in 2000 when the Taliban closed the office,” which was an interesting insight into an organization that, according to the US, was connected to al-Qaeda. He then transferred to the RIHS office in Peshawar, where he worked as the director of a primary school for orphans.

As with Mohammed al-Ghazali Babikir and Hassan Hamid, the Task Force then jumped to the circumstances of his arrest without providing any explanation, noting that, “On May 26, 2002, [he] was at home with his family preparing for bed when the doorbell rang. When [he] opened the door, approximately 25 Pakistanis (some wearing civilian clothes, others in police gear) had their weapons trained on him. He was then taken to the house of another man, Muhammed Hussein Abdalla (ISN 704, a 57-year old Somali teacher, and a father of eleven children, who was not released until November 2008), whom he knew as Abu Abd Al Tawab. The two were then held in a Pakistani military intelligence holding facility for ten days, then handed over to US forces and held in Bagram for two months.

He was sent to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of the Islamic International Relief Organization and Revival of Islamic Heritage (RIHS), a non-governmental organisation in Peshawar, Pakistan.” As with Babikir and Hamid, however, it was clear that he and others were sent to Guantánamo just in case they may have had any information about the charities’ suspected connections with al-Qaeda.

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that it “consider[ed] the information obtained from and about him as not valuable or tactically exploitable,” and added, “Based on current information, detainee [714] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.” It was also noted that he had asked to be returned to Sudan, “where his family [had] now relocated back to,” and had stated that he “plan[ned to find a teaching position," and, "if not, he hope[d] to open a small store or to return to the Agricultural College.”

Hussain Mustafa (ISN 715, Jordan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Mustafa, a 48-year old Jordanian, who was born in Palestine, was another innocent victim of house raids based on dubious intelligence. Interviewed by Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, for his article entitled, “Abandoned to their fate in Guantánamo,” published by Index on Censorship in 2005 (and available here in an edited form), he explained that he had taken a Masters degree in Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia, and had taught at the University of Galilee until 1984, when he moved to Pakistan, where he lived with his family near the Afghan border, teaching refugees.

He told Stafford Smith that on the evening of May 25, 2002, after returning home with his son Mohammed, the doorbell rang. “I asked Ibrahim, my youngest son to answer the door,” he said. “He came back scared, calling, ‘Police, Police!’ He was crying. As soon as he came in the room, the Pakistani police followed, armed and with their guns pointing at us … I asked the officer what he wanted and he said he needed Hussain. I said, ‘I am Hussain.’” He added that he had a refugee card from the UN, but that, although the police looked at it, they took him and his son away.

Mustafa also told Stafford Smith that, in the US prison at Bagram airbase, where he was taken before his transfer to Guantánamo, he was repeatedly threatened that his wife would be brought to the prison. “I felt a true anger,” he said. “I was torn on the inside because of what they said. This was a terrible threat.” He also said that prisoners were repeatedly threatened “with ghastly and immoral acts like rape,” and explained that he thought that the worst moment in his life took place in Bagram, when, blindfolded and handcuffed, and with his ears plugged and his mouth covered, he was forced to bend down, while a soldier “forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum.”

Mustafa told Stafford Smith that these events had “affected him deeply,” explaining:

I simply cannot understand why it happened to me. It is a smear that will always cloud my life. It is something that I am ashamed to think about, let alone talk about, but it is something that, inevitably, I cannot press out of my mind. What they did to me was disgusting, and it is difficult for me to talk about this. Naturally, I do not want this known in public, yet my fear for my own privacy is overridden by my desire to make sure that the truth is known, so that others are not made to suffer in this way in the future.

Stafford Smith also explained that Mustafa’s family “did not all survive to welcome him home. His oldest son Abdullah died of a heart condition in February 2004.” Further explaining the painful changes in his life, Mustafa told him, “I have had the experience of doing nothing wrong or illegal, and yet being held for over two years of my life. I will never be the same person. Now I spend a lot of my time alone, sitting in the Mosque, as I have become an introvert. I only go out where it is really necessary.”

In the memos released by WikiLeaks, the document relating to him was a  “Recommendation [for] Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country,” dated February 27, 2004, in which he was identified as Abdul Qadir Yousef Hussein, born in March 1953, and it was stated that he and his family moved to Pakistan in 1992, where “he was hired as a teacher of history, culture and Islamic studies at a university,” and then moved to Afghanistan, teaching from 1995-96 at a university that was sponsored by the International Islamic Relief Organization. At the time of his capture, on May 25, 2002, at his home on Peshawar, he was working for a university run by the Saudi Red Crescent, and was seized, according to the Task Force, because the police “were looking for a man named Abu Sufian.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002, allegedly because it was thought that he might be able to “provide general or specific information on IIRO and SRC leadership and activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and because of “[h]is possible connections to Abu Sufian and the IIRO.” As with Mohammed al-Ghazali Babikir, Hassan Hamid and Rashid Ahmad, however, it was clear that he and others were sent to Guantánamo just in case they may have had any information about the charities’ suspected connections with al-Qaeda, and this was spelled out clearly in a section of the memo headed, “Reasons for Transfer from JTF GTMO,” in which it was noted that, “Although the IIRO has been connected to Islamic extremism in the past,” Mustafa’s connection with it consisted of one year as a teacher, six years before his capture, and “appears to have been administrative in nature,” so that “[h]is knowledge of the IIRO is limited to administrative information, relating to daily school operations,” and “is very dated.”

Similarly, with the SRC, which had “not been directly linked with Islamic extremism at this time,” it was noted that his connection was “more recent, but also limited,” because his “connections and information appear[ed] to be administrative and related to running the school.” In addition, his connection to Abu Sufian “appear[ed] to be one of acquaintances. [He] said an Abu Sufia [sic] had an apartment on the floor above his for about 3-4 months in 2000, but then moved to another part of the city.” Bluntly, the Task Force conceded, “There does not appear to be any direct links between them.”

Despite having seized Mustafa on the basis of very poor intelligence, and having found no reason to detain him, he was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” rather than no intelligence value at all, although it was also noted that he posed “a low risk, as he [was] unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “released or transferred to the control of another country as appropriate,” although he conceded that the Criminal Investigative Task Force had “not completed an assessment” and was “unable to supply a threat [sic] at this time.”

Menhal Al Henali (ISN 726, Syria) Released March 2004

In Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, before the release of the Detainee Assessment Briefs by WikiLeaks, all that was known of al-Henali was that the Syrian, who was 38 years old at the time of his capture, was one of three teachers, working in a school run by the Saudi Red Crescent, who were seized in house raids in Peshawar, Pakistan on May 27, 2002, the others being Fethi Boucetta, a 38-year old Algerian seized after the Pakistani police came to his house looking for someone else, and Mohammed Abdallah, a 57-year old Somali. At Guantánamo, Boucetta described how all three men used to travel to work together in a bus that was provided for the teachers.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated May 3, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that he was born in 1963, and that he had been “diagnozed with latent tuberculosis,” in common with many of the prisoners, and was “a chronic Hepatitis B carrier,” but was “otherwise in good health.” It was also stated that he left Syria when he was 19, to avoid military service, and his mother then “advised him never [to] return to Syria because his father and brother were subsequently incarcerated following his flight out of the country.”

In assessing his case, the Task Force noted that he fled to Pakistan, where he was living with his wife and six children until his capture in May 2002. He was employed by the Saudi Red Crescent to work as an Arabic instructor and director of a school in Islamabad, where he stayed until 1991, when he left for two years to finish his Master’s degree in Lahore. He then began working as a language instructor at a school in Peshawar, which is where he was for nine years until he was seized by the Pakistani police, presumably with US guidance.

Detained first in Pakistan, and then in US custody at Bagram, he was sent to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of the activities of the Saudi Red Crescent organisation in Pakistan.” As with Mohammed al-Ghazali Babikir, Hassan Hamid, Rashid Ahmad and Hussain Mustafa, however, it was clear that he and others were sent to Guantánamo just in case they may have had any information about the charities’ suspected connections with al-Qaeda.

In its assessment, the Joint Task Force stated that it “consider[ed] the information obtained from and about him as not valuable or tactically exploitable,” and added, “Based on current information, detainee [726] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on the above, detainee does not pose a future threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government.”

It was also noted that he had “expressed concerns over being released to the Pakistani government because he believe[d] the reason he was arrested was that he could [perhaps in the sense of "was no longer allowed to"] pay bribes to government officials. He [felt] that if he return[ed] to Pakistan he [would] receive harsh punishment, and therefore would like to return to PK only to retrieve his family, then move to another country in the Gulf States region.” Despite this, he was returned to Syria, and, in light of the fact that his father and brother were imprisoned because he left the country in the first place, it is troubling that no news has emerged from Syria regarding his treatment since his release.

Muhibullo Umarov (ISN 729, Tajikistan) Released March 2004

Umarov, who was 21 years old when he was seized, was one of three unfortunate Tajiks — along with 22-year old Mazharuddin (ISN 731) and 27-year old Abdughaffor Shirinov (ISN 732, see below) — who were seized from an improvised dormitory in the library of Karachi University. In 2006, the journalist McKenzie Funk met Umarov by chance while reporting from Tajikistan for Mother Jones, when a farmer in the remote Obihingou valley told him, “There’s a man in the valley who has been to America. Really. He was in a prison. They made a mistake.”

After tracking Umarov down to his tiny, mud-walled home, Funk heard how, during the civil war, when he was 14 years old, his father took him and his two younger brothers to Pakistan and installed them in madrassas for the duration of the war. Six years later, he returned to his home village, diploma in hand, and began helping the family with their harvest of apples, potatoes and walnuts, “but then America bombed Afghanistan and the whole world went crazy.” Sent back to Pakistan to raise money to bring his brothers home, he found odd jobs in the bazaar in Peshawar and on May 13, 2002, in search of a better job, set off for Karachi, where his friend Abdughaffor Shirinov, who was working at the library, had a place for him to stay. Mazharuddin was also staying there, and at night the three men hung their T-shirts on the bookcases and slept on thin carpets on the floor.

Six days after his arrival, in the wake of Pakistan’s first suicide bombing, Pakistani intelligence agents raided the library, using the men’s T-shirts to tie them up and blindfold their eyes, and took them away. Held for ten days by the Pakistanis, Umarov was moved to secret prison — in what appeared to be a luggage factory — that was run by Americans, where he was questioned about al-Qaeda and was locked them up for ten days in a concrete cubicle that was only a meter long and half a meter wide, and was “insufferably hot.” “All my thoughts were about how my life was going to end,” he told the journalist. He was then returned to his friends in the Pakistani jail, and the following day the three men were transported to Bagram and then to Guantánamo.

Describing Bagram, Umarov told McKenzie Funk about the “hangar, vast and bright with artificial lights,” where, he said, “Our cages were in a two-story building inside the bigger building. They had high fences and were surrounded by sharp wires.” He added, “The whole place was blocked from daylight and man’s sight.”

Funk continued (and the whole section is worth reproducing in detail, I believe):

Each cell held as many as 15 men; each man was issued blue prison dungarees, a wooden platform to serve as a bed, and two blankets. Umarov used one of the blankets as a mattress, the other to cover himself — though it wasn’t enough. The nights were cold, and the guards would not let him put his head under the covers. Inmates wore shackles on their wrists as well as their ankles, even when sleeping, and each was assigned a number. Umarov’s was 75. “Seventy-five,” he whispers in halting English. “Seventy-five, come here.”

Powerful lights flooded the cages 24 hours a day, and the guards made loud noises to keep the prisoners awake. They hit their billy clubs against the metal fences. They pounded on barrels. They threw cans and empty water bottles. “We lost count of days, let alone dawn and dusk,” he says. “We never saw daylight. We were never outside.” […]

If the prisoners talked to each other, the soldiers forced them to stand and hold their shackles above their heads until the pain made them not want to talk again. If they talked again, Umarov says, the soldiers would take them upstairs and beat them. He was never beaten. But once he dared to talk to Abdughaffor and Mazharuddin, and the soldiers forced him to stand for hours, holding his shackles up while his arms shook. He did not talk again.

Umarov knew the other men in his cage as faces. He grew bored of looking at them. They were Arabs and Afghans and Pakistanis and men who spoke French and English. These, he assumed, must be the terrorists — the ones to be blamed for the world going crazy, the ones who should be punished. Sometimes, when a cellmate was taken upstairs, screams would ring out across the prison. “This did not happen every day,” he says, “but it happened.”

I ask for details, and he’s reluctant to say more. “I did not see anything with my own eyes,” he says, “and my friends and I did not experience this torture.” He pauses. There were stories he later heard in Cuba, he says — stories that he believed — about “beatings with the wooden stick” and electrocutions. “American soldiers used electrical cables to shock them in their eyes, hands, and feet. Three men told me this. And some, mostly Arabs, were forced to remove their clothes in front of women. There were other things, too.” He will not go on. […]

In two months at Bagram, Umarov says, he had only one interrogation — with an American woman who questioned him in Farsi and seemed confused as to why he was there. “We were alone in the room,” he says. “She checked my documents and listened to my answers, then told me I wasn’t guilty.” Life became a haze. He would stand and sit and try to sleep in his cage, and every fifth day a soldier loosened his handcuffs and let him walk around the prison grounds. Every seventh day, he was brought to the showers, which often had female guards and shut off after two minutes, even if he was still covered in soap.

After his transfer to Guantánamo, he said, “I did not understand where I was. When my consciousness appeared, I found myself in the sandy desert. And I thought I would be executed there, in the desert.” Instead, he was initially interrogated every week. “There were new investigators every time,” he said. “There was a new room every time. But the questions were always the same” — what Funk described as “an endless repetition of the conversation about Pakistan and Tajikistan and his life in both.” “Occasionally,” Funk explained, “he became so angry that he wouldn’t answer their questions, preferring to sit in silence. Other times, he challenged his interrogators: ‘Why was I taken here if I have not committed any crimes?’” Funk also explained:

They told him they were suspicious because he had traveled many places, many times, by many routes. He had been to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. “I answered that they could find many people like me,” he says. “Why was it that it had to be me?” They said that the routes he’d taken were famous, and used mostly by terrorists; he might have seen the terrorists on the roads.

After a while, Umarov said, they stopped interrogating him, although not everyone was so fortunate. As Funk explained:

“Some men were moved constantly,” he says. “They would wake them up, put them in chains, and take them to a new cell or to an interrogation room.” Prisoners were left shackled in a standing position until the investigators arrived. “They sometimes had to stand for 24 hours, moving only when they were brought to the toilet,” he says. “How could anyone be normal after that?” Yet Umarov never heard Bagram-like yells at Guantánamo, and few of his neighbors told him they had been tortured. What they talked about was injustice. “We did not know why we were there or when we would leave,” he says. “At Guantánamo, the torture wasn’t physical — it was psychological.”

Some prisoners went insane. Abdughaffor was one of them. He would throw himself against the door and scream. He tried to hang himself. He wouldn’t eat. He became somebody Umarov did not know. Others took off their clothes and sat naked in their cells. “These people became like children,” he says. “They did not understand their reality.”

Although he watched as his fellow prisoners tried to commit suicide, after the Koran was abused by US personnel, and although he also, briefly, took part in three of the hunger strikes, the injustice he felt most keenly was personal, when he asked an interrogator about his status, and was then punished by the guard force “for his insolence,” by being held in isolation for 10 days:

“I was taken to the dark room,” he says. “The soldiers took all my clothes and left me there.” The room was made of iron; it measured three feet by five feet. At night, frigid air was pumped through a hole in its ceiling, and its small window was covered by Plexiglas so the air couldn’t leave. Two electric coils provided dim light, and during the day, they were turned up to heat the cell to a very high temperature. But night was worse. “Some prisoners wouldn’t last the night and had to be taken to the doctor,” he says. “They kept me there for 10 days — and for no reason.”

He later spent another 15 days in isolation, but for that, he says, there was a reason. I ask him what it was. “I was standing in the cell block, leading a prayer for 48 people, and a female soldier came up and stood right next to me. I asked her to move, but she would not. She was doing psychological pressure. So I spit on her.”

When Funk pushed him for further information on some of the horrors of Guantánamo, the following took place, which should really provide Umarov’s final words on his lost two years in US custody:

“What I’ve already said should be enough for those who want to know about this prison,” he says softly. “It was like being in a zoo, with people coming to stare and laugh at you.” I keep pressing. His voice rises. “There is no point in telling more of these stories. Such a prison has never existed in the history of mankind. No one has ever written about such a prison. Why did they keep a man for two years with no reason? Why? They caught me and kept me as a prisoner of war. What war, may I ask? When was I involved? I was sleeping when they came and dragged me out of my bed. People who understand the laws will have already made up their minds about who is who.”

In the files leaked to WikiLeaks and released in April, Umarov’s file, dated January 31, 2004, was an “Annual Enemy Combatant Review.” This type of document was evidently used to assess the status of all the prisoners as “enemy combatants,” although the only one I had seen previously was the review for the Iranian Bakhtiar Bameri (ISN 623, see Part Seven).

In the memo relating to Umarov, in which he was described as Mukhibullo Abdukarimovith Umarov (he was also identified as Moyuballah Homaro), it was noted that he was transferred to Guantánamo from Afghanistan on August 5, 2002. It was also noted, crucially, that, “Although he was assessed as an enemy combatant at the time of his transfer to GTMO, on-going assessment and determination of his status as an EC is required by the Implementing Guidance for Release or Transfer of Detainees under US Department of Defense Control to Foreign government Control, dated 11 December 2002 and approved by the Secretary of Defense on 26 December 2002.” The reference to this document in Bakhtiar Bameri’s file was the first time I had seeing mentioned, although a version of it, relating to Bagram and issued on December 10, 2002, is available here. In it, as Bameri and Umarov’s memos explained:

Enemy combatant is defined by the above guidance as “any person that US or allied forces could properly detain under laws and customs of war.” For purposes of this conflict, an enemy combatant includes, but is not necessarily limited to, a member or agent of al-Qaida, the Taliban, or another international terrorist organisation against which the United States is engaged in armed conflict.

In describing how he ended up in US custody, the Task Force admitted that he was “living and working in Pakistan,” that he was arrested by Pakistani police “at a small library in Karachi on 19 May 02,” that he was “held for a month in a Karachi jail and then sent to the US Forces in Afghanistan.” Most significantly, the Task Force noted that it was “undetermined as to why [he] was transferred to GTMO.”

The Task Force added, “Since his arrival at GTMO it has been determined that [he] is not an al-Qaida or Taliban member. Furthermore, no information has developed to support his determination as an EC under any other aspect of the EC definition above. Therefore, after reviewing all relevant and reasonably available information, it is GTMO’s assessment that [he] is not an enemy combatant.” The memo concluded by noting that his case was being “processed by the Department of Defense Detainee Assessment Team for release.” This is notable for two reasons: firstly, because it is only the second mention I have seen (the first was in Bakhtiar Bameri’s file) of the existence of a Department of Defense Detainee Assessment Team responsible for processing the prisoners for release; and secondly, because it is almost unprecedented for a prisoner to be designated as “not an enemy combatant.” The terminology, when the Combatant Status Review Tribunals began in the summer of 2004, was that those whose release was recommended (38 out of 558 prisoners whose cases were reviewed) were not judged as “not an enemy combatant,” but as being “no longer an enemy combatant.”

Not being an “enemy combatant” should have been useful to Umarov, but as McKenzie Funk explained, it was not useful on the ground in Tajikistan. At one point, Umarov showed him a document provided on his release, which stated, “This individual has been determined to pose no threat to the United States Armed Forces or its interests in Afghanistan. There are no charges from the United States pending [sic] this individual at this time. The United States government intends that this person be fully rejoined with his family.” As Funk explained, however, “These papers are now the only form of identification Umarov has,” and they are “a red flag that causes shakedowns at Tajik checkpoints and occasional arrests. The US, which offered no compensation upon his release, never returned his passport either.”

Mazharuddin (ISN 731, Tajikistan) Released March 2004

As with Abdughaffor Shirinov (ISN 732, see below), little was known about Mazharuddin (also identified as Mazharudin) before the release of the Detainee Assessment Briefs by WikiLeaks, although it was clear, from the story of Muhibullo Umarov (ISN 729, above) that all three had been seized from the library of Karachi University, where Umarov worked, and where they were all staying, either on the basis of extremely dubious intelligence, or because they could be easily sold to US forces as terrorist suspects.

As with Muhibulllo Umarov (above), Mazharuddin’s file, dated January 31, 2004, was an “Annual Enemy Combatant Review.” This type of document was evidently used to assess the status of all the prisoners as “enemy combatants,” although the only one I had seen before Umarov’s was the review for the Iranian Bakhtiar Bameri (ISN 623, see Part Seven).

In the memo relating to Mazharuddin, dated January 31, 2004, in which he was described as Nuzar Udeen, it was noted that, like Umarov, he was transferred to Guantánamo from Afghanistan on August 5, 2002. As with Umarov, it was also noted, crucially, that, “Although he was assessed as an enemy combatant at the time of his transfer to GTMO, on-going assessment and determination of his status as an EC is required by the Implementing Guidance for Release or Transfer of Detainees under US Department of Defense Control to Foreign government Control, dated 11 December 2002 and approved by the Secretary of Defense on 26 December 2002.” In it, as Bameri and Umarov’s memos explained:

Enemy combatant is defined by the above guidance as “any person that US or allied forces could properly detain under laws and customs of war.” For purposes of this conflict, an enemy combatant includes, but is not necessarily limited to, a member or agent of al-Qaida, the Taliban, or another international terrorist organisation against which the United States is engaged in armed conflict.

In describing how Mazharuddin ended up in US custody, the Task Force repeated exactly the same information contained in Umarov’s file, admitting that he was “living and working in Pakistan,” that he was arrested by Pakistani police “at a small library in Karachi on 19 May 02,” that he was “held for a month in a Karachi jail and then sent to the US Forces in Afghanistan.” Most significantly, the Task Force noted that it was “undetermined as to why [he] was transferred to GTMO.”

As with Umarov, the Task Force added, “Since his arrival at GTMO it has been determined that [he] is not an al-Qaida or Taliban member. Furthermore, no information has developed to support his determination as an EC under any other aspect of the EC definition above. Therefore, after reviewing all relevant and reasonably available information, it is GTMO’s assessment that [he] is not an enemy combatant.” The memo concluded by noting that his case was being “processed by the Department of Defense Detainee Assessment Team for release.” As I noted in the reviews of Bameri and Umarov’s memos, this was notable because it mentioned the existence of a Department of Defense Detainee Assessment Team responsible for processing the prisoners for release, and because it is almost unprecedented for a prisoner to be designated as “not an enemy combatant.” As I explained in Umarov’s case, the terminology, when the Combatant Status Review Tribunals began in the summer of 2004, was that those whose release was recommended (38 out of 558 prisoners whose cases were reviewed) were not judged as “not an enemy combatant,” but as being “no longer an enemy combatant.”

Abdughaffor Shirinov (ISN 732, Tajikistan) Released March 2004

In the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, Shirinov’s was one of 14 missing files, as I noted in my article, “WikiLeaks and the 14 Missing Guantánamo Files,” although it was clear, from the story of Muhibullo Umarov (ISN 729, above) that he was Umarov’s friend, that he worked in the library of Karachi University, that he had allowed Umarov and Mazharuddin (ISN 731) to stay, and that all three had been seized either on the basis of extremely dubious intelligence, or because they could be easily sold to US forces as terrorist suspects.

Given that the files for Umarov and Mazharuddin contain exactly the same information and assessments, it is certain that Shirinov’s was the same, with the same damning conclusions — that it was “undetermined as to why [he] was transferred to GTMO,” and that he was “not an enemy combatant.”

In response to Umarov’s comments about his friend, however, it is not known how he has fared since being released from Guantánamo. As McKenzie Funk wrote, based on Umarov’s words, “Some prisoners went insane. Abdughaffor was one of them. He would throw himself against the door and scream. He tried to hang himself. He wouldn’t eat. He became somebody Umarov did not know.”

Haji Osman Khan (ISN 818, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Haji Osman Khan, who was 50 years old at the time of his capture, was part of a family of businessmen from Bermel, in Paktika province, who were caught up in what the Americans described as “a sweep of the Bermel town bazaar,” which was as random as it sounds. Khan was seized with 27-year old Abdul Salaam (ISN 826), and 19-year old Noor Aslam (ISN 822, see below), who was his cousin, and the family ran a hawala (a money exchange/forwarding business) with branches in Pakistan and the UAE. Khan did not speak publicly about his experiences following his release, but Salaam (who was not released until February 2006), explained in a review board at Guantánamo that he was seized at his shop by American and Afghan soldiers, but he insisted that he was an honest businessman and had never received money on behalf of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. He also explained that the money the family received at the hawala was from families outside the country who were supporting their families in Afghanistan.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated September 6, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” Khan, described as Osman Khan, born in 1950, was subjected to serious doubts about his innocence, given that, by May 2005, the Task Force conceded, in the case of Abdul Salaam, “It was first assessed [he] was involved in money laundering operations, however, after reviewing all the available documentation, nothing has been found to support this claim. It is highly probable [his] statements that he and his family are honest business people, have no connections to the Taliban and Al-Qaida, and have never transferred any money on behalf of the Taliban or Al-Qaida are truthful.” It was also significant that Mohammed Haji Yousef (ISN 820), released in November 2003, whose story was told for the first time in my article in June, “WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo (Part Five of Five),” was evidently Khan’s brother, and was assessed, in August 2003, “as not being affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader,” of being “of low intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies.”

Khan told his interrogators that he was at home in Bermel “with his brother, friends and his children, when Afghan soldiers and Americans came into his home and arrested everyone.” He stated that “the information used against him was ‘false’ and he [had] no affiliations with any members of the Taliban,” and that he was “a local businessman,” who, with his brother, ran “several small shops, including a call office.”

To the Task Force, however, “when questioned closely about his business dealings with known Taliban and Al-Qaida members,” he “feigned any knowledge of these individuals [sic] and remained evasive.” He was “assessed to have had a great deal of involvement with the movement of money for the local hawalas, which were used by the Taliban to provide funds to their members,” but no explanation was provided as to why this assessment demonstrated that, as a result, Khan knew about the provision of money to the Taliban through the hawala system rather than being nothing more than a suspect with no actual evidence against him.

It was apparently regarded as suspicious that he “continue[d] to deny any knowledge of Al-Qaida” and “professed his innocence in this whole matter,” because, according to the Task Force, he had been “generally cooperative but never forthright,” had “consistently been evasive in his answers” and had “outwardly refused to identify individuals whom he had a known affiliation with.” The Task Force added that Khan, “along with his brother and other family members,  was heavily involved in the movement of monies (for a fee) for known Al-Qaida and  local Taliban members and [Khan had] refused to reveal the nature of these transactions,” even though he was “assessed to have extensive (though dated) knowledge concerning the financing of local extremists and the personalities involved in cross-border trade, financing and telecommunications (via local call office run by his brother)” — although how that was known, especially in light of the later revelations about Abdul Salaam, was, again, not explained, and, moreover, the allegations about his brother contradicted the findings of the Task Force in his assessment a month earlier.

Refusing to let up, however, the Task Force stated that Khan had been “assessed as being an opportunist and an extremist criminal, protecting his business dealings by not revealing his connections to extremist elements operating in the region,” who was, therefore, “assessed as possibly posing a threat to the Afghan government.” As a result of all the above, he was “assessed as possibly being a member of the Taliban, however that has not been determined with any certainty” — which, of course, is doubly vague. He was also assessed as being “of minimal intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a medium threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and as a result, Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III of the US Army, who signed the memo, recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Noor Aslam (ISN 822, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Aslam, who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, was part of a family of businessmen who ran a hawala (a money exchange/forwarding business), and who were seized in a sweep of Bermel, in Paktika province, by US forces. He was seized with 50-year old Haji Osman Khan (ISN 818, see above) and his cousin, 27-year old Abdul Salaam (ISN 826), but his own story was not known until the release of the Detainee Assessment Briefs by WikiLeaks.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated September 6, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” Aslam was identified as Noor Aslaam, born in 1983, and was also identified as having been “improperly listed as Afghani however he was born in Pakistan and holds Pakistani citizenship.”   No mention was made of his purported family relationship with Osman Khan, Abdul Salaam and Mohammed Haji Yousef, so it is uncertain if he was actually related to any of these men, but what was clear was that he “worked with six other men on the security force” in Bermel (and that “some of those men are detainees in Guantánamo with him”), and that “he was conducting early morning security checks of buildings and businesses within the Bermel town bazaar,” when “he was arrested by US forces, who were conducting a sweep of the bazaar, looking for weapons.”

After he was seized, US forces “found a grenade in a box, in the building that he and the others shared as living quarters, along with other small arms and ammo.” This was unsurprising, given that the security force of which he was a part had been put together after the Taliban fled, and no one should really have been surprised if they were armed. Nevertheless, Aslam was obliged to find explanations for the presence of the weapons, to explain that “he knew about the grenade but that it was not his,” to explain that he owned several of the other weapons found, which he had “‘acquired’ through deals with friends,” and to explain that “everyone in the village owns a Kalashnikov, and because of the violence many of the shopkeepers band[ed] together to protect their businesses.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on October 27, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his possession of the grenade that was found in the box,” which was a particularly feeble reason for transporting him halfway round the world.

In assessing him, the Task Force stated that, “although cooperative and non-aggressive,” he was “assessed as not being completely forthright.” It was noted that his explanation of “his association with the local businessmen [was] viewed as plausible, however he [had] failed to completely explain the dynamics of his involvement with these men,” which was regarded as important because several of these men had “known affiliations with former Taliban” (which had not actually been established) “and he was working as a personal security guard for these persons.”

The Task Force also regarded it as suspicious that he was a Pakistani working for Afghans, suggesting that this indicated that his employers had “a stronger affiliation with former Taliban than [he] would like us to believe,” and noted that he had “failed also to convincingly explain how he came into the possession of all the weapons he had,” and, as a result, although he was assessed as “not being a member of Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader” and of being “of low intelligence value to the United States,” he was also assessed as being “a medium threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III of the US Army, who signed the memo, recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Parkhudin (ISN 896, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, and also in my article, “When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan,” I discussed the murder by US soldiers of detainees in the prison at Bagram airbase in 2002, including the killing, in December 2002, of Dilawar, a taxi driver who was brought into the prison the day after another prisoner, Mullah Habibullah, had been killed. Dilawar was brought in with the three passengers in his taxi — Parkhudin, a 25-year old farmer, Abdul Rahim, a 27-year old baker, and Zakkim Shah, a 19-year old farmer.

According to Dilawar’s elder brother, Dilawar was “a shy man, a very simple man,” who lived a quiet life with his wife, his young daughter and the rest of his family. On the day of his capture, after he had picked up the three passengers, he was passing Camp Salerno, a US base, when he was stopped at a checkpoint by soldiers serving under Jan Baz Khan, the nephew of the warlord Pacha Khan Zadran, who were looking for the men who had launched a rocket attack on the base earlier that day. Finding a broken walkie-talkie on one of the passengers and an electric stabilizer for a generator in the boot of the car, they delivered the four men to the Americans at Bagram as suspects.

They were among the last men to be implicated by Jan Baz Khan, and Dilawar’s passengers were certainly the last three to be sent to Guantánamo on Khan’s advice, because the Americans finally realized that their supposed ally was actually using them for his own ends, and imprisoned him in Bagram in February 2004, although as mentioned elsewhere in these articles, and in The Guantánamo Files, Pacha Khan, who also fell out of favor, was responsible for sending several other prisoners to Guantánamo.

Before the release of the Detainee Assessment Briefs, all that was known of Parkhudin and Dilawar’s other passengers came from reports dealing with Dilawar’s murder, which was first exposed by Carlotta Gall of the New York Times in March 2003. In that ground-breaking article, Gall identified two of the three men seized with Dilawar as Parkhudin and Zakhim, and explained that Dilawar’s father and brother and local government officials told her the men had been seized “when [Dilawar's] taxi was stopped by Afghan soldiers guarding the perimeter of the United States army base Salerno, on the outskirts of Khost, in eastern Afghanistan,” and that they “were innocent and arrested because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That morning two rockets had been fired at the base, and Mr. Dilawar passed by at noon.” On searching the car, the soldiers “found a stabilizer, a machine used to regulate electricity, in the trunk of his car,” and Parkhudin, described as being 30 years old and “a local policeman from the village of Turiuba,” was identified as the passenger who “had a broken walkie-talkie with him.”

In September 2004, Gall and David Rohde provided an important update, and included further testimony from Parkhudin, described as a 26-year-old farmer and former soldier. He said that, in Bagram, “his hands were chained to the ceiling for 8 of his 10 days in isolation and that he was hooded for hours at a time,” as the article described it. “They were putting a mask over our heads, they were beating us in Bagram,” he said. “I think Dilawar died because he couldn’t breathe. For me, it was very difficult to breathe.” He also “said he was forced to lie on his stomach and that a soldier then jumped on his back,” adding that “he believed that the Afghan in an adjoining isolation cell was Mr. Dilawar because the prisoner cried out for his mother and father.”

In a detailed report about the murderous regime in Bagram, published in the New York Times in May 2005, Tim Golden explained how Dilawar  and his passengers spent their first night in Bagram “handcuffed to a fence, so they would be unable to sleep,” and reiterated how Dilawar’s passengers said that the most difficult thing for Dilawar “seemed to be the black cloth hood that was pulled over his head.” “He could not breathe,” Parkhudin said.

Golden also noted that, in interviews after their release, the three survivors “described their treatment at Bagram as far worse than at Guantánamo. While all of them said they had been beaten, they complained most bitterly of being stripped naked in front of female soldiers for showers and medical examinations, which they said included the first of several painful and humiliating rectal exams.”

Golden also explained that, when the three men were finally sent home from Guantánamo in March 2004, 15 months after their capture, they had “letters saying they posed ‘no threat’ to American forces.” He also noted:

They were later visited by Mr. Dilawar’s parents, who begged them to explain what had happened to their son. But the men said they could not bring themselves to recount the details. “I told them he had a bed,” said Mr. Parkhudin. “I said the Americans were very nice because he had a heart problem.”

In the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks in April, in which he was identified as Bar Far Huddine, born in 1975, the document relating to him, dated February 26, 2004, was an “Update Recommendation [for] a Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention,” in which — rather depressingly, given the circumstances of Dilawar’s death — it was noted that, on November 11, 2003, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “retained for continued detention,” based on an assessment that he was “a Taliban member, who was possibly involved in a rocket attack on US Fire Base Salerno.”

According to new information, however, Parkhudin was “no longer assessed as being a Taliban member,” because “[a] review of information about the radio [he] was captured with revealed that it was non-functional at the time of capture and not used to communicate with the Taliban, as previously reported,” and because “further investigation revealed no links between [him] and the rocket attack on US Fire Base Salerno, which he was suspected of being involved in,” and that “[t]he other people arrested out of the same taxi have also been assessed as having no links to the rocket attacks.”

As a result, he was “assessed as having a low intelligence value,” and as “a low risk as he [was] unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies” (not “no risk at all,” as he should have been) and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer or release to the control of another government.” It was also noted that, on November 10, 2003, the Criminal Investigative Task Force had been “unable to give a threat assessment, citing the need for additional information,” but that, “[i]n the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between CITF and JTF-GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to the JTF-GTMO assessment that [he] was a low risk.”

Abdul Rahim (ISN 897, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

As with the story of Parkhudin (ISN 896, above), I explained, in Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, and also in my article, “When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan,” how Parkhudin, Abdul Rahim and Zakkim Shah (ISN 898, see below) were passengers in a taxi driven by another Afghan, Dilawar, who was killed by US soldiers in the prison at Bagram airbase after the four men were seized by Afghan soldiers following a rocket attack on a US military base in December 2002. The three survivors were then sent to Guantánamo, where they were held for 15 months.

Abdul Rahim was apparently a 27-year old baker, although not much else was known about him until the Detainee Assessment Briefs were released by WikiLeaks. In a New York Times report in September 2004 about the murderous regime in Bagram, Carlotta Gall and David Rohde described him as Abdur Rahim, a 26-year-old baker, and noted that he told them that “he was hooded and that his hands were chained to the ceiling for ‘seven or eight days’ and turned black.” He also said that “American interrogators forced him to crouch and hold his hands out in front of him for long periods, causing intense pain in his shoulders. When he tried to sit up, he said, they were coming and hitting me and saying ‘Don’t move!’” In another article in the New York Times in May 2005, Tim Golden noted that, speaking of his time in Bagram, Abdul Rahim said, “They did lots and lots of bad things to me. I was shouting and crying, and no one was listening. When I was shouting, the soldiers were slamming my head against the desk.”

In the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks in April, in which it was noted that he was born in 1975, the document relating to him, dated February 26, 2004, was an “Update Recommendation [for] a Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention,” in which — rather depressingly, given the circumstances of Dilawar’s death — it was noted that, on November 11, 2003, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “retained for continued detention,” based on an assessment that he was “a member of Hezb-e-Islami [Gulbuddin] (HIG),” who was possibly “involved in a rocket attack on US Fire Base Salerno.”

According to new information, Abdul Rahim “joined HIG for a brief 4-month period in the mid-1990s, after which he broke off his association,” and “spent most of the 1990s involved with various Northern Alliance combat units, fighting the Taliban.” However, he was “assessed as having no current ties to HIG,” and, as with Parkhudin, it was also noted that “further investigation revealed no links between [him] and the rocket attack on US Fire Base Salerno, which he was suspected of being involved in,” and that “[t]he other people arrested out of the same taxi have also been assessed as having no links to the rocket attacks.”

As a result, he was “assessed as having a minimal intelligence value,” and as “a low risk as he [was] unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” because he was “no longer assessed as being an HIG member,” and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer or release to the control of another government.”

Zakkim Shah (ISN 898, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

As with the story of Parkhudin and Abdul Rahim (ISN 896 and 897, above), I explained, in Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, and also in my article, “When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan,” how Parkhudin, Abdul Rahim and Zakkim Shah were passengers in a taxi driven by another Afghan, Dilawar, who was killed by US soldiers in the prison at Bagram airbase after the four men were seized by Afghan soldiers following a rocket attack on a US military base in December 2002. The three survivors were then sent to Guantánamo, where they were held for 15 months.

Zakkim Shah was apparently a 19-year old farmer, although not much else was known about him until the Detainee Assessment Briefs were released by WikiLeaks. In Carlotta Gall’s original New York Times report about Dilawar’s death, Shah was described simply as Zakhim, from the same village as Parkhudin, and was also described as being 25 years old. In a follow-up article in September 2004, he was identified as Zakim Shah, a 20-year-old farmer, and it was noted that he “said he was kept awake by soldiers blaring music and shouting at him.” He also said “he grew so exhausted at one point that he vomited.”

In the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks in April, in which he was identified as Zakhim Shah, born in 1983, the document relating to him, dated February 26, 2004, was an “Update Recommendation [for] a Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention,” in which — rather depressingly, given the circumstances of Dilawar’s death — it was noted that, on November 11, 2003, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “retained for continued detention,” based on an assessment that he was “a Taliban fighter,” who was “committed to Jihad.”

According to new information, however, he was “no longer assessed as being a Taliban fighter or committed to Jihad,” and, as with Parkhudin and Abdul Salim, it was also noted that “further investigation revealed no links between [him] and the rocket attack on US Fire Base Salerno, which he was suspected of being involved in,” and that “[t]he other people arrested out of the same taxi have also been assessed as having no links to the rocket attacks.”

As a result, he was “assessed as having a minimal intelligence value,” and as “a low risk as he [was] unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer or release to the control of another government.”

Also see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight 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, 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.

Two suspicious omissions: Abdullah Tabarak and Abdurahman Khadr

Of the 14 missing stories, just two are overtly suspicious. The first of these is the file for Abdullah Tabarak Ahmad (ISN 56), a Moroccan who, according to a Washington Post article in January 2003, “was one of [Osama] bin Laden’s long-time bodyguards,” and who, in order to help bin Laden to escape from the showdown with US forces in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains in December 2001, “took possession of the al-Qaeda leader’s satellite phone on the assumption that US intelligence agencies were monitoring it to get a fix on their position.” Whether or not there is any truth to this story is unknown, as the Post‘s source was a number of “senior Moroccan officials,” who have visited Guantánamo, and had interviewed Tabarak. One official said, “He agreed to be captured or die. That’s the level of his fanaticism for bin Laden. It wasn’t a lot of time, but it was enough.” Moroccan officials also stated that Tabarak, who was 43 years old at the time, “had become the ‘emir,’ or camp leader,” at Guantánamo.

One sign of Tabarak’s supposed significance is that, when representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited Guantánamo in October 2003, he was one of four prisoners they were not allowed to visit. However, the problem with this is not that they were refused access to him, but that he was no longer present at Guantánamo. Although it was reported in August 2004 that he had been released from Guantánamo at that time with four other Moroccans, it actually transpired that he had been released 13 months earlier, on July 1, 2003.

The reason for this is unknown, although in January 2006, in another article in the Washington Post, Tabarak’s attorney, Abdelfattah Zahrach, “said his client’s importance as an al-Qaeda figure ha[d] been exaggerated, although he acknowledged that Tabarak knew bin Laden and worked for one of his companies.” Zahrach stated, “He was in bin Laden’s environment, but he didn’t play an operational role. Do you think that if he was really the bodyguard of bin Laden that the Americans would have let him come back to Morocco?” In response to this question, others in Rabat who were “familiar with Tabarak’s case” told the Post that “Moroccan officials had pressed the US military for many months to hand over Tabarak, arguing that they would have a better chance of persuading him to reveal secrets about al-Qaeda.”

The truth may never be known, but Tabarak’s missing file suggests that there were some secrets that were regarded as off-limits to general readers of the Guantánamo DABs in the US intelligence circles with access to them — focused, presumably, on the 13 months between his real date of his release, and his stated date of release.

The second suspicious missing file is that of Abdurahman Khadr (ISN 990), listed as Abdul Khadr. A Canadian, and the brother of Omar Khadr (ISN 766), he was persuaded to work as a spy, as I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files:

Abdurahman was captured by Afghans in Kabul in November 2001, when he was 20 years old, and was then handed over to the Americans. Describing himself as the “black sheep” of the family, who saw no value in the radical beliefs of the rest of his family, Abdurahman agreed to work as a spy for the CIA in Kabul, and then in Guantánamo, but was told that, to protect his cover, he would have to be treated like all the other prisoners. He said that his imprisonment at Bagram — where he was stripped, photographed naked and subjected to an anal probe — was the start of “the longest and most painful ordeal of his life,” and that he “had no idea what he was getting into.”

After ten days at Bagram, he was flown to Guantánamo, where, he said, he arrived “a broken man,” and was then kept in isolation for a month before being moved to a cell near other prisoners. The plan, as he described it, was that “they could put me next to anyone that was stubborn and that wouldn’t talk and I would talk him into it. Well, it’s not that easy — lots of people won’t talk to anyone because everybody in Cuba is scared of the person next to him. I couldn’t do a lot for them.” Unable to cope with his situation, he spent the rest of his time in Guantánamo in a “luxurious” private cell, and was then sent to Bosnia, where his mission was to infiltrate radical mosques and gather information on al-Qaeda’s activities.

When the CIA wanted to send him to Iraq, however, he decided that he couldn’t take the pressure any more, and after resigning from the agency he returned to Canada, where his most salient comments concerned the prisoners in Guantánamo. He said that he told the CIA that the vast majority of the prisoners were innocent, and that it was “a huge mistake for the US military to offer large cash rewards for the capture of al-Qaeda suspects when they first arrived in Afghanistan.”

The US “enemy combatant”: Yasser Hamdi

One other missing file relates to Yasser Hamdi or Yaser Hamdi (ISN 009), identified as Himdy Yasser in the files, who was one of around 80 survivors of a massacre in the Qala-i-Janghi fort in Mazar-e-Sharif in November 2001. This came about after several hundred prisoners had surrendered, as part of the fall of the city of Kunduz, apparently on the basis that they would be allowed to return home after doing so. However, after being transported to the fort, some of the men started an uprising, because of their betrayal, or because they feared that they were about to be killed, which was then suppressed savagely. Hamdi and the other survivors hid in the basement for a week, where they were bombed and, finally, flooded.

Hamdi was initially regarded as a Saudi, even though he had told a journalist on his emergence from the basement that he was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When it finally dawned on the US authorities that they were holding an American citizen at Guantánamo, Hamdi, who retained his US citizenship, although he had moved to Saudi Arabia as a child, was immediately moved to the US mainland (on April 5, 2002), where he was one of only three US citizens or residents held as “enemy combatants” — along with Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri — and subjected to profound isolation, sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation (in other words, torture), until he was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in September 2004 — and stripped of his citizenship — after he won a landmark case in the US Supreme Court (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, in which the Court rejected the government’s attempts to detain him indefinitely without trial).

The late arrivals — in 2007 and 2008

Three other missing files relate to three of the last six prisoners brought to Guantánamo, between March 2007 and March 2008, two of whom are, according to the US authorities, regarded as “high-value detainees.”. I am unsure why these files are missing, as files are available for the three other prisoners who arrived at Guantánamo during this period.

The first of these three (and the first of the two missing “high-value detainees”) is Nashwan Abd Al-Razzaq Abd Al-Baqi, more commonly known as Abd Al-Hadi Al-Iraqi (ISN 10026), who is referred to repeatedly in the Detainee Assessment Briefs, and the third to arrive (and the other “high-value detainee”) is Muhammad Rahim (ISN 10029), an Afghan.

This is how they were described in the United Nations’ “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” a detailed report issued in February 2010 (PDF, or see here):

On 27 April 2007, the Department of Defense announced that another high-value detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, described as “a high-level member of Al-Qaida”, had been transferred to Guantánamo. On the same day, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, stated that the detainee had been transferred to Defense Department custody that week from the CIA although he “would not say where or when al-Iraqi was captured or by whom”. However, a United States intelligence official stated that al-Iraqi “had been captured late last year in an operation that involved many people in more than one country”. Another high-value detainee, Muhammad Rahim, an Afghan described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was transferred to Guantánamo on 14 March 2008. In a press release, the Department of Defense stated that, “prior to his arrival at Guantánamo Bay, he was held in CIA custody”. According to reports in Pakistani newspapers, he was captured in Lahore in August 2007.

The Government of the United States provided no further details about where the above-mentioned men had been held before their transfer to Guantánamo; however, although it is probable that al-Iraqi was held in another country, in a prison to which the CIA had access (it was reported in March 2009 that he “was captured by a foreign security service in 2006” and then handed over to the CIA), the Department of Defense itself made it clear that the CIA had been holding Muhammad Rahim, indicating that some sort of CIA “black site” was still operating.

The second to arrive (who was not regarded as a “high-value detainee”), was Inayatullah (ISN 10028), another Afghan, whose arrival at Guantánamo was announced on September 12, 2007. As I explained in an article at the time:

Captured, according to the DoD’s press release, “as a result of ongoing DoD operations in the struggle against violent extremists in Afghanistan,” the DoD claimed that Inayatullah had “admitted that he was the al-Qaeda Emir of Zahedan, Iran, and planned and directed al-Qaeda terrorist operations,” adding that he “collaborated with numerous al-Qaeda senior leaders, to include Abu Ubaydah al-Masri and Azzam, executing their instructions and personally supporting global terrorist efforts.” (Al-Masri and Azzam were not identified in the DoD’s press release, but the former is an Egyptian-born al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, and the latter is probably the American Adam Gadahn, known as Azzam the American, who has produced al-Qaeda propaganda with Ayman al-Zawahiri).

On May 18, 2011, it was reported that Inayatullah had “died of an apparent suicide,” according to a news release issued by US Southern Command. The news release also stated, “While conducting routine checks, the guards found the detainee unresponsive and not breathing. The guards immediately initiated CPR and also summoned medical personnel to the scene. After extensive lifesaving measures had been exhausted, the detainee was pronounced dead by a physician.”

As it transpired, the death could have been avoided, had the authorities been concerned to act on information that, according to the dead man’s attorney, was readily available to them. Paul Rashkind, a federal defender in Miami, explained that his client, whose real name was Hajji Nassim, “had never been known as Inayatullah anywhere but in Guantánamo, had never had a role in al-Qaeda and ran a cellphone shop in Iran near the Afghan border.” He also explained that he “suffered significant psychosis, a paralyzing psychosis beginning many years ago, long before he got to Gitmo,” and that he had previously attempted to commit suicide twice. Rashkind told the Associated Press that that he was “not permitted to provide details” about either of his client’s two previous suicide attempts, “except to say both were serious,” although he did explicitly state, “He was close to death the first time.”

Note: I wrote about the death of Hajji Nassim (aka Inayatullah) in two articles, The Only Way Out of Guantánamo Is In a Coffin and Guantánamo Suicide Was Severely Mentally Ill, And Was A Case of Mistaken Identity.

The eight others, released between 2003 and 2005

And finally, eight of the missing files seem to refer to generally Insignificant prisoners:

The first, Badshah Wali (ISN 638), an Afghan released in March 2003, is known about because he is the brother of Niaz Wali (ISN 640), also released in March 2003. As I explained in The Guantánamo Files, “Two brothers from Khost — 39-year old Niaz Wali, a cobbler, and 24-year old Badshah Wali, a taxi driver — were ‘targeted for arrest by local people, who were their enemies from another Pashtun tribe.’ On their release in March 2003, they were ‘too scared to talk about their experiences.’” The quotes are from an article, “A Tough Homecoming,” published in the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s “Afghan Recovery Report,” shortly after their release. In the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks, it was revealed for the first time that Niaz Wali (Neyaz Walijan) was seized during “a routine search” of his home because “local security forces” “discovered a large, thick hard cover book.” When “questioned about the nature of the book,” Niaz Wali “was unaware of its existence.” On the basis of this book, he was taken into US custody, and when his brother, Badshah Wali (Patcha Walijan) “freely vsited” him at his place of detention “to inquire about the book,” he was “told to mind his own business.” “Shortly thereafter,” he too was seized.

Haji Mohammed Wazir (ISN 996), a 60-year old Afghan, was released in March 2004 with 22 other Afghans. A farmer from Helmand province, he spent a year in Guantánamo and was held for two and half years in total. Speaking briefly to reporters on his release, he said, “I’m a poor and innocent man. I was in my home, unaware of Taliban and al-Qaeda, when I was caught. If I’m a Taliban or al-Qaeda I want to be punished. If I’m not, then they should compensate me. The two-and-a-half years that I have spent in pain and soreness — who is going to pay?”

Mirwais Hasan (ISN 998) is an Afghan, apparently born in 1980, who was released in March 2004, but nothing else is known about him.

Reda Fadel El-Waleeli (ISN 663), identified by the US as Fael Roda Al-Waleeli, is an Egyptian, apparently born in 1966. The first Egyptian transferred from Guantánamo to Egypt, he arrived in Cairo on July 1, 2003, and subsequently disappeared. As I explained in an article in April this year:

In October 2009, Martin Scheinin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, complained that, after a visit to Egypt in April 2009, he “regrets that the Government of Egypt did not reply to his questions on the fate of … El-Weleli,” although I was later told that UN representatives finally succeeded in tracking him down, and that he was a broken figure, and very obviously a threat to nobody, who explained that, after his return from Guantánamo, he had been held and tortured in a secret prison in Egypt for three and a half years.

Ayman Mohammad Silman Al-Amrani (ISN 169) is a Jordanian, apparently born in 1978, who was released in November 2003, but nothing else is known about him.

Hammad Ali Amno Gadallah (ISN 705), from Sudan, is the only one of these eight released after September 2004. He was freed in July 2005, and, like all the prisoners released after September 2004, was subjected to a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, whose results were released by the Pentagon in 2006. He was one of five prisoners working for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), a Kuwait-based NGO, with branches around the world, who were seized in 2002 after the Pakistani and Afghan branches of RHS were blacklisted by the US government. This is how I described his story in The Guantánamo Files:

32-year old Hamad Gadallah (released in July 2005) told the most complete story of the organization’s activities, and obviously managed to impress upon the Americans that not everyone who worked for the charity was siphoning off money for al-Qaeda. Arrested at his home on 27 May 2002, by two Americans and representatives of Pakistani intelligence and the police, he explained that he had been working for the Central Bank in Sudan, when his brother, who worked for a bank in Bangladesh, told him that the RIHS in Peshawar had a vacancy for an accountant. He took leave from his job to investigate the organization in January 2001, and, after seeing that they were “all good people, with high standards, [who] love their work, and … perform their work faithfully,” and that there were “no problems with the accountancy programme,” he handed in his notice at the bank and began working for the RIHS in March.

Refuting allegations about the organization’s inclusion in a US guide to terrorist organizations, he said, “I say that not every organization or person that is within that guide can be accused of being a terrorist. That requires a lot of evidence and proof … I’m sure that the year that I was working for the RIHS in 2001, it had nothing to do with any terrorist acts.” He added that the organization had an income of around two and a half million dollars in 2001, which came from mosques in Kuwait, and described it as a “huge organization” with one branch in Pakistan. He also explained the significance of his role and, crucially, how there were no underhand financial transactions during his time there:

Q: If your organization were transferring money to another organization, you would be aware of it?
A: That never happened.
Q: But if it had, you would know that?
A: Yes I would. Because I record everything that comes in and everything that goes out.

Sadee Eideov (ISN 665) is a Tajik, apparently born in 1953, who was released in March 2004, but nothing else is known about him.

Shirinov Ghafar Homarovich (ISN 732), also identified as Abdughaffor Shirinov, is one of three Tajiks seized in a raid on an improvised dorm in the library of Karachi University, where he was working, and where he allowed two of his compatriots to stay. Files exist for the other two — Muhibullo Umarov (Moyuballah Homaro) and Mazharuddin — and all three were released in April 2004. This was how I explained their story in The Guantánamo Files (via an article in Mother Jones), and the files for Umarov and Mazharuddin reinforce this explanation of how they were seized by mistake:

In 2006, the journalist McKenzie Funk met Umarov by chance while reporting from Tajikistan, when a farmer in the remote Obihingou valley told him, “There’s a man in the valley who has been to America. Really. He was in a prison. They made a mistake.” After tracking Umarov down to his tiny, mud-walled home, Funk heard how, during the civil war, when he was 14 years old, his father took him and his two younger brothers to Pakistan and installed them in madrassas for the duration of the war.

Six years later, he returned to his home village, diploma in hand, and began helping the family with their harvest of apples, potatoes and walnuts, “but then America bombed Afghanistan and the whole world went crazy.” Sent back to Pakistan to raise money to bring his brothers home, he found odd jobs in the bazaar in Peshawar and on 13 May 2002, in search of a better job, set off for Karachi, where his friend Abdughaffor Shirinov, who was working at the library, had a place for him to stay. Mazharuddin was also staying there, and at night the three men hung their T-shirts on the bookcases and slept on thin carpets on the floor.

Six days after his arrival, in the wake of Pakistan’s first suicide bombing, Pakistani intelligence agents raided the library, using the men’s T-shirts to tie them up and blindfold their eyes, and took them away. Held for ten days by the Pakistanis, Umarov was moved to secret prison — in what appeared to be a luggage factory — that was run by Americans, where he was questioned about al-Qaeda and was locked them up for ten days in a concrete cubicle that was only a metre long and half a metre wide, and was “insufferably hot.” “All my thoughts were about how my life was going to end,” he told the journalist. He was then returned to his friends in the Pakistani jail, and the following day the three men were transported to Kandahar.

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 July 2010, 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.

As published exclusively on WikiLeaks.

However, as in the majority of the cases in which the prisoners have lost, there was nothing in the ruling that could be construed as representing the delivery of justice after the eight and a half years that al-Bihani has spent in US custody, as he has been consigned to indefinite detention in Guantánamo, on an apparently legal basis, despite the fact that there is no evidence that he ever took up arms against anyone, or had any contact with anyone involved in preparing, facilitating or supporting acts of international terrorism.

Moreover, in examining his habeas corpus petition, Judge Walton appeared to remain blissfully unaware that, despite being, at most, a lowly foot soldier, al-Bihani was held in a variety of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan before his transfer to Guantánamo, where he was subjected to torture.

As revealed in the background to al-Bihani’s case, accepted by both al-Bihani and the government, he cut a depressing figure prior to traveling to Afghanistan in the summer of 2000. As Judge Walton explained, “During the time he resided in Saudi Arabia, the petitioner was abusing various drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, hashish, crystal methamphetamine, and depression pills,” Judge Walton also noted, “The petitioner began to ‘increase [his] intake of alcohol and drugs,’ when his fiancee ended their engagement due to her concerns that ‘she would fall out of grace with her father if she married a Yemeni against his wishes.’”

Apparently persuaded to travel to Afghanistan by his brother Mansour, described as “an experienced fighter who fought against the Russians in Chechnya,” and who “had close relationships with senior Chechen fighters and other individuals who were engaged in training men to fight in Chechnya and in other countries,” he traveled to Afghanistan with his brother, where, as Judge Walton concluded, he “received, at a minimum, weapons training” at the al-Farouq training camp, established by the Afghan warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the early 1990s, but associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before the 9/11 attacks, and also stayed in Afghan guest houses reportedly associated with al-Qaeda.

In authorizing al-Bihani’s ongoing detention, Judge Walton gave weight to al-Bihani’s admission that he “became, and was part of, al-Qaeda at least during the five months period he was training at al-Farouq,” even though he also noted that his training was far from rigorous. “Although he was enrolled at al-Farouq for approximately five months,” Judge Walton explained, “he only ‘received approximately two months of training,’ because he would train for approximately ‘a week or two weeks’ before feigning illness in order to leave and ‘do hashish or tobacco.’” Judge Walton added that al-Bihani “repeated this cycle several times,” and also explained, “Towards the end of his time at al-Farouq, the trainers at the camp informed him that he was ‘not ready physically because [he] keep[s] leaving and going back, — adding that the trainers reportedly “concluded that he was of ‘no use,’ and ‘they kick[ed him] out of the camp.’”

Personally, I find it troubling that an obviously drug-addled, inconsistent and unreliable recruit can nevertheless be regarded as “part of” al-Qaeda, as it tends to render meaningless the supposed threat posed by al-Qaeda if useless recruits can legitimately be held, even when, as with al-Bihani, they had no knowledge of international terrorism, and not even a demonstrable commitment to al-Qaeda’s military activities in Afghanistan.

Judge Walton, however, seemed unconcerned that there appeared to be no basis for concluding that al-Bihani had ever posed a threat to the United States. Proceeding to an explanation of how he was captured, he explained that, in late 2001, having become separated from his brother Mansour (who was “ill” and was transported to Quetta in “a tractor-trailer truck” for those “who appeared sick or injured”), al-Bihani traveled through Pakistan to Iran, “with a group of other men.” Near Zahedan, he was supposed to be reunited with his brother, and with Hamza al-Qa’eity, who ran a guest house in Kabul described by al-Bihani as “one that jihad fighters used as a transition point.” However, as Judge Walton explained, at “the exact time” that al-Qa’eity arrived to pick him up from the house of an Iranian family, where he was staying, the Iranian police — or intelligence services — “descended on the house and apprehended” him — and, presumably, Hamza al-Qa’eity as well.

The hidden story of ten men rendered from Iran to Afghanistan — including Tawfiq al-Bihani

As I mentioned in the introduction to this article, what Judge Walton appeared not to know — or ignored in his ruling — was the fact that, after al-Bihani was subsequently “flown to Afghanistan” and “transferred to United States custody,” he was held in a variety of secret CIA prisons.

This information is readily accessible, because I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files that al-Bihani was one of ten men seized in Iran who were flown to Afghanistan and then handed over to US forces. One of these men, Aminullah Tukhi, an Afghan released from Guantánamo in December 2007, explained that six Arabs, two Afghans, an Uzbek and a Tajik had been delivered to the Americans, and I was able to identify six of them — Tukhi, Tawfiq al-Bihani, Walid al-Qadasi, a Yemeni transferred to the custody of his home government in April 2004, Wassam al-Ourdoni, a Jordanian released in April 2004, Rafiq Alhami, a Tunisian released in Slovakia in January this year, and Hussein Almerfedi, a Yemeni who won his habeas petition in July this year. Unaccounted for are the other four men mentioned by Aminullah Tukhi — an Arab, an Afghan, the Uzbek and the Tajik — although it seems possible that one of the disappeared was Hamza al-Qa’eity.

Confirmation that al-Bihani was one of the men came from an unexpected source. Abu Yahya al-Libi, one of four prisoners who escaped from Bagram in July 2005, described, in a post on an obscure French language website, which has since disappeared from the Internet, 12 prisoners who were held with him in Bagram, one of whom was Tawfiq al-Bihani. He also explained how all the men had passed through a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, where they had endured “hard torture,” and added, in al-Bihani’s case, that he was captured in Iran at the start of 2002, that he had met him in June 2002 in a prison he identified as “Rissat 2,” and that he was taken to another prison in September 2002, after which he never saw him again, and thought that he may have been transferred to Guantánamo.

Al-Libi also explained that Tawfiq al-Bihani thought that his brother Ghaleb, who had also been in Afghanistan, had been killed, but that the Americans had told him that he had been captured — and it later emerged that this was correct. Ghaleb al-Bihani lost his habeas corpus petition in January 2009, on the basis that he was a cook for Arab forces supporting the Taliban, and also had his appeal denied in January this year, consigning him to the same form of court-approved indefinite detention as his brother.

The torture in secret CIA prisons of three men rendered from Iran to Afghanistan

The accounts of three of the men rendered from Iran to Afghanistan are publicly available, and they are, to be blunt, horrific. Al-Ourdoni, a missionary seized with his wife and new-born child, explained after his release that his American captors “put me in jail under circumstances that I can only recall with dread. I lived under unimaginable conditions that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.” He said that he was first placed in an underground prison for 77 days, and stated, “this room was so dark that we couldn’t distinguish nights and days. There was no window, and we didn’t see the sun once during the whole time.” He added that he was then moved to “prison number three”, where the food was so bad that his weight dropped substantially, and was then held in Bagram for 40 days before being flown to Guantánamo.

In an interview with a UN rapporteur, Walid al-Qadasi provided the following explanation of his treatment, which, like al-Ourdoni’s account, was included in a major UN report on secret detention earlier this year:

He was held in a prison in Kabul. During US custody, officials cut his clothes with scissors, left him naked and took photos of him before giving him Afghan clothes to wear. They then handcuffed his hands behind his back, blindfolded him and started interrogating him. The apparently Egyptian interrogator, accusing him of belonging to al-Qaeda, threatened him with death. He was put in an underground cell measuring approximately two meters by three meters with very small windows. He shared the cell with ten inmates. They had to sleep in shifts due to lack of space and received food only once a day. He spent three months there without ever leaving the cell. After three months, Walid al-Qadasi was transferred to Bagram, where he was interrogated for one month.

In a lawsuit filed in April 2009, Rafiq Alhami stated that, for a year, he was held in three CIA “dark sites,” where “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and where, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.” Moreover, at Guantánamo, he told a military review board that one of the prisons was the “Dark Prison” near Kabul, which I have previously described as “a medieval torture dungeon with the addition of ear-splittingly loud music and noise, which was pumped into the cells 24 hours a day,” based on accounts by prisoners who were held there, including the British resident Binyam Mohamed, who described his time there as “the worst days of his captivity” — worse than the 18 months in Morocco, where the CIA’s proxy torturers regularly sliced his genitals with a razorblade.

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

The torture of Tawfiq al-Bihani

However while Judge Walton may not have come across my book, or the inclusion of this information in the UN report on secret detention earlier this year, I can’t understand how he would not have known about al-Bihani’s treatment from his lawyer, George M. Clarke III, because, in the book The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison, Outside the Law, published last year, Clarke reproduced a letter from al-Bihani in which he provided a detailed explanation of what had happened to him after he was delivered to Afghanistan from Iran.

In his letter, al-Bihani explained that he was initially held in a vile Afghan prison in Kabul, where he and the other prisoners from Iran were hidden from Red Cross representatives until one of their fellow prisoners informed them of their existence. His first encounters with US agents — he believes they were from the FBI — took place in this prison, and he described his first interrogation as follows:

I was handcuffed behind and they put a hood on my head so that I could not see anything. When I entered the interrogation room, the American guards pushed me down to the ground in a very savage manner. They started to cut my clothing with scissors. They undressed me completely and I was nude. They made me sit on a chair and it was very cold. I was also afraid and terrorized because the guards were aiming their weapons towards me. The interrogator put his personal gun on my forehead threatening to kill me.

Al-Bihani explained that he stayed in this prison for around ten weeks, and was then moved to another prison where he was held in solitary confinement for “approximately five months and ten days.” He added that the guards were Afghan, that they handed out “very bad treatment,” and that “The interrogation was also very savage.” He was then moved to a third prison, which appears to have been the “Dark Prison,” and en route US soldiers “started to hit me and strangle me, they would put a rope around my neck and I was about to die.” This is his description of the “Dark Prison”:

This was absolutely the worst prison. It was a very dark prison and there was no light, no bed or a carpet, the floor was semi cement. The restraints on my feet were very tight; they put me into a cell and kept me hanging tied to the wall for almost ten days. […]

The irritating music 24 hours a day was very loud and hard banging on the door. When I used to go for interrogations, I was unable to walk because of the restraints on my legs and tightness on my feet.  Would fall down to the ground and scream that I cannot walk. They would pick me up from the ground and I would walk with them while they were hitting me on the way to the interrogation until I would bleed from my feet. When I would fall to the ground, they would drag me while I am on the ground. Then they would bring me back to the cell and sprinkle cold water on me. Sometimes they would put a weapon on my head threatening to kill me using some provocative statements which I cannot mention in this letter.

After ten days, they brought me down from the hanging position and made me sit on the floor. Then they tied my hands upwards for approximately one month so that I could not lie down on the floor for comfort, therefore I was unable to sleep except for quarter of an hour every day.

After one month and ten days, they removed all my restraints, however I was unable to rest or sleep because of extreme hunger and cold and the loud irritating music and the banging on the door. I stayed in this prison for approximately two months and a half and I had no idea whether it is day or night as it was extremely dark and oppressive conditions.

After this, al-Bihani was moved to Bagram, where, he said, “the treatment was very bad there as well,” and was then flown to Guantánamo.

A bleak conclusion

Beyond a rather obvious question raised by the accounts above — did Tawfiq al-Bihani confess that he was “part of” al-Qaeda (when he so obviously wasn’t) because of the torture to which he was subjected in Afghanistan? — what this apparently overlooked torture account most vividly and balefully demonstrates is how effortlessly the torture of al-Bihani has become irrelevant to his case.

The exposure of torture has derailed other habeas petitions challenged by the government — in, for example, the cases of Mohamed Jawad and Fouad al-Rabiah (who were subsequently released), Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who is still held, and, less successfully, in the cases of Saeed Hatim and Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman (whose successful petitions are being appealed by the government).

However, in Tawfiq al-Bihani’s case it is difficult to escape the conclusion that, even had Judge Walton known, or chosen to pay attention to these reports, it would not have fundamentally altered his conclusion that this failed recruit was sufficiently involved with al-Qaeda to justify his ongoing detention. That, as I concluded above, already demonstrates that the classification process for determining who may be legally detained is far too loose, but when evidence that al-Bihani was tortured in secret prisons is also removed from the picture, the end result is far bleaker.

Somewhere along the line, questions need to be raised not only regarding the justification for continuing to hold insignificant individuals at Guantánamo who never raised arms against anyone and were not involved in terrorism, but also regarding the ease with which detailed information about the torture of prisoners in a series of secret prisons run by the CIA can be so thoroughly ignored that Judge Walton failed to mention it at all.

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 and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners. Cross-posted on Firedoglake, The Public Record, The Smirking Chimp, Anti-Fascist Encyclopedia, Antemedius, Op-Ed News and Uruknet.

For an overview of all the habeas rulings, including links to all my articles, and to the judges’ unclassified opinions, see: Guantánamo Habeas Results: The Definitive List. For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases, see: Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history and Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? (both December 2007), The Supreme Court’s Guantánamo ruling: what does it mean? (June 2008), Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland (Uighurs’ first court victory, June 2008), What’s Happening with the Guantánamo cases? (July 2008), Government Says Six Years Is Not Long Enough To Prepare Evidence (September 2008), From Guantánamo to the United States: The Story of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs (October 2008), Guantánamo Uyghurs’ resettlement prospects skewered by Justice Department lies (October 2008), Guilt By Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims (November 2008), Is Robert Gates Guilty of Perjury in Guantánamo Torture Case? (December 2008), A New Year Message to Barack Obama: Free the Guantánamo Uighurs (January 2009), The Top Ten Judges of 2008 (January 2009), No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo (January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (January 2009), How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo (January 2009), Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (February 2009), Bad News And Good News For The Guantánamo Uighurs (February 2009), The Nobodies Formerly Known As Enemy Combatants (March 2009), Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied (April 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Judge Condemns “Mosaic” Of Guantánamo Intelligence, And Unreliable Witnesses (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies (July 2009), Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (July 2009), Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think (July 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave (August 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Two): Obama’s Shame (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame (August 2009), No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings (September 2009), First Guantánamo Prisoner To Lose Habeas Hearing Appeals Ruling (September 2009), A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions (September 2009), 75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today (September 2009), Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari (October 2009), Justice Department Pointlessly Gags Guantánamo Lawyer (November 2009), Judge Orders Release Of Algerian From Guantánamo (But He’s Not Going Anywhere) (November 2009), Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait (December 2009), What Does It Take To Get Out Of Obama’s Guantánamo? (December 2009), “Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition (December 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Unwilling Yemeni Recruit (December 2009), Serious Problems With Obama’s Plan To Move Guantánamo To Illinois (December 2009), Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights (January 2010), Fear and Paranoia as Guantánamo Marks its Eighth Anniversary (January 2010), Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force Announces Indefinite Detention (January 2010), The Black Hole of Guantánamo (March 2010), Guantánamo Uighurs Back in Legal Limbo (March 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: The Torture Victim and the Taliban Recruit (April 2010), An Insignificant Yemeni at Guantánamo Loses His Habeas Petition (April 2010), With Regrets, Judge Allows Indefinite Detention at Guantánamo of a Medic (April 2010), Mohamedou Ould Salahi: How a Judge Demolished the US Government’s Al-Qaeda Claims (April 2010), Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantánamo Based Solely on Torture (April 2010), Why Judges Can’t Free Torture Victims from Guantánamo (April 2010), How Binyam Mohamed’s Torture Was Revealed in a US Court (May 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Consigning Soldiers to Oblivion (May 2010), Judge Denies Habeas Petition of an Ill and Abused Libyan in Guantánamo (May 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Russian Caught in Abu Zubaydah’s Web (May 2010), No Escape from Guantánamo: Uighurs Lose Again in US Court (June 2010), Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo? (June 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: 2 Years, 50 Cases, 36 Victories for the Prisoners (June 2010), Obama Thinks About Releasing Innocent Yemenis from Guantánamo (June 2010), Calling for US Accountability on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (June 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Yemeni Seized in Iran, Held in Secret CIA Prisons (July 2010), Innocent Student Finally Released from Guantánamo (July 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Prisoners Win 3 out of 4 Cases, But Lose 5 out of 6 in Court of Appeals (Part One) (July 2010), Obama and US Courts Repatriate Algerian from Guantánamo Against His Will; May Be Complicit in Torture (July 2010), In Abu Zubaydah’s Case, Court Relies on Propaganda and Lies (July 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Prisoners Win 3 out of 4 Cases, But Lose 5 out of 6 in Court of Appeals (Part Two) (July 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Mentally Ill Yemeni; 2nd Judge Approves Detention of Minor Taliban Recruit (August 2010), Judge Denies Habeas Petition of Afghan Shopkeeper at Guantánamo (September 2010), Nine Years After 9/11, US Court Concedes that International Laws of War Restrict President’s Wartime Powers (September 2010), Fayiz Al-Kandari, A Kuwaiti Aid Worker in Guantánamo, Loses His Habeas Petition (September 2010), Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose: The Betrayal of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (September 2010), First Guantánamo Habeas Appeal to US Supreme Court (Fawzi al-Odah, October 2010).

Judge Friedman’s unclassified opinion has not yet been released, so it is not, at present, possible to know why he granted Hussein Almerfedi’s habeas petition, but clues can be found in publicly available documents released by the Pentagon, which I drew on for my explanation of his story in my book The Guantánamo Files.

Extraordinarily, Almerfedi was one of ten prisoners transferred to Afghan custody by the Iranian government in early 2002, and then handed on to US forces, in circumstances that have never been explained. One of the ten, an Afghan taxi driver named Aminullah Tukhi, who was released from Guantánamo in December 2007, said that the Iranians had delivered six Arabs, two Afghans, an Uzbek and a Tajik to the Afghans.

Although six of these men ended up in Guantánamo, it is not known what happened to the other four — one of the Arabs, one of the Afghans, and the Uzbek and the Tajik.

However, it would be surprising if their stories ended well, because Aminullah Tukhi, Hussein Almerfedi and the four other men were all held in secret prisons run by the CIA before being sent to Guantánamo, even though most, if not all of them appear to have been nothing more than random foreigners seized opportunistically.

Hussein Almerfedi’s story

In Guantánamo, Almerfedi stated that he had been a student in Yemen, and had traveled to Pakistan in the hope of using members of Jamaat-al-Tablighi, an enormous missionary organization with headquarters in Pakistan, to help him emigrate to Europe. As the New York Times explained on Thursday, he said “he left Yemen because life was intolerable there and that he wanted to go to Europe and seek asylum in a more open, Western society.”

When he found that the Tablighi organization was unable to help him, he “paid a smuggler to take him through Iran and into Turkey and then Greece,” but was seized in Tehran. He added that “he had never been in Afghanistan until the Iranians handed him over to the United States military.” This was disputed by the US authorities, but in an unconvincing manner that was undoubtedly dismissed by Judge Friedman. Unidentified sources — often revealed in previous cases to have been other prisoners subjected to torture or other forms of coercion — alleged that Almerfedi “was seen” at al-Qaeda guesthouses in Afghanistan and described him as “an old junior al-Qaeda member,” and, in desperation, the authorities resorted to declaring, as they have in numerous Guantánamo cases, that although Jamaat-al-Tablighi, which has millions of members, is a “legitimate” organization, it was also used “as cover to mask travel and activities of terrorists including members of al-Qaeda.” This allegation is so vague and sweeping that the authorities might as well have substituted the word “Islam” for “Jamaat-al-Tablighi,” and thereby have attempted to justify imprisoning any Muslim who came into US custody.

Torture in secret CIA prisons

In Guantánamo, Hussein Almerfedi also explained that he was held for a total of 14 months in three prisons in Afghanistan — “two under Afghan control and one under US control,” although he added that they all “seemed to be under US supervision.” One of these prisons was Bagram, and another was the “Dark Prison” near Kabul. Almerfedi stated that he was only interrogated on three occasions in Afghanistan, and that on each occasion he was told that the authorities knew he was innocent and would soon be released.

Almerfedi’s claims that he was not tortured tend to reinforce the suggestion that he was a nobody seized so that he could be sold to US forces — or used as a pawn in some sort of diplomatic deal — as most of the other men seized with him who ended up in Guantánamo have stated that they were tortured extensively in CIA custody, as described in a recent UN report on secret detention:

Wassam al-Ourdoni, a Jordanian released in April 2004, was seized with his wife and child while returning from a religious visit to Pakistan. In 2006, he told Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, that the CIA “put me in jail under circumstances that I can only recall with dread. I lived under unimaginable conditions that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.” He said that he was first placed in an underground prison for 77 days, in a cell that “was so dark that we couldn’t distinguish nights and days,” and was then moved to “prison number three”, where the food was so bad that his weight dropped substantially.

Walid al-Qadasi, a Yemeni transferred to Yemeni custody in April 2004, was held in the “Dark Prison” near Kabul. He told UN representatives that US officials “cut his clothes with scissors, left him naked and took photos of him before giving him Afghan clothes to wear. They then handcuffed his hands behind his back, blindfolded him and started interrogating him. The apparently Egyptian interrogator, accusing him of belonging to al-Qaeda, threatened him with death. He was put in an underground cell measuring approximately two meters by three meters with very small windows. He shared the cell with ten inmates. They had to sleep in shifts due to lack of space and received food only once a day. He spent three months there without ever leaving the cell.”

Rafiq al-Hami, a Tunisian released in Slovakia in January this year, explained in Guantánamo that he was held in secret prisons for “about a one-year period, transferring from one place to another. I was tortured for about three months in a prison called the Prison of Darkness or the Dark Prison.” He added, “Back in Afghanistan I would be tortured. I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold … I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray. I was not allowed to fast during Ramadan. These things are documented. You have them.”

No release from Guantánamo

Despite Hussein Almerfedi’s victory in court, which means that the Guantánamo prisoners have now won 73 percent of the cases decided, this success rate will mean little to him, as ten other prisoners who have won their habeas petitions are still held.

Moreover, as a Yemeni, Almerfedi is in an extraordinary, and, frankly, unjustifiable position, apparently doomed to be held for an unknown amount of time (even if the government does not appeal the ruling) because of a moratorium on releasing any Yemenis from Guantánamo that was issued by President Obama in January.

In a craven display of capitulation to political bullying, the President allowed critics to assert that, because the failed Christmas Day plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, had apparently been recruited in Yemen, it was acceptable not to release any Yemenis from Guantánamo — even if they had been cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration, by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, and by a US court, because no Yemeni could be trusted, and they were all potential terrorists.

The President did not use these words of course, but the subtext of his decision was unmistakable to anyone prepared to look beyond the bullish rhetoric at the time about Yemen as a failed state, which might need a good dose of US military aggression to sort it out.

When President Obama issued his moratorium, two Yemenis who had won their habeas petitions were still held, although one of these cases — that of Mohammed al-Adahi — had been appealed by the government (and was won today), and since the moratorium three more Yemenis (including Hussein Almerfedi) have won their petitions, putting the administration in a quandary of its own making.

Two weeks ago, government spokesmen told the Washington Post that, in the case of one of these men — Mohammed Hassan Odaini, a student seized in a house raid in Pakistan in March 2002, who was just a guest of other students on that particular night — the administration was prepared to lift the moratorium. One of the spokesmen stated that this was because senior officials were “comfortable” with making an exception for Odaini “because of the guy’s background, his family and where he comes from in Yemen,” thereby admitting that the perception of a prisoner’s family background is now more important than whether he is innocent or not. However, it was also because he was so clearly an innocent man seized by mistake and held for eight years that, for a change, it was embarrassing having to try to justify his detention. “This is a bad case to argue,” one of the officials explained. “There is nothing there. The bottom line is: We don’t have anything on this kid.”

Even so, Odaini was not released until today, even though it beggared belief that the US military could not spare one plane to accomplish the task of returning him immediately to his family. Moreover, the administration must now grapple with further problems relating to its moratorium, as highlighted by Judge Friedman in the case of Hussein Almerfedi.

Defending the detention of prisoners already cleared for release

In the New York Times, Charlie Savage explained that the administration was now in a truly ridiculous place because “[t]he suspension on transfers meant that habeas corpus lawsuits that had been frozen since the detainees were due to be released anyway started to move forward, putting the Justice Department in the position of fighting to keep the detainees imprisoned.” In other words, the Justice Department is arguing in court that the administration should be allowed to continue holding men that it has already conceded it has no reason to hold.

The scale of this problem is extraordinary. In its review of the prisoners’ cases last year, Obama’s Task Force approved 66 of the remaining 97 Yemenis for release, although 30 were put in a novel category — “conditional” detention — pending an improvement in the security situation in Yemen. Seven of the remaining 36 were freed last year, leaving 29 who may well have been freed had it not been for the moratorium.

Three weeks ago, the officials who spoke to the Washington Post acknowledged that these men presented a problem for the administration. One of the spokesmen stated that President Obama “may come under further pressure to quickly release Yemenis besides Odaini,” because “As many as 20 more Yemenis could be ordered released by the courts for lack of evidence to justify their continued detention.” The official added, “There is a group of Yemenis who are going to win their habeas cases. Some of them will not be as clear as this case, but some will be, and that poses a real dilemma.”

According to Charlie Savage, the truth may be even bleaker for the administration. Savage noted that all 59 of the men cleared for release by the Task Force “present weak cases for continued detention,” and secured advice from Robert Chesney, a national security law expert at the University of Texas, who explained that the moratorium had created “a difficult policy dilemma”:

If the administration lifts the moratorium to avoid losing those cases, it could be attacked by conservatives for sending detainees to Yemen whom it had not been ordered to release. But if it keeps the moratorium, it could face a string of defeats that will undercut its effort to keep holding other detainees.

Chesney added:

The coverage of the Odaini case made them look ridiculous. Imagine them experiencing some 50-plus individual defeats. By the time they are done, the narrative of the innocent detainee being blindly or stupidly detained by the administration would be so entrenched that there would be real strategic harm to the administration’s case that there are people they actually need to and can justify keeping in military detention.

Ridiculous, blind, stupid: These are hard words to have directed at you if you’re an administration struggling to clean up a mess inherited from the previous President, but when courage and principles are lacking — and at stake is the freedom of men unjustly deprived of their liberty for up to eight and a half years — the words are entirely appropriate.

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 and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation (as “Freeing the Innocent from Guantánamo”). Cross-posted on Eurasia Review, Campaign for Liberty, Uruknet, New Left Project, Rebel News and GCN.

For an overview of all the habeas rulings, including links to all my articles, and to the judges’ unclassified opinions, see: Guantánamo Habeas Results: The Definitive List. For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases, see: Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history and Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? (both December 2007), The Supreme Court’s Guantánamo ruling: what does it mean? (June 2008), Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland (Uighurs’ first court victory, June 2008), What’s Happening with the Guantánamo cases? (July 2008), Government Says Six Years Is Not Long Enough To Prepare Evidence (September 2008), From Guantánamo to the United States: The Story of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs (October 2008), Guantánamo Uyghurs’ resettlement prospects skewered by Justice Department lies (October 2008), Guilt By Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims (November 2008), Is Robert Gates Guilty of Perjury in Guantánamo Torture Case? (December 2008), A New Year Message to Barack Obama: Free the Guantánamo Uighurs (January 2009), The Top Ten Judges of 2008 (January 2009), No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo (January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (January 2009), How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo (January 2009), Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (February 2009), Bad News And Good News For The Guantánamo Uighurs (February 2009), The Nobodies Formerly Known As Enemy Combatants (March 2009), Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied (April 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Judge Condemns “Mosaic” Of Guantánamo Intelligence, And Unreliable Witnesses (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies (July 2009), Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (July 2009), Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think (July 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave (August 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Two): Obama’s Shame (August 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame (August 2009), No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings (September 2009), First Guantánamo Prisoner To Lose Habeas Hearing Appeals Ruling (September 2009), A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions (September 2009), 75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today (September 2009), Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari (October 2009), Justice Department Pointlessly Gags Guantánamo Lawyer (November 2009), Judge Orders Release Of Algerian From Guantánamo (But He’s Not Going Anywhere) (November 2009), Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait (December 2009), What Does It Take To Get Out Of Obama’s Guantánamo? (December 2009), “Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition (December 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Unwilling Yemeni Recruit (December 2009), Serious Problems With Obama’s Plan To Move Guantánamo To Illinois (December 2009), Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights (January 2010), Fear and Paranoia as Guantánamo Marks its Eighth Anniversary (January 2010), Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force Announces Indefinite Detention (January 2010), The Black Hole of Guantánamo (March 2010), Guantánamo Uighurs Back in Legal Limbo (March 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: The Torture Victim and the Taliban Recruit (April 2010), An Insignificant Yemeni at Guantánamo Loses His Habeas Petition (April 2010), With Regrets, Judge Allows Indefinite Detention at Guantánamo of a Medic (April 2010), Mohamedou Ould Salahi: How a Judge Demolished the US Government’s Al-Qaeda Claims (April 2010), Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantánamo Based Solely on Torture (April 2010), Why Judges Can’t Free Torture Victims from Guantánamo (April 2010), How Binyam Mohamed’s Torture Was Revealed in a US Court (May 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Consigning Soldiers to Oblivion (May 2010), Judge Denies Habeas Petition of an Ill and Abused Libyan in Guantánamo (May 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Russian Caught in Abu Zubaydah’s Web (May 2010), No Escape from Guantánamo: Uighurs Lose Again in US Court (June 2010), Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo? (June 2010).

Also see: Justice extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror (April 2009), Judge Rules That Afghan “Rendered” To Bagram In 2002 Has No Rights (July 2009), Bagram Isn’t The New Guantánamo, It’s The Old Guantánamo (August 2009), Obama Brings Guantánamo And Rendition To Bagram (And Not The Geneva Conventions) and Is Bagram Obama’s New Secret Prison? (both September 2009), Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List (January 2010), Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions (February 2010), The Black Hole of Bagram (May 2010), What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part Two): Executive Detention, Rendition, Review Boards, Released Prisoners and Trials (June 2010).

I do, however, urge everyone to read the whole report, because the introduction and conclusions are important, as are the sections establishing the legal approach to secret detention and its historical context, the section detailing current practices in 25 other countries worldwide, and the annexes, which contain government responses to a questionnaire about secret detention, and a number of case studies.

Given the length of this section of the report (pp. 43-89), I’m publishing it in three parts. The first, published here, provided an introduction, and dealt with “The ‘high-value detainee’ programme and CIA secret detention facilities,” the second, published below, looks at “CIA detention facilities or facilities operated jointly with United States military in battlefield zones,” and the third looks at “Proxy detention sites,” “Complicity in the practice of secret detention” and “Secret detention and the Obama administration.”

Please note that I have inserted hyperlinks where possible. However, the original report contains footnotes, and not all of these provide links to websites. In most cases, I have added the information contained in the footnotes in square brackets, but for full details, please see the original.

Excerpts from the UN “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” February 2010

Prepared by Martin Scheinin, the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Manfred Nowak, the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Shaheen Ali, the vice-chair of the Working Group on arbitrary detention, and Jeremy Sarkin, the chair of the Working Group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.

B. CIA detention facilities or facilities operated jointly with United States military in battlefield zones

131. Although it is still not possible to identify all 28 of the CIA’s acknowledged high-value detainees, the figures quoted in a memo of the Office of Legal Counsel of 30 May 2005 written by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stephen G. Bradbury [PDF] indicate that the other 66 prisoners in the CIA programme were regarded as less significant. Some of them were subsequently handed over to the United States military and transferred to Guantanamo, while others were rendered to the custody of their home countries or other countries. In very few cases were they released.

1. Afghanistan

132. Outside of the specific “high-value detainee” programme, most detainees were held in a variety of prisons in Afghanistan. Three of these are well-known: a secret prison at Bagram airbase, reportedly identified as “the Hangar” [See also the interview with Murat Kurnaz (annex II, case 14)], and two secret prisons near Kabul, known as the “dark prison” and the “salt pit”. During an interview held with the experts, Bisher al-Rawi indicated that, in the dark prison, there were no lights, heating or decoration. His cell was about 5 x 9 feet with a solid steel door and a hatch towards the bottom of it. He only had a bucket to use as a toilet, an old piece of carpet and a rusty steel bar across the width of the cell to hang people from. All the guards wore hoods with small eye holes, and they never spoke. Very loud music was played continuously. He also indicated that he had been subjected to sleep deprivation for up to three days and received threats. Binyam Mohamed provided a similar account to the experts [see annex II, case 18], as did the lawyer of Khaled El-Masri [annex II, case 9] and Suleiman Abdallah [annex II, case 2]. The experts heard allegations about three lesser-known prisons, including one in the Panjshir valley, north of Kabul, and two others identified as Rissat and Rissat 2, but it was not yet possible to verify these allegations. Of the prisoners identified as having been held in secret CIA custody (in addition to the above-mentioned high-value detainees), seven were eventually released and four escaped from Bagram in July 2005, namely Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan; Omar al-Faruq, a Kuwaiti, captured in Bogor, Indonesia, in 2002; Muhammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani, a Saudi, reportedly [re-]captured in Khost province, Afghanistan, in November 2006; and Abdullah Hashimi, a Syrian, also known as Abu Abdullah al-Shami. Five prisoners were reportedly returned to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in 2006: Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi [see para. 146 below]; Hassan Raba’i and Khaled al-Sharif, both captured in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2003, who had “spent time in a CIA prison in Afghanistan”; Abdallah al-Sadeq, seized in a covert CIA operation in Thailand in the spring of 2004; and Abu Munder al-Saadi, both held briefly before being rendered to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. In May 2009, Human Rights Watch reported that its representatives briefly met Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi on a visit to Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, although he refused to be interviewed. Human Rights Watch interviewed four other men, who claimed that, “before they were sent to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, United States forces had tortured them in detention centers in Afghanistan, and supervised their torture in Pakistan and Thailand”. One of the four was Hassan Raba’i, also known as Mohamed Ahmad Mohamed al-Shoroeiya, who stated that, in mid-2003, in a place he believed was Bagram prison in Afghanistan, “the interpreters who directed the questions to us did it with beatings and insults. They used cold water, ice water. They put us in a tub with cold water. We were forced [to go] for months without clothes. They brought a doctor at the beginning. He put my leg in a plaster. One of the methods of interrogation was to take the plaster off and stand on my leg”.

133. The released detainees are:

• Laid Saidi, an Algerian seized in the United Republic of Tanzania on 10 May 2003, was handed over to Malawians in plain clothes who were accompanied by two middle-aged Caucasian men wearing jeans and T-shirts. Shortly after the expulsion, a lawyer representing Mr. Saidi’s wife filed an affidavit with a Tanzanian court, saying that immigration documents showed that Mr. Saidi had been deported through the border between Kasumulu, United Republic of Tanzania, and Malawi. He was held for a week in a detention facility in the mountains of Malawi, then rendered to Afghanistan, where he was held in the “dark prison”, the “salt pit” and another unidentified prison. About a year after he was seized, he was flown to Tunisia, where he was detained for another 75 days, before being returned to Algeria, where he was released.

• Three Yemenis — Salah Nasser Salim Ali Darwish, seized in Indonesia in October 2003, Mohammed al-Asad and Mohammed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah — were held in a number of CIA detention facilities until their return to Yemen in May 2005, where they continued to be held, apparently at the request of the United States authorities. Mr. Bashmilah was detained by Jordanian intelligence agents in October 2003, when he was in Jordan to assist his mother who was having an operation. From 21 to 26 October 2003, Mr. Bashmilah was detained without charge and subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including prolonged beatings and being threatened with electric shocks and the rape of his mother and wife [see Declaration of Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in support of plaintiffs’ opposition to the motion of the United States to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, civil action No. 5:07-cv-02798 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division]. A communication was sent by the special rapporteurs on torture and on human rights while countering terrorism to the Governments of the United States, Indonesia, Yemen and Jordan on the cases of Bashmilah and Salim Ali, who were both detained and tortured in Jordan [E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.1, paras. 93, 126, 525 and 550]. Only the latter country responded, declaring that no record showing that the two men had been arrested for the violations of either the penal, disciplinary or administrative codes, and that they did not have documented files indicating that they posed a security concern, eliminating the possibility of their arrest for what may be described as terrorism [A/HRC/4/33/Add.1, para. 123]. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention adopted its opinion No. 47/2005 (Yemen) on the case on 30 November 2005, declaring their detention to be arbitrary as being devoid of any legal basis. In its reply to the allegations, the Government of Yemen confirmed that Mr. Bashmilah and Mr. Salim Ali had been handed over to Yemen by the United States. According to the Government, they had been held in a security police facility because of their alleged involvement in terrorist activities related to Al-Qaida. The Government added that the competent authorities were still dealing with the case pending receipt of the persons’ files from the United States authorities in order to transfer them to the Prosecutor [A/HRC/4/40/Add.1, para. 15].

• Khaled El-Masri, a German seized on the border of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia on 31 December 2003, was held in a hotel room by agents of that State for 23 days, then rendered by the CIA to the “salt pit”. He was released in Albania on 29 May 2004 [Also see Interview with the lawyer of Khaled El-Masri (annex II, case 9)].

• Khaled al-Maqtari, a Yemeni seized in Iraq in January 2004, was initially held in Abu Ghraib, then transferred to a secret CIA detention facility in Afghanistan. In April 2004, he was moved to a second secret detention facility, possibly in Eastern Europe, where he remained in complete isolation for 28 months, until he was returned to Yemen and released in May 2007.

• Marwan Jabour, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, was seized in Lahore, Pakistan, on 9 May 2004, and held in a CIA detention facility in Afghanistan for 25 months. He was then transferred to Jordan, where he was held for six weeks, and to Israel, where he was held for another six weeks, before being freed in Gaza.

[Also mentioned:] Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national residing in Germany, interviewed by the experts for the present study, was arrested in Pakistan in November or December 2001 and initially held by Pakistani police officers and officers of the United States. He was then transferred into the custody of the United States at that country’s airbase in Kandahar, Afghanistan, before being taken to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay on 1 February 2002. He was held secretly until May 2002, and released on 24 August 2006.

134. A total of 23 detainees who ended up in Guantanamo were also held in CIA detention facilities in Afghanistan. They include:

(a) Six men seized in the Islamic Republic of Iran in late 2001:

• Wassam al-Ourdoni, a Jordanian, who was released from Guantanamo in April 2004. In 2006, he told Reprieve that he had been seized by the Iranian authorities while returning from a religious visit to Pakistan with his wife and newborn child in December 2001, then handed over to the Afghan authorities, who handed him on to the CIA. He said that the Americans “asked me about my relationship with Al-Qaida. I told them I had nothing to do with Al-Qaida. They then put me in jail under circumstances that I can only recall with dread. I lived under unimaginable conditions that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society.” He said that he was first placed in an underground prison for 77 days: “this room was so dark that we couldn’t distinguish nights and days. There was no window, and we didn’t see the sun once during the whole time.” He said that he was then moved to “prison number three”, where the food was so bad that his weight dropped substantially. He was then held in Bagram for 40 days before being flown to Guantanamo [Clive Stafford Smith, “Abandoned to their fate in Guantánamo”, Index on Censorship, 2006].

• Aminullah Tukhi, an Afghan who was transferred to Afghan custody from Guantanamo in December 2007. He alleged that he had fled from Herat to the Islamic Republic of Iran to escape the Taliban, and was working as a taxi driver when the Iranians began rounding up illegal immigrants towards the end of 2001 [PDF, pp. 71-7].

• Hussein Almerfedi, a Yemeni, still at Guantanamo. He alleged that he was “kidnapped” in the Islamic Republic of Iran and held for a total of 14 months in three prisons in Afghanistan, “two under Afghani control and one under US control [Bagram]” [PDF, pp. 31-40].

• Tawfiq al-Bihani, a Yemeni, still at Guantanamo. Allegedly, after deciding to flee Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks, he was “arrested by Iranian Police in Zahedan, Iran for entering the country without a visa” and held “in various prisons in Iran and Afghanistan, for approximately one year in total [PDF, pp. 66-9].

• Rafiq Alhami, a Tunisian still held at Guantanamo, who alleged that “I was in an Afghan prison but the interrogation was done by Americans. I was there for about a one-year period, transferring from one place to another. I was tortured for about three months in a prison called the Prison of Darkness or the Dark Prison” [PDF, pp. 147-61]. And further: “Back in Afghanistan I would be tortured. I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold. It was different here. I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray. I was not allowed to fast during Ramadan. These things are documented. You have them” [PDF, pp. 20-22].

• Walid al-Qadasi, a Yemeni who was rendered to the “dark prison” and held in other prisons in Afghanistan, together with four other men whose whereabouts are unknown [In addition, Aminullah Tukhi explained that 10 prisoners in total -- six Arabs, two Afghans, an Uzbek and a Tajik -- had been delivered to the Americans. Although six of these men are accounted for above, it is not known what happened to the other four: an Arab, an Afghan, the Uzbek and the Tajik]. An allegation letter was sent in November 2005 by the Special Rapporteur on torture in relation to Walid Muhammad Shahir Muhammad al-Qadasi, a Yemeni citizen, indicating that the following allegations had been received: He was arrested in Iran in late 2001. He was held there for about three months before being handed over to the authorities in Afghanistan who in turn handed him over to the custody of the US. He was held in a prison in Kabul. During US custody, officials cut his clothes with scissors, left him naked and took photos of him before giving him Afghan clothes to wear. They then handcuffed his hands behind his back, blindfolded him and started interrogating him. The apparently Egyptian interrogator, accusing him of belonging to Al-Qaida, threatened him with death. He was put in an underground cell measuring approximately two metres by three metres with very small windows. He shared the cell with ten inmates. They had to sleep in shifts due to lack of space and received food only once a day. He spent three months there without ever leaving the cell. After three months, Walid al-Qadasi was transferred to Bagram, where he was interrogated for one month. His head was shaved, he was blindfolded, made to wear ear muffs and a mouth mask, handcuffed, shackled, loaded on to a plane and flown out to Guantanamo, where he was held in solitary confinement for one more month. In April 2004, after having been detained for two years, he was transferred to Sana’a prison in Yemen. In its response, the Government of the United States reiterated its earlier announcements that no Government agency was allowed to engage in torture and that its actions complied with the non-refoulement principle. Opinion No. 47/2005 of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also concerns Mr. al-Qadasi [See E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.1, paras. 1 and 527, and the response from the Government of the United States (A/HRC/10/44/Add.4, para. 252). See also the report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, opinion No. 47/2005 (A/HRC/4/40/Add.1)].

(b) Two men seized in Georgia in early 2002 and sold to United States forces:

• Soufian al-Huwari, an Algerian, transferred to Algerian custody from Guantanamo in November 2008; and Zakaria al-Baidany, also known as Omar al-Rammah, a Yemeni, still held at Guantanamo. According to Mr. al-Huwari, both were rendered to the “dark prison”, and were also held in other detention facilities in Afghanistan: “The Americans didn’t capture me. The Mafia captured me. They sold me to the Americans”. He added: “When I was captured, a car came around and people inside were talking Russian and Georgian. I also heard a little Chechnyan. We were delivered to another group who spoke perfect Russian. They sold us to the dogs. The Americans came two days later with a briefcase full of money. They took us to a forest, then a private plane to Kabul, Afghanistan” [PDF, pp. 15-23].

(c) Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national and British resident, was seized in the Gambia in November 2002, and rendered to the “dark prison” at the beginning of December 2002. He was kept shackled in complete isolation and darkness for two weeks. On or around 22 December 2002, he was transferred to Bagram, and then to Guantanamo on 7 February 2003. He was finally released on 30 March 2007. At Bagram, he was reportedly threatened and subjected to ill-treatment and sleep deprivation for up to three days at a time [Interview with Bisher al-Rawi (annex II, case 4)].

(d) Jamil El-Banna, a Jordanian national and British resident, was also seized in the Gambia in November 2002 and rendered to the “dark prison”, then to Guantanamo. He was released from Guantanamo in December 2007.

(e) Six other detainees were flown to Guantanamo on 20 September 2004 after having spent one to three years in custody:

• Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani and Mohammed Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani, Pakistani brothers seized in Karachi, who were held in the “salt pit” [Both Laid Saidi and Khaled El-Masri spoke about getting to know the Rabbani brothers in the “salt pit”];

• Abdulsalam al-Hela, a Yemeni colonel and businessman who was seized in Egypt;

• Adil al-Jazeeri, an Algerian seized in Pakistan [PDF, pp. 315-34];

• Sanad al-Kazimi, a Yemeni seized in the United Arab Emirates [PDF. Also on the flight that took these men to Guantanamo were Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, Hassan bin Attash and Binyam Mohamed. See also paras 151 and 159 below];

• Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman seized in Thailand, who was held in isolation in Bagram for a year.

Mr. al-Kazimi was apprehended in Dubai in January 2003 and held at an undisclosed location in or near Dubai for two months. He was then transferred to a different place about two hours away. He was kept naked for 22 days, at times shackled, and subjected to extreme climatic conditions and simulated drowning. After six months, he was transferred to United States custody, allegedly pursuant to the CIA rendition programme. He was taken to Kabul and held in the “dark prison” for nine months, where he suffered severe physical and psychological torture by unidentified persons. He was then transferred to Bagram airbase, where he was held for a further four months in United States custody. Again, he was allegedly subjected to severe physical and psychological torture by what he believed were the same unidentified persons he had encountered in the “dark prison” [See the report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, opinion No. 3/2009 (United States of America) (A/HRC/13/30/Add.1)].

135. Four other detainees, held in Bagram, are known because lawyers established contact with their families and filed habeas corpus petitions on their behalf:

• Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian who was seized in Karachi in May 2002.

• Amin Mohammad al-Bakri, a Yemeni who was seized in Bangkok on 28 December 2002 by agents of the intelligence services of the United States or of Thailand. Throughout 2003, his whereabouts were unknown. The Thai authorities confirmed to Mr. al-Bakri’s relatives that he had entered Thai territory, but denied knowing his whereabouts. In January 2004, Mr. al-Bakri’s relatives received a letter from him through ICRC, informing them that he was being kept in detention at the Bagram airbase. It was reported that Mr. al-Bakri was detained owing to his commercial connections with Mr. Khalifa, a cousin of Osama bin Laden later assassinated in Madagascar [Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, opinion No. 11/2007 (Afghanistan/ United States of America) (A/HRC/7/4/Add.1)].

• Fadi al-Maqaleh, a Yemeni seized in 2004, who was sent to Abu Ghraib before Bagram.

• Haji Wazir, an Afghan seized in the United Arab Emirates in late 2002 [PDF].

136. The whereabouts of 12 others are unknown, and the others remain to be identified. It is probable that some of these men have been returned to their home countries, and that others are still held in Bagram. The experts received allegations that the following men were also held: Issa al-Tanzani (Tanzanian), also identified as Soulayman al-Tanzani, captured in Mogadishu; Abu Naseem (Libyan), captured in Peshawar, Pakistan, in early 2003; Abou Hudeifa (Tunisian), captured in Peshawar, Pakistan, at the end of 2002; and Salah Din al-Bakistani, captured in Baghdad. Marwan Jabour also mentioned eight other prisoners. One was Yassir al-Jazeeri (Algerian), seized in Lahore, March 2003 (whom he met), and he heard about seven others: Ayoub al-Libi (Libyan), seized in Peshawar in January 2004; Mohammed (Afghan, born Saudi), seized in Peshawar in May 2004; Abdul Basit (Saudi or Yemeni), seized before June 2004; Adnan (nationality unknown), seized before June 2004; an unidentified Somali (possibly Shoeab as-Somali or Rethwan as-Somali); another unidentified Somali; and Marwan al-Adeni (Yemeni), seized in or around May 2003.

2. Iraq

137. Although the Government of the United States stated that the Geneva Conventions applied to detainees seized during the occupation, an unknown number of persons were deliberately held “off the books” and denied ICRC access. In Abu Ghraib, for example, the abuse scandal that erupted following the publication of photographs in April 2004 involved military personnel who were not only holding supposedly significant detainees delivered by the United States military, but others delivered by the CIA or United States Special Forces units. The existence of “ghost detainees”, who were clearly held incommunicado in secret detention, was later exposed in two United States investigations.

138. In August 2004, a report into detainee detentions in Iraq (chaired by former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger) noted that “other Government agencies” had brought a number of “ghost detainees” to detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib, “without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention”, and that, on one occasion, a “handful” of these detainees had been “moved around the facility to hide them from a visiting ICRC team” [PDF].

139. In another report issued in August 2004, Lieutenant General Anthony R. Jones and Major General George R. Fay noted that eight prisoners in Abu Ghraib had been denied access to ICRC delegates by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the Commander of the Coalition Joint Task Force in Iraq: “Detainee-14 was detained in a totally darkened cell measuring about 2 metres long and less than a metre across, devoid of any window, latrine or water tap, or bedding. On the door the delegates noticed the inscription ‘the Gollum’, and a picture of the said character from the film trilogy ‘The Lord of the Rings’” [PDF].

140. Although the Schlesinger report noted the use of other facilities for “ghost detainees”, the locations of these other prisons, and the numbers of detainees held, have not yet been thoroughly investigated. In June 2004, the then United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that a suspected leader of Ansar al-Aslam had been held for more than seven months without ICRC being notified of his detention; he also stated: “He was not at Abu Ghraib. He is not there now. He has never been there to my knowledge” [also see this New York Times report]. According to another report, the prisoner was known as “Triple X” and his secret detention was authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who issued a classified order in November 2003 “directing military guards to hide [him] from Red Cross inspectors and keep his name off official rosters”. In addition, some locations may well be those in which prisoners died in United States custody. In 2006, Human Rights First published a report identifying 98 deaths in United States custody in Iraq, describing five deaths in CIA custody, including Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in Abu Ghraib, and others at locations including Forward Operating Base Tiger, in Anbar province, a forward operating base near Al-Asad, a base outside Mosul, a temporary holding camp near Nasiriyah and a forward operating base in Tikrit [PDF].

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 and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

For a sequence of articles discussing the use of torture in secret prisons, see: An unreported story from Guantánamo: the tale of Sanad al-Kazimi (August 2007), Rendered to Egypt for torture, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni is released from Guantánamo (September 2008), A History of Music Torture in the “War on Terror” (December 2008), Seven Years of Torture: Binyam Mohamed Tells His Story (March 2009), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part One), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two), 9/11 Commission Director Philip Zelikow Condemns Bush Torture Program, Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?, CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months before DoJ Approval, Even In Cheney’s Bleak World, The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Torture Story Is A New Low (all April 2009), Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison , Dick Cheney And The Death Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, The “Suicide” Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: Why The Media Silence?, Two Experts Cast Doubt On Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s “Suicide”, Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney On Use Of Torture To Invade Iraq, In the Guardian: Death in Libya, betrayal by the West (in the Guardian here), Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney’s Iraq Lies Again (And Rumsfeld And The CIA) (all May 2009) and WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (June 2009), When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan (July 2009), US Torture Under Scrutiny In British Courts (July 2009), What The British Government Knew About The Torture Of Binyam Mohamed (August 2009), Torture in Bagram and Guantánamo: The Declaration of Ahmed al-Darbi (September 2009), UK Judges Order Release Of Details About The Torture Of Binyam Mohamed By US Agents (October 2009), “Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition (December 2009), Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List (January 2010), Two Algerian Torture Victims Are Freed from Guantánamo (January 2010), UN Secret Detention Report Asks, “Where Are The CIA Ghost Prisoners?” (January 2010), Mohamedou Ould Salahi: How a Judge Demolished the US Government’s Al-Qaeda Claims (April 2010), Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantánamo Based Solely on Torture (April 2010), and also see the extensive Binyam Mohamed archive.

The “requisite opinions” referred to by Cheney consisted primarily of two memos issued in August 2002 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), whose lawyers interpret the law as it relates to the powers of the executive branch, which were issued in connection with the administration’s “high-value detainee” program.

The first of these memos (PDF), which has become known, simply, as the “torture memo,” was leaked in June 2004, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Notorious for the attempts by its primary author, OLC lawyer John Yoo, to redefine torture as the infliction of physical pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” or the infliction of mental pain which “result[s] in significant psychological harm of significant duration,” it had been vilified by lawyers and human rights activists for nearly four and a half years by the time that Cheney made his pronouncement.

However, it was not until two weeks ago, when the Obama administration released the other memo — authorizing specific techniques, including waterboarding, an ancient torture technique that involves controlled drowning, to be used on a specific “high-value detainee,” Abu Zubaydah — that the “bright lines” so carefully delineated by Cheney began to blur uncontrollably.

The main problem with the memos, of course, is that they involve attempts to justify the use of torture that are, simply, unjustifiable. The US anti-torture statute defines torture as any act committed by an individual that is “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering … upon another person within his custody of physical control,” and further defines “severe mental pain or suffering” as “the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from” a variety of factors including “the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering.” Moreover, as the UN Convention Against Torture makes clear, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

It is, therefore, abundantly clear that no amount of creative advice by canny lawyers, arguing that waterboarding, prolonged sleep deprivation and a host of other grotesque and outlawed techniques are somehow acceptable can sidestep this definition or overcome the absolute prohibition on the use of torture, however much the lawyers protested, as they did repeatedly, that “many of the key terms in the [anti-torture] statute (for example, ‘severe,’ ‘prolonged,’ ‘suffering’) are imprecise.”

However, even if we accept, for now, that the OLC memos provided the administration with the “golden shield” that it so desperately sought (and I fervently hope that a long-awaited internal DoJ report will confirm that no “golden shield” exists for those who creatively attempted to sanction the use of torture), the problem for Cheney and his fellow torturers right now is the existence of evidence that confirms that the torture of Abu Zubaydah actually began long before the OLC’s advice was issued, as I reported in an article last Friday, “Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?”

“Extraordinary rendition” before August 2002

Moreover, although the OLC memos dealt specifically with a “high-value detainee” program that began with the capture of Abu Zubaydah on March 28, 2002, it’s also clear that the administration began working out how to deal with prisoners outside of existing legal frameworks within days of the 9/11 attacks. Most of this centered, at the time, on expanding the program of “extraordinary rendition” developed by the CIA under Bill Clinton in order to deliver “terror suspects” to third countries, where they could be interrogated by proxy torturers or even “disappeared.”

This in itself was enormously worrying, of course. The Clinton-era program occupied a horribly gray area, in which “terror suspects” — mostly Egyptians — were seized by the CIA and rendered to the custody of the Egyptian government, which was then free to kill them, torture them or imprison them after show trials, but it was at least a carefully controlled program, involving 13 prisoners between 1995 and 2000, according to research undertaken last year by Peter Bergen for Mother Jones, and a detailed paper trail that required the existence of a sentence by a court, even one handed down in absentia by a government with a disturbing human rights record.

After 9/11, however, all these restraints were abandoned. Within 12 days of the attacks on New York and Washington, a Yemeni named Jamal Mar’i, who worked for a Saudi charity in Pakistan, was kidnapped from his house in Karachi and rendered to Jordan, one of several countries with whom the Bush administration had swiftly established arrangements involving “extraordinary rendition” and torture. In the ten months that followed, before the OLC issued its indefensible opinions, at least 25 more prisoners were rendered to torture in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Syria, and we now know, from one of three more OLC memos released two weeks ago — written in May 2005 by Steven G. Bradbury, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and revisiting the OLC’s August 2002 torture opinions — that, after the CIA brought torture in-house in August 2002, 94 prisoners in total were held in secret CIA custody.

CIA torture in Afghanistan from December 2001

However, while this entire half-submerged story needs to be exposed to the light, and with some urgency, it appears that, at least for now, the CIA can plausibly claim that it did not participate in the torture of any of the men rendered to prisons in third countries before August 2002. Last Thursday, however, lawyers for Rafiq Alhami, a Tunisian prisoner in Guantánamo, introduced another disturbing element to the narrative, which confirms without a shadow of a doubt that the CIA was torturing prisoners in Afghanistan from December 2001.

In his lawsuit, Alhami stated, as the Associated Press described it, that, from December 2001, he was held in three CIA “dark sites,” where “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and where, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.” He also stated that his interrogators “sprayed pepper spray on his hemorroids, causing extreme pain.”

It’s likely that all of Alhami’s claims are true. In my book The Guantánamo Files, I wrote about him (identifying him, as the Pentagon had, as Rafiq al-Hami), noting, from the transcript of his tribunal at Guantánamo, that he stated that had been working in restaurants in Germany, and had traveled to Pakistan in 1999 to study with the vast missionary organization Jamaat-al-Tablighi.

Speaking of his experiences before his transfer to Guantánamo, Alhami explained, “I was in … Afghan prison[s] but the interrogation was done by Americans. I was there for about a one-year period, transferring from one place to another.” He added that one of the prisons was the “Dark Prison” near Kabul, which is known, in particular, from the story of the British resident Binyam Mohamed, released from Guantánamo two months ago, who spent four or five months there after being tortured for 18 months in Morocco. I have previously described the “Dark Prison” as “a medieval torture dungeon with the addition of ear-splittingly loud music and noise, which was pumped into the cells 24 hours a day,” based on accounts by prisoners who were held there, including Binyam Mohamed, who described his time there as “the worst days of his captivity” — worse than the 18 months in Morocco, where the CIA’s proxy torturers regularly sliced his genitals with a razorblade.

Alhami, who was 33 years old when he was seized, told his tribunal that he was tortured for three months in the “Dark Prison,” where, he said, “I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold … I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray … These things are documented. You have them.”

Rendered to torture from Iran

Shockingly, Alhami’s lawsuit reveals that he was actually seized in Iran, and transferred to CIA custody through an arrangement between the US and Iranian governments that has never been explained. He was, moreover, not the only one. Although I was unable to identify his country of capture while researching The Guantánamo Files, I was able to establish that at least four other prisoners seized in Iran had also been held in the “Dark Prison”, and described the stories of two of these men as follows:

Wisam Ahmed, a 25-year old Jordanian (released from Guantánamo in April 2004), ran a clothes shop in Jordan and traveled to Pakistan every year with a religious group. After getting married in 2000, he decided to take his wife and their newborn child to Pakistan for his visit in August 2001. In December, they were on a bus, traveling home, when they were stopped at a checkpoint in Iran, and Ahmed — under suspicion “because they associated [my] headdress with al-Qaeda and must have overlooked the fact that it was also my national dress” — was taken into custody. Rendered to Afghanistan on 1 March 2002, he was held in the “Dark Prison,” in [what he described as] “unimaginable conditions that cannot be tolerated in a civilized society,” and spent 77 days in a room that “was so dark that we couldn’t distinguish nights and days. There was no window, and we didn’t see the sun once during the whole time.” He was then moved to another secret prison — “Prison Number Three” — where the food was so bad that he lost a significant amount of weight, and was then moved to Bagram, where, in the 40 days before his transfer to Guantánamo, he was threatened by dogs, made to watch torture videos, and intimidated in other ways: “they used to start up an electric saw and while they were sawing we would hear cries of agony. I thought they would cut me into pieces sooner or later.”

Walid al-Qadasi, a 22-year old Yemeni (transferred to Yemeni custody from Guantánamo in April 2004) was also captured in Iran, and was rendered to Afghanistan in January 2002. Describing his time in [a prison that he identified as] the “Dark Prison” [but which was probably another secret prison instead], he said, “The Americans interrogated us on our first night which we coined as ‘the black night.’ They cut our clothes with scissors, left us naked and took photos of us before they gave us Afghan clothes to wear. They then handcuffed our hands behind our backs, blindfolded us and started interrogating us … They threatened me with death, accusing me of belonging to al-Qaeda.” After this initial interrogation, he said, “They put us in an underground cell measuring approximately two meters by three meters. There were 10 of us in the cell. We spent three months in the cell. There was no room for us to sleep so we had to alternate … It was too hot in the cell, despite the fact that outside the temperature was freezing (there was snow), because the cell was overcrowded.” He added that they were only fed once a day, that loud music was used as “torture,” and that one of his fellow detainees “went insane,” and pointed out that, when Red Cross representatives were allowed to visit, the most severely disturbed prisoners were secretly moved to another cell that was off-limits.

As is clear from these accounts, both men were clearly subjected to torture in facilities operated by the CIA between January and May 2002 (three months before the OLC memos were issued), and, in addition, many more prisoners who also ended up in Guantánamo were also held and tortured in the “Dark Prison” during the same timeframe. Many of these men were seized after the Tora Bora campaign, when US forces allowed Osama bin Laden and other senior figures in al-Qaeda and the Taliban to escape into Pakistan, and one of them, Mohammed Khusruf, a 60-year old Yemeni, told his tribunal that, after he was captured, he — and an unspecified number of wounded prisoners — were moved from a jail in Jalalabad to “an underground prison” in Kabul, where “they would interrogate and beat us.”

No excuses to avoid prosecution

I don’t know about you, but from my reading of this story, a number of the highest-ranking officials in the Bush administration need hauling up before the courts as soon as possible, and confronted with the evidence that, up to eight months before they secured a legal fig leaf for their abominable journey to the “Dark Side,” they had already authorized torture in a number of secret prisons in Afghanistan.

They will claim, no doubt, that everything that took place was supposedly covered by the “memorandum of notification” issued to the CIA by President Bush on September 17, 2001, which authorized the agency, in the broadest terms possible, to “to capture, detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.” If this is the case, then there was clearly no need to persuade lawyers at the OLC to come up with all their subsequent legal contortions to justify the use of torture. However, as is clear from the words of Dick Cheney, quoted at the start of this article, the Justice Department’s August 2002 opinions were essential for the administration “to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross,” and without them Cheney and his colleagues were nothing less than rogue torturers, operating outside the law.

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

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

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

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

In some ways, of course, it is not. The British government, while clearly complicit, to some extent, in the rendition and torture of prisoners by or on behalf of the Bush administration, and in interrogating them while they were held in illegal and unjustifiable conditions, was not directly involved in their industrial-scale rendition, in the establishment of a vast offshore prison devoted to coercive intelligence-gathering, or in the direct implementation of torture, under the cover of flawed legal advice which included blatant attempts to redefine its very meaning.

That said, there are, in fact, many unnerving similarities between the Bush administration’s policies, which prompted universal condemnation on an unprecedented scale, and those implemented in the UK, which have caused barely a ripple of protest.

The similarities between Guantánamo and the UK terror laws

At Guantánamo, since January 2002, the US government has, at various times, held 779 men, mostly without charge or trial, who were picked up in 20 different countries but detained neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects, to be tried in a recognized court. When, after three and a half years, the Supreme Court ruled that they had habeas corpus rights, the government responded not by allowing them access to the US courts, but by holding military tribunals, designed to justify their detention through the use of secret evidence that the prisoners — known as “detainees” — were not allowed to see.

In the UK, since December 2001, the British government has, at various times, held around 70 men without charge or trial, refusing to try them as criminal suspects in recognized courts. The policy began with the imprisonment of 17 men in Belmarsh high-security prison, but when, after three years, the Law Lords ruled that their imprisonment was in contravention of the Human Rights Act, the government responded by introducing control orders and deportation bail, both of which involve draconian restrictions that amount to house arrest. Throughout this whole period, the government has justified the men’s detention through the use of secret evidence that the prisoners — known as “detainees” — are not allowed to see.

Another similarity concerns attempts by both the British and American governments to bypass their obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture — which prevents the return of foreign nationals to countries where they face the risk of torture — by reaching diplomatic agreements with various dictatorships in North Africa and the Middle East. These purport to guarantee that repatriated prisoners will be treated humanely, but in reality they have proved worthless.

Deportation to Tunisia

In June 2007, for example, after the US government signed a “diplomatic assurance” with the Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, so that prisoners cleared for release from Guantánamo could be repatriated, two prisoners who were returned — Lotfi Lagha and Abdullah bin Omar — reported that they were threatened and mistreated in Tunisian custody. They were then subjected to show trials, apparently based on evidence obtained through the torture of other prisoners, and received prison sentences of three and seven years.

In the UK, the British government has been involved in a similar policy, signing “memoranda of understanding” (MoUs) in 2005 with Jordan, Libya and Lebanon, and attempting, without success, to do the same with Algeria, in order to deport “detainees” held on the basis of secret evidence, instead of putting them forward for trial in the UK. This is apparently because of the British government’s refusal to join the rest of the world in finding ways to use information obtained by the intelligence services in court, while preserving the confidentiality of sources and methods (PDF), but it is difficult not to conclude that, in fact, the government has been swept up in its own rhetoric, and has actually lost sight of the correct balance between liberty and security.

There are further disturbing parallels. After the demonstrable failure of the Americans’ “diplomatic assurance” with Tunisia, a District Court judge intervened to prevent the return of a third Tunisian — Lotfi bin Ali — in November 2007, arguing that he could suffer “irreparable harm” that the US courts would be powerless to reverse. Since then, no other Tunisians have been repatriated from Guantánamo, and, although the British government subsequently persisted in attempts to deport Tunisians from Europe, intervening in an Italian case, Saadi v. Italy, which was being considered by the European Court of Human Rights at the same time, the British attempts were struck down by the Court, which ruled, in March 2008, that attempts to return Nassim Saadi to Tunisia would be a clear breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (which states that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”).

Deportation to Libya

Both the US and the UK have faced struggles with repatriating foreign nationals to Libya, not because of any difficulties either government has with its enemy-turned-ally, the dictator Moammar Gaddafi, but because courts on both sides of the Atlantic have intervened to prevent Libyans from being repatriated: a Libyan in Guantánamo, Abdul Rauf al-Qassim, has been resisting his enforced return since June 2007, and in the UK, attempts to return 12 Libyans accused of having connections with terrorism were scuppered when, in April 2008, as the Independent described it, the Court of Appeal “gave a damning verdict on promises” that two men — identified only as AS and DD — “would not be tortured in their home country.” The judges ruled that the government “failed to give enough weight to the risk of torture.”

What is particularly galling in the Libyans’ case is that nowhere along the line has a single voice in authority been heard pointing out that those who once opposed Colonel Gaddafi’s regime — and are now wanted in his dungeons — would, not so long ago, have been regarded as our friends, but that observation, of course, succinctly demonstrates an uncomfortable truth: that yesterday’s freedom fighters can all too easily become today’s terrorists when the winds of politics change.

Deportation to Algeria

Where both the British and American governments seem to be in accord — and seem also to be meeting with some success in their mission to discard the UN Convention Against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights — is with Algeria. Although some Algerians in Guantánamo — most notably Ahmed Belbacha, who had lived peacefully in the UK for two years before he took an ill-timed holiday in Pakistan — are still striving to prevent their enforced repatriation from Guantánamo, others are on record as having returned willingly, even though the fate that awaited them — whether freedom, or a bent trial followed by further imprisonment — seems to be akin to a round of Russian Roulette.

Given the choice of two evils, eight Algerians (see here, here, here, here and here) settled for Algeria over Guantánamo between July 2008 and January 2009, and the same thing has happened with a number of “terror suspects” in the UK, who, exhausted by the imprisonment and house arrest foisted on them by the British government, on the basis of unknowable and unchallengeable secret evidence, opted to return “voluntarily “ to Algeria, with mixed results, as Amnesty International has reported (PDF). Some were released without charge, while others received prison sentences after dubious trials, and in all cases it has been next to impossible for human rights observers to monitor what has been happening with the kind of diligence that is necessary.

The British government — or the Law Lords, at least — know how shaky is the assumption that Algerians returned from the UK will be treated humanely and given fair trials, for two particular reasons: firstly, because the Algerian government has refused even to sign a worthless “memorandum of understanding” and has also refused to allow any British representatives to monitor what happens to those who are returned, and secondly, because, when the Lords approved the deportation in February of two prisoners — BB and U — they resorted, as I explained in an article at the time, to claiming that President Bouteflika has improved Algeria’s human rights record, and has “acknowledged and approved a letter from the Prime Minster which included the statement that ‘this exchange of letters underscores the absolute commitment of our two governments to human rights and fundamental freedoms.’”

In quiet desperation, the Lords also quoted the judges of SIAC (Britain’s secret terror court), who had noted that “Very considerable efforts have been made at the highest political levels on both sides to strengthen these ties,” and concluded that, as a result, “it is barely conceivable, let alone likely, that the Algerian government would put them at risk by reneging on solemn assurances.” As I noted at the time, it was hardly reassuring that, if returned prisoners did find themselves abused, they could be comforted by the fact that the government, SIAC and the Law Lords had thought that such abuse was “barely conceivable.”

Deportation to Jordan

And finally, while the US managed to return all the Jordanians it was holding in Guantánamo without apparent incident, the British government faced an even more uphill struggle to conclude that it most-celebrated would-be deportee, Abu Qatada, would be treated humanely on his return. In the same ruling in which the Law Lords declared that it was safe for BB and U to be returned to Algeria, they concluded that Abu Qatada would not be tortured, and would receive a fair trial — or at least, would not receive “a flagrant denial of a fair trial” — for two reasons; firstly, because, in October 2005, a human rights organization in Jordan “signed an agreement with the United Kingdom government under which it would monitor the due performance of the obligations undertaken by Jordan under the MoU,” and, secondly, because “the fact that he would have a very high profile, coupled with the MoU, and the diplomatic capital invested in it, meant that the Jordanian authorities were likely to make sure that he was not ill-treated in custody or when he emerged from it.”

The judges made their decision in spite of the fact that Abu Qatada had been previously tortured in Jordan, and had been convicted in absentia in a terror trial at which witnesses claimed they had been tortured to make false confessions. In addition, their ruling was disappointing because a “likelihood” that he would not be tortured is far from reassuring, and seems, instead, to be another form of Russian Roulette that plays games with a man’s life and with the universal torture ban.

An unnerving conclusion

For now, the deportations of Abu Qatada, BB and U are on hold, pending a review by the European Court of Human Rights, which may mean — if both torture and judicial secrecy are regarded with the horror and scorn that they deserve — that the British government will eventually be obliged to abandon its blanket use of secret evidence and its labyrinthine attempts to circumvent the universal torture ban, by allowing the use of intercept evidence and reintroducing fair trials.

Ministers might also want to reflect that, although Barack Obama has not magically dismantled the legacy of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” he is at least committed to closing Guantánamo within a year, has established a review of the prisoners’ cases that has started to approve the release of prisoners, and is continuing to allow judges — empowered by a Supreme Court ruling last June — to challenge the Bush administration’s secret evidence, with the result that, in 24 of the 28 cases so far reviewed, the judges involved have ordered the prisoners’ release because the government failed to provide sufficient evidence that they should ever have been held in the first place (a summary is here, and see here for the latest decision).

In Britain, in contrast, the government would still have us believe that all of its supposed “terror” evidence is infallible, and cannot be challenged, even though much of what is known appears to be misguided intelligence, or intelligence obtained through torture, and even though glaring errors on the part of the Home Office and the security services have been repeatedly noted over the last seven years. This not only makes a mockery of due process; it also leaves the government — and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in particular — looking like the last bastion of the kind of unprincipled and unfettered executive power embraced by former US Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff David Addington, the architects of the “War on Terror.”

As Jane Mayer explained in her book The Dark Side, in the summer of 2002, when John Bellinger, the National Security Council’s top lawyer, tried to approach the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to seek a review of the prisoners’ cases — expressing some of the same doubts about the US intelligence services that lawyers have sought to expose in relation to the intelligence services in the UK, and that judges in the US have finally been allowed to prove in some of the Guantánamo cases — he was met with the sternest of rebukes, when a scheduled meeting was hijacked by David Addington, who declared, imperiously, “No, there will be no review. The President has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.”

Without fair trials for “terror suspects” in the UK, Jacqui Smith, like Jack Straw, David Blunkett, Charles Clarke and John Reid before her, appears to be nothing less than David Addington’s Anglicized twin, and in Addington’s statement above, all that needs changing are the words “President” to “Tony Blair,” and “enemy combatants” to “terrorists,” and the picture is complete. In democracies founded on the rule of law, it is not sufficient for an elected minister to maintain, as President Bush declared for over seven years, that it was true because he said so.

This article is part of a series of four articles and five statements examining the use of secret evidence in the British courts. For an introduction, see Britain’s Guantánamo: An Introduction, and for the first two articles, see Torture taints all our lives (published in the Guardian’s Comment is free), and Britain’s Guantánamo: Calling For An End To Secret Evidence. For the statements, see: Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (1) Detainee Y, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (2) Detainee BB, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (3) Detainee U, Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (4) Hussain Al-Samamara and Five Stories From Britain’s Guantánamo: (5) Detainee Z.

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

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportations and extraditions, see Deals with dictators undermined by British request for return of five Guantánamo detainees (August 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: the troubling tale of Tunisian Belmarsh detainee Hedi Boudhiba, extradited, cleared and abandoned in Spain (August 2007), Guantánamo as house arrest: Britain’s law lords capitulate on control orders (November 2007), The Guantánamo Britons and Spain’s dubious extradition request (December 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: control orders renewed, as one suspect is freed (February 2008), Spanish drop “inhuman” extradition request for Guantánamo Britons (March 2008), UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no one notices (March 2008), Repatriation as Russian Roulette: Will the Two Algerians Freed from Guantánamo Be Treated Fairly? (July 2008), Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009).

With just one more online chapter to complete, the mission I set myself three years ago — to record the stories of all the prisoners in Guantánamo — is now close to completion, and will be followed by the first definitive prisoner list, identifying not only those who are still held, and those who have been released (and the dates they were released), but also those who have been cleared for release, whose plight is one of the major stumbling blocks to Barack Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo within a year, as the majority of these prisoners cannot be repatriated because of fears that they will be tortured in their home countries.

Of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo, the stories of around 10 percent are unknown, because they were released in 2003 or 2004, and the Pentagon has not been obliged to release and information relating to these prisoners, but the rest will be sourced and referenced in the definitive list. Links will be provided to the stories of half of these prisoners, and references will be provided for the other half, identifying where their stories can be found in The Guantánamo Files. The list will, I hope, be a useful research tool, not just in identifying the stories of those who have been released, but also as an aid to analyzing the stories of those who are still held, to compare the Bush administration’s long-standing assertions that the remaining prisoners are the “hardcore” with a more objective view, which, in the majority of cases, questions the quality of the so-called evidence against them.

This eleventh online chapter features the stories of 17 of the 220 or so Afghan prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo, revealing, as I also discussed at length in The Guantánamo Files, how the majority of the Afghans were seized not because they were a threat to the US or its allies, but largely because they were sold to US forces by their Afghan allies or were seized in raids based on dubious intelligence. Three of those discussed — including Mohamed Jawad, put forward for trial by Military Commission — were juveniles at the time of their capture. The chapter also includes the stories of half-a-dozen stray foreigners. In addition, I look at the stories of six of the 50 or so Guantánamo prisoners who were subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and detention in secret prisons before their transfer to Guantánamo, and cast an objective eye on the supposed evidence used to justify their extraordinarily brutal treatment.

Note: See the column on the left for the first ten online chapters, and the last.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

These discussions are clearly a response to fears within the administration that the imminent Supreme Court showdown over Guantánamo may lead to the detainees “winning … even more power to challenge their detention,” but it remains apparent that closing the prison is far easier said than done. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, who has come under fire for refusing to condemn waterboarding, has, for example, indicated that his goal would be to shut down Guantánamo “because it’s hurting us,” and because it has “given us a black eye,” but he too has conceded that there is “no easy solution” to the thorny question of what to do with the detainees.

According to the latest statistics cited by officials, the administration still intends to pursue war crimes trials against “80 or more” of the detainees, and regards another “120 or fewer” as too dangerous to repatriate. Leaving aside, for now, the lawless arrogance of the administration’s intention to hold these 120 men indefinitely, without charge or trial, because of unchallengeable military assertions that they are a threat to American security, severe difficulties remain in repatriating those who are not regarded as suitable for trial by Military Commission, or who are regarded as “too dangerous to repatriate,” but not dangerous enough to be charged.

With 450 detainees already released from Guantánamo (58% of the total population), the remaining 124 detainees that the administration says it wants to release are, in dozens of cases, men who have been cleared for release for at least two years, but who are still held either because of fears that they will be subjected to torture (or worse) if returned to their home countries, or because of an inexplicable inertia on the part of the US authorities.

Inertia certainly seems to have played a part in the delayed release of the eight Afghans who were part of the latest batch of freed detainees. Only one –- Izatullah Nasrat –- has been identified, but he was cleared after the first round of reviews (which mostly took place in 2005), and, even with these latest releases, another eight Afghans remain in Guantánamo, who have been cleared for at least nine months. The unconscionable delay in releasing these men becomes more marked when Nasrat’s story is looked at more closely.

A tribal leader, in Paktika province, in south eastern Afghanistan, Nasrat supervised the collection of weapons from his people, as requested by the Americans and the government of Hamid Karzai, and was responsible for guarding them in a compound. Betrayed by a rival, who told a false story about him to the US forces, he was then arrested and sent to Guantánamo, along with his father, Haji Nasrat Khan. The tribal leader until illness left him virtually housebound, Khan was seized after asking what had happened to his son, and was released in August 2006, when he was 72 years old.

When it comes to the other three detainees just released –- the last three Jordanians in Guantánamo (out of a total of eight) –- another disturbing truth becomes apparent: that, despite its talk of justice, the administration also bases its decisions about who to release on political maneuvering. This was revealed earlier this year, when an analysis of the 32 Saudi detainees released in July and September uncovered the significant revelation that none of them had been cleared by a military review board, and it seems to have played a part in the sudden release of the three Jordanians, only one of whom, Osama Abu Kabir, had actually been cleared for release. I can only wonder whether King Abdullah has been granted a favor in exchange for cooperation over Iraq or the doomed Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or, more worryingly, over the proposed war with Iran.

Osama Abu Kabir with his sons Abdel Aziz and Usaid in his house near Amman on November 11, 2007. Photo © Reuters.

31 years old at the time of his capture, Osama Abu Kabir was one of the clearest examples of a naïve, would-be jihadist who never so much as raised a finger against the Americans. A driver by occupation, who also sold clothing with his wife from their home, he told his review board that he had travelled to Raiwind, in Pakistan, for the annual conference of the vast global missionary organization Jamaat-al-Tablighi (regarded as a front for terrorism by the US authorities, despite having several million members), and had then spent a month preaching, when he was suddenly converted to the idea of jihad because of “the emotion and the excitement from the Afghani people” at a demonstration that he came across unexpectedly. “They were all holding up signs, had writing on T-shirts,” he said. “It was their love that I had seen. I can explain it to you, but you won’t understand how I felt that day.” He did, however, explain that, despite this conversion to the spirit of jihad, he never took up arms, “never met anyone from the Taliban, al-Qaeda or any other group,” and was captured by the Northern Alliance in Jalalabad, where he fled after arriving in Kabul two days before the city fell, and imprisoned for four and a half months in Kabul before being handed over to the Americans.

The other two men had not even flirted with the idea of militancy. Ahmed Sulayman, who was 40 years old at the time of his capture, was seized by bounty hunters in Pakistan, eager for the reward –- $5000 on average –- that was offered by the Americans for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects. Also a member of Jamaat-al-Tablighi, which he pointedly described as a “relief organization” that “does not have any evil; it just does missionary work and calls people to Islam,” he worked for the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a Saudi charity that is also regarded by the US authorities as a front for terrorism. Sulayman described the IIRO as an organization which “helps poor people, immigrants and orphans and feeds people during Ramadan and Eid ul-Adha,” and while the prisoners in Guantánamo were being subjected to the most spurious allegations about the charity –- which, it should be noted, is not actually blacklisted by the US –- the IIRO was providing relief packages to the victims of the 2004 tsunami in south east Asia and to some of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Pakistan that were affected by the 2005 earthquake.

Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantánamo detainees, visited Sulayman’s family in Jordan in 2005, and explained that the charity worker, who has nine brothers and nine sisters, was working for the IIRO as a teacher, and had “moved his family to a tiny village near Peshawar, a four-hour walk from the nearest main road, to help teach the poorest of the poor there.” He reported that he “was so much liked that when he fell ill with meningitis, the locals paid for his hospital bills and refused repayment from his family,” and he also stated that during the US-led invasion Ahmed continued with his work, but that “One morning, he left home for work, and simply did not come back. His wife worried that the meningitis had recurred and called around the hospitals. Six months later, the family received news that Ahmed was in Guantánamo.”

25-year old Ibrahim Zeidan was the victim of even more ambitious kidnappers. After traveling to Afghanistan in 2000, using money he had saved from his job as a house painter, to visit his brother, who was teaching the Koran and Sharia law in Khost, he said that he stayed in Afghanistan until the US-led invasion, when he was captured by a group of Afghans, who imprisoned him, tortured him and demanded a ransom for his release from his family. Clive Stafford Smith, who also visited his family in Jordan, stated that Zeidan was actually working in Kabul for a Saudi charity at the time of his capture, and was kidnapped before the war even reached the city. The gang who abducted him “apparently hoped for a far larger return than that offered by the US,” because he was working for “a well-heeled Saudi charity,” and rang his family demanding a ransom of $150,000, telling them that “his organs would be removed one by one” if they didn’t pay. Although the family ran an appeal in a Jordanian newspaper and raised several thousand dollars, there was no way that they could raise the money demanded by the gang, but after eight months, according to Zeidan, he managed to escape from his prison, but was then captured in Jalalabad, in July 2002, by government officials who handed him over to the Americans.

There are, sadly, more grim tales to be told about these men –- in particular, about the treatment they received in US custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, as discussed in my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison –- but it seems more relevant, for now, simply to highlight the circumstances of their capture. The depressing conclusion to be drawn from these stories is that, despite the rumors that the US administration is hoping to close Guantánamo, it is still holding men without charge or trial who should never have been imprisoned in the first place, let alone losing years of their life in an experimental prison of extraordinary bleakness and inhumanity.

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

As published on the Huffington Post.

POSTSCRIPT: One of the Guantánamo lawyers has just kindly informed me of the identities of two of the other released Afghans. Upon reviewing their stories, it’s noticeable that neither does anything to detract from my concluding statement above.

The first of the men, Abdul Nasir (born in 1981) was a student at a madrassa. In his tribunal, he explained that another student, a Pakistani member of the Taliban, had tricked him into taking part in a rocket attack on a US base. The only one of the group of 30 to be captured, after handing himself in to the authorities and turning over the bullets and grenades that he’d been forced to carry, he was taken to Bagram, where, as with many other detainees whose stories are reported in The Guantánamo Files, he described being held in painful stress positions: “I had to stay standing up for ten days, 24 hours a day … because I am human and I get tired … they handcuffed me and they tied me up there with my hands above my head.” He added that he thought that he had perhaps been singled out for particularly bad treatment because the Americans “could not catch or arrest [the] other people.”

The second man, Mohammed Quasam (born in 1977) was captured by US forces at his home in Zormat, in Paktia province, in eastern Afghanistan. It was alleged that he was identified as being in charge of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin operations in Jalalabad (operations run by the militia group headed by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the virulently anti-American warlord, who, ironically, had received the lion’s share of US funding during the war against the Soviet Union), but he said that he had never been to Jalalabad. He added that he was betrayed by a personal enemy of his family –- a high-ranking Taliban official called Nur Mohammed –- who was an opponent of his father, because his father had worked in the last Communist government.

Both men were cleared for release after the first round of the annual Administrative Review Boards (in early 2006, at the latest), but according to my source, although Izatullah Nasrat was one of the relatively lucky few dozen detainees allowed to stay in Camp 4, with its communal dorms and limited recreational facilities, Quasam was held in Camp 5, supposedly reserved for detainees who are considered to be dangerous or to have significant intelligence value, and Nasir was held in Camp 6, the most recently erected block, where all the detainees –- including many others cleared for release –- are held in solitary confinement for 22 or 23 hours a day.

As all these men are so clearly innocent, I hope that their return –- like that of many other recently released Afghan detainees –- to a newly constructed special wing of the Pul-i-Charki prison in Kabul does not signify that the US authorities have insisted that they be kept imprisoned on their return to Afghanistan. After their long ordeal, they deserve nothing less than the freedom to return to their families, and to begin to rebuild their shattered lives.

SECOND POSTSCRIPT: On November 8, I also learned the identity of another of the Afghans from Susan Hu at the Center for Constitutional Rights. 23-year old Fizaulla Rahman, whose story is featured in Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, “said he was betrayed because of a disagreement about money. Accused of working for Taliban intelligence in Mazar-e-Sharif, he said that he was taken in as a house servant by a senior member of the intelligence services, and his job was essentially a front. Although he did not want to spell out why he was taken in, it was implicit in his description of his brother and nephew as ‘young and pretty boys,’ who had also caught the eye of the Taliban officer.”

Note:

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

ISN 651: Osama Abu Kabir (Usama) (Jordan)
ISN 662: Ahmed Sulayman (Jordan)
ISN 761: Ibrahim Zeidan (Jordan)
ISN 977: Izatullah Nasrat (Hiztullah Nazrat Yar) (Afghan)
ISN 874: Abdul Nasir (Afghan)
ISN 955: Mohammed Quasam (Afghan)
ISN 496:Fizaulla Rahman (Afghan)

The four Afghans whose identities were unknown at the time of their release are as follows:

ISN 670: Abdullah Hekmat (to be described in a forthcoming online chapter)
ISN 967: Naserullah (as described in Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files)
ISN 1003: Shabir Ahmed (see Website Extras 7)
ISN 1010: Zahir Shah (to be described in a forthcoming online chapter)

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the eleven prisoners released from February to June 2009, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here).