Just a few days ago, Jenifer Fenton, who used to work for CNN, but has recently started working for Al-Jazeera, followed up on the excellent work she was doing for CNN last year, focusing on the stories on the Kuwaiti prisoners held at Guantánamo, with a new article focusing on the mothers of the two remaining Kuwaitis in the prison, Fayiz al-Kandari and Fawzi al-Odah. The publication of the article is timely, as, in just nine days, the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for ten years.

I discussed the first of Jenifer’s articles in August, in an article entitled, “Can Kuwait Break the Guantánamo Deadlock?” and cross-posted a second, in October, under the heading, “Life After Guantánamo: Kuwaitis Discuss Their Tortured Confessions,” and this third article continues Jenifer’s important work, as it is even clearer now than it was in August that Fayiz and Fawzi will only be released through outside pressure on the Obama administration, and not through any mechanisms within the United States.

Despite the lack of evidence against Fayiz and Fawzi, both men lost their habeas corpus petitions — Fayiz in September 2010 and Fawzi in August 2009. Fawzi then had his appeal turned down by the D.C. Circuit Court, where, after victories by the prisoners from 2008 to 2010, right-wing judges have, shamefully, been rewriting detention policies so that no prisoner can expect to have his habeas petition granted, and also by the Supreme Court, which, just as shamefully, has refused to tackle the Circuit Court’s meddling on purely ideological grounds.

Sadly, Fayiz al-Kandari has also just had his appeal denied by the D.C. Circuit Court, leaving both men stranded in Guantánamo forever, unless the Kuwaiti government can secure their release through diplomatic means, or concerned citizens in the US can persuade the Obama administration to tackle the cheerleaders for Guantánamo in Congress, who have imposed almost insurmountable restrictions on the President’s ability to release prisoners, and who appear to be unconcerned that Kuwait is a loyal ally of the US, and has a state-of-the-art rehabilitation center, built especially for returning Guantánamo prisoners, which lies empty, its only possible purpose being to rehabilitate Fayiz al-Kandari and Fawzi al-Odah.

Jenifer Fenton’s article is cross-posted below.

Kuwaiti families in legal limbo at Guantánamo
By Jenifer Fenton, Al-Jazeera, December 29, 2011

Fatimah Al-Kandari has not seen her son Fayiz Al-Kandari in more than 10 years, but her thoughts are possessed by him. She sees Fayiz in every face. She thinks she hears him at times speaking to her. There is no room for anything else in Fatimah Al-Kandari’s life but her son.

Soad Abdul Jaleel feels the same way. When she last saw her son Fawzi Al-Odah he was 24; he is now 34. Not a second goes by without her thinking of him, praying for him.

Al-Kandari and Al-Odah are incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Al-Kandari has been accused of providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy to materially support terrorism.

Al-Odah has been accused of being associated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. He has admitted to carrying a weapon through the Tora Bora Mountains in Afghanistan, but his father Khalid Al-Odah has said the gun was for self-defence.

Both men have asserted their innocence. The two traveled to Afghanistan to do charity work, according to statements they, their families and lawyers have made.

Detention without charges

Though they stand accused, neither has had a trial — nor is one scheduled — to determine their guilt or innocence. They have filed habeas corpus petitions challenging the basis of their detention without charges, but their petitions have been denied.

The courts have concluded that there is a basis for the US government to continue to detain them under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Act, which allows the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against nations, organizations, or persons linked to the 9/11 attacks.

The US Supreme Court rejected Al-Odah’s appeal challenging his indefinite detention. On December 9, Al-Kandari’s appeal was also rejected by the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The court cancelled oral arguments, meaning that the appeal was decided on the briefs.

“The judges will not even give 10 minutes to hear the appeal of a man who has now spent a decade behind bars,” said David Cynamon, the lead attorney for Kuwaiti detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Their lawyers fear that the two men will be indefinitely detained.

But the two men’s mothers will not allow themselves to think that they will not see their sons again. For them, giving up hope is not an option.

“We didn’t speak to him for years after [he was first taken to] Guantánamo,” Fatimah Al-Kandari said. They were only allowed to communicate through letters, but most of the words were crossed out. “The only words we could read were greetings and words to his mother and his signature. That’s it. Everything else was crossed out with a black marker.”

Time stands still for Fatimah Al-Kandari. She buys her son, now 36, new clothes so he will have something to wear if he is freed and embroiders them with the letter “F” so they do not get mixed up with his brothers’ clothes.

She wants to know what her son has been charged with and why has he not had a trial. She cannot believe that Americans would agree to this kind of abuse.

‘Enhanced interrogation’

Al Kandari has been tortured — or as the Bush administration called it, subject to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” his lawyer said. The abuse has included sleep deprivation, physical abuse, being placed in stress positions, sexual humiliation, the use of dogs, loud music, and the use of extreme temperatures, according to what Al-Kandari told his military defense attorney, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard.

His mother has, of course, seen photos and heard about the torture. “What do I feel? You know a mother’s heart. I cry all the time and I never sleep at night.”

In response to previous queries about alleged abuse of Kuwaiti detainees, I was referred to a Department of Defence (DoD) report on detainee conditions, which states: “It is our judgment that the conditions of confinement, in Guantánamo, are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions,” which among other things prohibits violence to life and person and humiliating and degrading treatment.

Commander Leslie Hull-Ryde of Defence Press Operations added via email that the DoD “does not tolerate the abuse of detainees. All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate disciplinary action is taken when those allegations are substantiated … Although there have been substantiated cases of abuse in the past, for which US service members have been held accountable, our enemies also have employed a deliberate campaign of exaggerations and fabrications.”

But is Al-Kandari an enemy of the US?

His family says no. “Where are the human rights here?” his mother asked. “They are just holding them in prison. If they have done something, let the world know what they did.”

According to Defence Department Documents from 2007, the following factors have favored Al-Kandari’s continued detention: his commitment, his training and his connections and associations. Some specifics claims levelled against him include: “an individual stated that the detainee was in charge of a group in Tora Bora” and “an individual stated that the detainee was very close to Osama bin Laden” [That individual, it should be noted, is Yasim Basardah, a Yemeni prisoner well-known as the most prolific and unreliable witness in Guantánamo].

Sixteen out of 22 of the government’s claims mentioned in a 2007 DoD report cite “an individual” who made statements against Al-Kandari. According to Cynamon, the lawyer, therein lies the difficulty with the Guantánamo cases: They rely on hearsay, which is not normally admissible in US courts.

There is no way of “testing the truthfulness of the people making the allegations,” Cynamon said. “The whole point of the prohibition against hearsay is the recognition that it is inherently inferior to live testimony, which can be tested by cross-examination, and where the trier of fact — whether the judge or jury — can actually see the witness and assess his or her credibility”, Cynamon added.

It is also not possible to assess under what circumstances Al-Kandari or other detainees may have made incriminating statements. In the 2007 DoD review, the government cites three times potentially self-incriminating statements by Al-Kandari like “the detainee suggested that he and another individual travel to Afghanistan to participate in jihad and the detainee assigned them aliases.”

Cynamon explained that ”typically, the only way to really test a hearsay document like an interrogation report would be to cross-examine the interrogator who prepared the report: Did you interrogate Fayiz in English or Arabic? Did he answer in English or Arabic? If Arabic, do you speak it? If not, who was your interpreter? What were the qualifications?”

But with the Guantánamo cases cross-examination is not an option. “Bottom line, a supposedly self-incriminating statement in an uncorroborated interrogation report — which, according to the government’s own intelligence expert, is merely the first step in the information-gathering process and is not relied upon by intelligence officials without further analysis and corroboration — is worthless,” Cynamon added.

American ‘mercy’

Ten Kuwaitis have returned to Kuwait from Guantánamo; Al-Kandari and Al-Odah are now the only Kuwaiti detainees still held at Guantánamo. Of the total 171 detainees remaining, 89 have been cleared for release.

Soad Abdul Jaleel deeply feels her son’s absence, but she said she will see him again. “I know for sure he will be free,” she said. “Because my God knows he is innocent and he will not leave him like this … If I can’t come together with him in this life, I will see him after Insha’allah [God willing].”

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 Soad Abdul Jaleel feared her son was dead because she had not heard from him for three months. One day someone whom she did not know called her and told her that several Kuwaitis who had been praying in a mosque were captured, but she doubted the call. Then she saw a picture of her son in Kabul on the internet with a caption that said he would be transferred to Guantánamo.

For a decade now, Soad Abdul Jaleel has experienced extreme emotional ups and downs. After thinking her son was dead, she then found out he is not. He is in American custody, but then the reports came that Americans are abusing people.

“Of course they claim that they treat the prisoners well, but God exposed them and we all saw the newspapers and the photos,” she said.

Her latest disappointment: Upon taking office, US President Barack Obama said he would close Guantánamo in a year, but he has failed to do.

She would trade places with her son if she could. “He’s a young man. When will he get married? When will he live his life?”

After years of only being allowed to communicate with her son through letters, she can now talk to him on the phone. During her first conversation with him, she said she could not talk — she could only cry.

Now, the family is allowed a one hour video conference every two months. For the last 10 years, the Americans have not told the family why they are holding their son.

Much like the Al-Kandari family, the Al-Odah family is in limbo. Soad Abdul Jaleel said she has given up on the American and Kuwaiti governments, but not on the mercy of the American people.

Both families feel like victims of circumstance. Their sons — who were doing charity work — were in the wrong place at the wrong time, they said.

Ten years later Fayiz Al-Kandari and Fawzi Al-Odah still linger in cells far away from their loved ones. But Soad Abdul Jaleel said she knows: “One day I will wake up, and this nightmare will be over.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life before Guantánamo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Road to Guantánamo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camp X-Ray, Guantánamo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They said: “Yes you did.”

Al-Rabiah: “OK, I did.”

Interrogator: “What did you talk about?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life after Guantánamo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 24 of the 70-part series. 304 stories have now been told. See the entire archive here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With 260 prisoners profiled in the first 20 parts of this project, this latest ten-part series covers the stories of the 111 prisoners released in 2006 (and the three who died at the prison in June 2006) and readers will, I hope, realize that almost all of these prisoners were freed because of political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice. The largest groups released by nationality in 2006 were Saudis (45 in total — 15 in May 2006, 14 in June and 16 in December) and Afghans (35 in total — 7 in February, 5 in August, 16 in October and 7 in December).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mohammed Laalami (ISN 237, Morocco) Released February 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington continues his 70-part, million-word series telling, for the first time, the stories of 776 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Adding information released by WikiLeaks in April 2011 to the existing documentation about the prisoners, much of which was already covered in Andy’s book The Guantánamo Files and in the archive of articles on his website, the project will be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 21 of the 70-part series. 271 stories have now been told. See the entire archive here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With 260 prisoners profiled in the first 20 parts of this project, this latest series covers the stories of the 111 prisoners released in 2006 (and the three who died at the prison in June 2006) and readers will, I hope, realize that almost all of these prisoners were freed because of political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice. The largest groups released by nationality in 2006 were Saudis (45 in total — 15 in May 2006, 14 in June and 16 in December) and Afghans (35 in total — 7 in February, 5 in August, 16 in October and 7 in December).

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

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

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

Zia Ul Shah (ISN 15, Pakistan) Released October 2006

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Zia Ul Shah, from Karachi, who was 25 years old at the time of his capture, said in Guantánamo that he went to Afghanistan to look for work, and was employed by the Taliban as a driver. Able to stipulate his own conditions, because the Taliban was in desperate need of drivers and he had his own truck, he refused to transport fighters to the war zone and mostly delivered food to a school in Kunduz that was used as a Taliban base.

Denying an allegation that he surrendered to the Northern Alliance in Kunduz, he explained, “I did not go to surrender. They asked me to take these [other] people to surrender and then they said I could go home. I took them to surrender and dropped them off, and then I left. There were a lot of other drivers that they let go, but they arrested me because I was the only Pakistani.” He said that this was only the beginning of his problems, and that his truck was then fought over by different factions of the Northern Alliance. Abandoned during the wrangling over the truck, he was taken in by an Afghan who offered him food, asked him where he was from, and kept him captive for five days before selling him to another Afghan, who promptly sold him to another Afghan who “was beating me up everyday.” This man then sold him to the Americans who “beat me up a little bit also [and] broke my nose. You can see that the bone is fractured. Then they took me to Kandahar.”

In 2008, he was interviewed by a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers for a major review of 66 released Guantánamo prisoners, when as was noted, there was little in his tribunal transcripts to suggest that he was anything but a truck driver for the Taliban.” Ul Shah (identified as Zia Khalid Najib) reiterated that he was seized “after he’d driven a load of Taliban fighters to surrender,” and explained that he’d “made the trip between his home on the outskirts of Karachi to Afghanistan on a regular basis since 1999, often doing jobs for the Taliban,” such as “transporting troops, food and blankets.” He added that he “did the work more for money than out of conviction.”

Although he “may or may not have come in contact occasionally with low- to mid-level Taliban leaders and ‘possible’ Pakistani intelligence agents inside the Taliban,” as the transcripts suggested, for that he was, as McClatchy pointed out, “imprisoned at Guantánamo for more than four years, longer than many top Taliban leaders and men accused of being Al-Qaida militants.”

McClatchy’s reporter concluded that “Najib and many more like him were detained for years not because of their actions on the battlefield or their links to terrorist groups, but because they tangled with guards at Guantánamo. There were exceptions, but some militants who behaved well in their cells were released relatively quickly while men at the bottom of the Taliban pecking order or those such as Najib who appeared not to be Taliban members were held far longer because they’d gotten into fights.”

Confirming this, Afghanistan’s attorney general, Abdul Jabar Sabit, said after visiting Guantánamo that “he was struck that detainees were classified into groups, marked in descending order from orange to white garb, by how well they behaved and not by whether they were suspected of terrorist or anti-American activities.” “This division did not have anything to do with the crimes attributed to them,” he said. “Only their behavior in the prison was taken into account.”

Najib said that, when guards “teased him by dropping a copy of the Quran or flipping through its pages,” or when they “got into confirmations” with other prisoners, he could not contain his anger. “I could not bear it, so I reacted violently,” he said, stating again, “I would react violently.”

As a result, he spent most of his time in solitary. “They would say they were taking me to isolation for three days, and then leave me there for three months,” he said. “Then they would bring me back to a cell, and three or four days later take me back to isolation … I would say, and this is a guess, I spent 15 days a month in isolation.”

Turning to his interrogations, he spoke about how he had been obliged to deny an allegation that he had been a driver for Osama bin Laden, and explained, in a succinct description of the pointlessness of these sessions, “The interrogators spent entire sessions asking me why I was staring at them and yelling at me that I should look at the floor.”

Speaking about a review board hearing before his release, he further highlighted the absurdity of his predicament, telling the board of military officers that “many of the reasons listed for keeping him at Guantánamo — that he knew various militants and their organizations — were the result of his telling interrogators that he knew of the men.” As he explained, “When they asked me if I know of them or did you hear about them I said yes,” he said. “[T]hese people have big banners hanging all over Karachi and in Pakistan. Of course I heard of them.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Zia Ul Shah was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated April 22, 2005, in which he was identified as Zia Ul Shah (not Zia Khalid Najib), born in January 1976, and it was noted that he was assessed as being eligible for “Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country (TR)” on November 20, 2003, but that new information had led to the revision of this recommendation, so that it did not involve the possibility of release.

To reach this conclusion, the Task Force had reassessed him, and, perhaps because of his behavior, had gone to great lengths to dress up a driver — who, at most, “support[ed] the Taliban against Coalition forces on the front lines by transporting food, supplies, weapons and personnel” — as someone more significant. He was assessed as being a member of the Taliban with “ties to” or “institutional knowledge of” four Pakistani militant groups — Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM), Harkat-ul-Mujahidin (HUM) and Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LET) — described as “Tier 1 Terrorist Target[s],” which “are defined as terrorist groups, especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests.”

Due to what was described as his “extensive knowledge” of Taliban, HUJI, JEM and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) operations as well as his placement and access to key figures and front line positions,” it was claimed that it was “most likely [he] was an active participant against US and Coalition forces,” who was “concealing his true affiliations with Pakistani Islamic extremist organizations and his support of the Taliban in Afghanistan,” and that he was therefore “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.”

Seeking to justify this exaggerated analysis, the Task Force explained how, after Ul Shah left Karachi for Afghanistan, he met a Taliban member in Kabul, who “told him if he went to Kunduz, AF, he could start driving a truck immediately for the Taliban,” and who “wrote [his] name on a piece of paper allowing [him] authorization to board a plane to Kunduz.” In relating the work he did, the Task Force claimed that “he acquired knowledge of the JEM and HUJI terrorist organizations, Taliban communication security procedures such as code words and simple encryption techniques, as well as observed Taliban and Al-Qaida leadership to include Senior Al-Qaida Commander Abdul Hadi Al-Iraqi [later captured and sent to Guantánamo], the leader of Osama Bin Laden’s (UBL) Arab Brigade in Kunduz, AF, region.”

To be honest, this doesn’t seem to constitute anything more than would be required of a driver doing his job, although it undoubtedly involved some information that would be useful as intelligence, as, presumably, was an additional claim that he “interacted with what he believe[d] to be Arab members of the Pakistani ISID that would spy against the Northern Alliance and report to Taliban/HUJI commander Sajjad and Taliban commander Ayubi.” However, if intelligence was what was being extracted, then it was somewhat dishonest to dress it up as information that contributed to the threat level he posed.

In addition, some of it was also of distinctly dubious provenance. An allegation that he was a member of HUJI, for example, was made under unknown circumstances by a fellow prisoner, Abdul Sattar Safeezi (ISN 11, identified as Abdul Sedar Nafeesi), and another implausible sounding claim — that he told Isa Khan (ISN 23, identified as Isaka K Bannu) that “he had four brothers, who were Taliban truck drivers as well” — was, according to an analyst, supposed to “add validity to the assumption [that his] family supports jihad and likely provides insight as to [his] true motives for going to Afghanistan.”

In detailing the circumstances of his capture, the Task Force noted that he “drove a truck full of Taliban soldiers to surrender to General Dostum’s forces,” and that a Northern Alliance soldier “boarded [his] truck and told him to drive to a prison near Mazar-e-Sharif,” from which he subsequently “escaped, but was recaptured by Northern Alliance soldiers.” Apparently handed over to US forces on November 26, 2001 (although the US had no general detention facilities at that time), he was sent to Guantánamo on May 13, 2002, allegedly to “provide information on the following: Punjab foreign fighters from the Punjab region who supported the Taliban operating north of Konduz, Punjabi leaders, Commander Qari Saleem and deputy, Bayee Moogheerah [and] Punjab recruiting practices, to include madrassas used as recruiting places in Pakistan.”

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

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

In conclusion, Ul Shah was assessed as being of medium intelligence value (as well as a medium threat risk) and Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood recommended his transfer for continued detention in Pakistan. He was not actually released for another 17 months, although there is no evidence that, on his return, he was subjected to further detention, as the US authorities wished.

Mohammed Al Zayla (ISN 55, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Mohammed al-Zayla, who was 24 years old at the time of his capture, admitted, in Guantánamo, that he had received military training at the Al-Farouq training camp (the basic training camp for Arab recruits), but said that he didn’t fight the Northern Alliance because he wouldn’t fight other Muslims. He said that he went to Afghanistan because he wanted to fight in Chechnya, and an ex-Chechen fighter told him he should first receive some training in Afghanistan, and added that he was in Kabul, on the back lines, when the US-led invasion started, and that everyone in the house that he was staying in decided to leave for Pakistan via Khost.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Zayla was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated March 3, 2006, in which he was identified as Muhammad Yahya Muhsin Al-Zaylai, born in July 1977, and it was noted that he was “in good health,” although “Behavioral Health ha[d] seen him for personality disorder and outbursts,” and it was also noted that he had “a history of gastroenteritis,” and “a history of episodes of orthostatic hypotension due to dehydration from the hunger strike, which was resolved after hydration with IVF.” It was also noted that he “was on a hunger strike in March 2002 and August 2005,” and that he had scars “on his right bicep, mid abdomen, lower back and right knee.”

In assessing al-Zayla, the Task Force provided a detailed version of his story, noting that he said that, in February or March 2001, he bought and watched a video about the “atrocities being committed by the Russians against Muslims in Chechnya,” and “then made the decision to travel to Chechnya to join the jihad.” This was a reason given by many of the prisoners, and there was, to be honest, no reason to doubt it necessarily, especially as numerous sources confirm that, to have a chance of getting to Chechnya, volunteers needed first to undertake training in Afghanistan. This, al-Zayla said, is what friends told him, and he was then put onto a facilitator, who arranged his visit to Afghanistan.

After arriving in Kandahar via Pakistan, and the Taliban’s office in Quetta, al-Zayla said that he was taken to a guest house (Al-Nebras), where “he was asked his name, asked if he was anxious to begin his training, and offered a safe to store his personal belongings.” He said that he “stayed in the guest house for two days, accepting the offer of safe storage, before going to Al-Farouq in mid-April 2001,” where he “trained under Abu Saliman, a Filipino.” However, when he “became sick and another trainer took over, [he] decided to leave Al-Farouq.”

He and another recruit then stayed in the “Arab House” in the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul “for two or three days before heading to the front lines,” where he was part of a group commanded by Abu Obeida. He said, however, that he “was never involved in any direct fighting, but did drill for an attack and was trained on the AK-47.” he also said that he “learned of the events of 11 September 2001 while on the front line.”

Al-Zayla also said that, in November 2001, he “and twenty others retreated from the front lines to Kabul,” where he “spoke with his family and decided to return home.” His personal belongings were in Kandahar, however, and when he tried to get them back, he was told that they had been sent to Khost for safekeeping. He then traveled to Khost, but was told that they had been sent on to a small village in Pakistan. He then traveled to Pakistan with approximately 28 others, split into two groups, each led by a guide. However, on arrival in Pakistan, the Pakistani authorities were waiting, and he was taken into custody, and was transferred to US custody in Peshawar on December 27, 2001.

He was sent to Guantánamo on January 11, 2002 (the day after the prison opened), on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Al-Farouq training camp [and] Guesthouse in Kandahar, AF.”

Of interest in his file are the statements made by his fellow prisoners, as they reveal the extent to which the authorities relied on the prisoners to incriminate each other, or to provide exculpatory information. In most cases, however, the reliability of these witnesses can, and should be called into question. In al-Zayla’s file, for example, after stating that he had been “photo-identified by known and assessed Al-Qaida members,” the Task Force revealed that those “known and assessed Al-Qaida members” included the Australian David Hicks (ISN 2), who was not an Al-Qaida member, and who is credited with having “photo-identified [al-Zayla] as someone he last saw in the Madafa in Kandahar” (which an analyst assessed as being a reference to the Al-Nebras guest house), and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul (ISN 39, still held), identified as Ali Hamza A Ismail, who was an al-Qaeda member, and who “stated that [al-Zayla] was in his group upon capture.”

Other dubious claims were made by Abd Al-Malik Abd Al-Wahab (ISN 37, still held), a probable Taliban fighter identified as an “[a]ssessed Al-Qaida operative and UBL [Osama bin Laden] bodyguard,” who “identified [al-Zayla] as Mahmoud from Saudi Arabia,” and said that he “knew [him] from the road fleeing Afghanistan,” but “did not know why [he] was in Afghanistan” (which does not sound very convincing), the British prisoner Richard Belmar (ISN 817), described as an “[a]ssessed Al-Qaida member,” who “stated [al-Zayla] and many others looked familiar when asked to review the photos of suspected UBL bodyguards,” but who “provided no further information on where he may have seen [him] before” (which is a particularly weak claim), and Sami El-Leithi (ISN 287), identified as Al-Muntasir Billah Ahmad Al-Bibr, and described as an “[a]ssessed jihadist” (which is ridiculous, as he was a teacher), who “photo-identified [al-Zayla] as a Saudi named Mohammed Omar aka Grandfather, who [he] knew from JTF GTMO” (which is also a very weak claim, as he did not claim knowledge of al-Zayla from anywhere except at Guantánamo).

Further information, which played in al-Zayla’s favour, as it involved repeated claims that he was not a bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, also came from numerous other sources, revealing the extent to which prisoners were plugged for information about each other. Those who did not name al-Zayla as a bodyguard were: Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63, still held), who was tortured in Guantánamo, Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016, still held) and Walid bin Attash (ISN 10014, still held), who were tortured in secret CIA prisons, Abdu Ali Al-Haji Sharqawi (ISN 1457, still held) and Sanad Yislam Al-Kazimi (ISN 1453, still held), who were also tortured, Salim Hamdan (ISN 149, released in November 2008), a driver for Osama bin Laden, and Mohammad Hashim (ISN 850, released in December 2009), an Afghan fantasist who claimed to have escorted bin Laden out of Afghanistan (and was believed by the US authorities).

In analyzing his case, the Task Force assessed that he was “a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] occasionally been both non-compliant and hostile to the guard force and staff.” In terms of the threat he reportedly posed to the US, he was assessed as “a jihadist who traveled to Afghanistan for training,” and as “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was also assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for continued detention. However, it was also noted that, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, he can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).” Nine months later, he was indeed transferred out of Guantánamo, to take part in the Saudi government’s rehabilitation program.

Salim Al Harbi (ISN 57, Saudi Arabia) Released December 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (3) – ‘Osama’s Bodyguards,’“  I told the story of Salim al-Harbi, who was 33 years old at the time of his capture. His story was unknown while I was researching and writing The Guantánamo Files, and was not made available until the Pentagon released a batch of documents relating to the prisoners in September 2007.

As I explained in the online chapter, al-Harbi’s story provided a break from most other narratives with its bold statements that he “left Mecca to get away from debts he owed from his failing business,” sold his automobile and decided to go to Afghanistan “to make a profit from the drug trade,” or, as he put it elsewhere, because he wanted “to get away from everything and stay high,” as opium and hashish were “very cheap in Afghanistan.” He was apparently no stranger to drugs and jails, as it was stated in his Unclassified Summary of Evidence that he was jailed in Mecca “after some financial problems with Interpol in 1998-99,” that he was also jailed — both in Riyadh and the UAE — for defrauding a telephone company, and that he also “spent two years in prison for stealing and possession of a controlled substance.”

Al-Harbi claimed that he stayed with a drug dealer in Khost, and “had access to the drug trade,” and he also seems to have come into contact with the vast missionary organization Jamaat-al-Tablighi, who, he pointed out, were “known to pay off the debts of members willing to travel for the group,” and, it should be noted, were also more than likely to want to “save” a drug addict who came into contact with them. Although the US authorities doubted his story that he was taken to the Pakistani border and apprehended either after being injured in a motorbike accident or while traveling in a bus that was hit in a US bombing raid, they secured little in the way of allegations against him, other than a claim that his trip was facilitated by a man who later became a jihadist martyr, and, bizarrely, that his alias was found “in the pocket litter of a Mujahedin [sic] traveling from Bosnia to Croatia in 1996.” It is unknown whether his stated aim on his return to Saudi Arabia — to “build a house and open a restaurant” — came true.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to al-Harbi was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated February 3, 2006, in which it was noted that he was born in November 1968, and also had an extensive medical history at Guantánamo, in which it was noted that he “was on a hunger strike in July 2003 and August 2005,” had a “history of latent TB but refused therapy,” had “a history of low Body Mass Index last recorded at 19.4%,” had “a history of chronic bilateral knee pain,” had “a documented episode of atrial fibrillation in 2002 that ha[d] now reportedly converted,” and had “a history of hypothyroidism but [had] refused all jabs and medications.”

Despite al-Harbi’s story about his drug history, and his intention in traveling to Afghanistan, the Task Force assessed him as “a probable jihadist,” who claim[ed] to have traveled to Afghanistan (AF), for a drug consumer holiday.” It was also noted that, while in Afghanistan, he “resided in several guesthouses and associated with members of a known Al-Qaida affiliated organisation, Jamaat al-Tablighi,” which was an outrageous distortion, as Jamaat al-Tablighi is a vast apolitical missionary organization, and that he “resided in known Al-Qaida and Taliban havens for extended periods of time,” although it was added, crucially, that he had “no documented attendance at training camps” — and, it should have been added, there was no evidence that he had engaged in combat against the US.

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he began using drugs at school, at the age of 15, dropped out of school, and was then imprisoned after “defrauding a satellite cellular phone company.” In prison, he met a man who suggested that he should go to Afghanistan “because the drugs were abundant and cheap,” which he did. Although he took a familiar recruitment route — from Karachi to Quetta, and then to Kandahar and Kabul, he denied ever participating in any armed conflict while in Afghanistan,” and said that he stayed in Khost (one of the “known Al-Qaida and Taliban havens” referred to above) for four months, where he decided to kick his drug addiction.

After the US-led invasion began, he traveled to Peshawar, via Miram Shah, with two Afghan members of Jamaat al-Tablighi, where he “and another six or seven Pakistanis and Arabs were stopped and then taken to jail.” He was transferred to US custody on December 27, 2001, and was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, although “no reasons for transfer” were documented.

The Task Force stated that his account “appears to be a cover story; however, there is limited additional information with which to counter his claims.” It was noted that he “fail[ed] to mention his previous participation in jihad and his association with Bosnian mujahideen,” but although it was difficult to be suspicious of the information from the Saudi Ministry of Interior General Dlrectorate of Investigations (Mabahith), which stated that he “went to Afghanistan in 1990 or 1991 for jihad,” there was no evidence that he had been in Bosnia, as it relied on a very thin claim that a “variation of [his] alias” was “found in the pocket litter” of a Saudi and a Pakistani who entered Croatia from Bosnia as mujahideen in January 1996. In addition, although at one point it was stated that the Mabahith “identified detainee as a high priority detainee,” in July 2002, “a delegation from Saudi Arabia visited JTF GTMO and interviewed detainee, [who] was identified as being of low intelligence and law enforcement value to the US, and unlikely to pose a terrorist threat to the US or its interests.”

In conclusion, al-Harbi was assessed as “a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behavior ha[d] been both non-compliant and hostile to the guard force and staff,” although, in terms of the threat he reportedly posed to the US, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence,” and as “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and, as a result, Brig. Gen. Hood recommended that he should continue to be held. However, it was also noted, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, [he] can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).” In addition, “A visiting Saudi delegation indicated that the Government of Saudi Arabia would be willing to take custody of detainee for possible prosecution.”

Musa Al Wahab (ISN 58, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (3) – ‘Osama’s Bodyguards,’“  I described the thin set of allegations leveled against Musa al-Wahab, who was 24 years old at the time of his capture. By his own account, he “received a fatwa to conduct Dawa activity [providing religious guidance] in Afghanistan,” and “used his own money to pay for his trip,” but he was, typically, the brunt of other, unsubstantiated claims. Although he was not specifically accused of being a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden — it was noted, instead, that he was “captured with a group of 30 individuals that include some of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and a weapons trainer” — he “was reported to have attended a known terrorist training camp,” and to have “been in Tora Bora,” where it was additionally “reported” that he was “an Emir of a group of fighters.”

Apparently jailed in Saudi Arabia for theft (with two Nigerians who were later deported), he was variously — and confusingly — described as being on a foreign government watch list for a supposed trip to Chechnya (not mentioned elsewhere), regarded as a “high priority” detainee by the Saudi Ministry of the Interior, and regarded by a foreign government service (the Saudis again, I presume) as being of “low intelligence or law enforcement value to the United States and also unlikely to pose a terrorist threat to the US or its interests.” His release, of course, suggested that the latter was true.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Wahab was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated January 21, 2005, in which it was stated that he was born in July 1977, he was also identified as Musa A. Al-Hawsawi, and it was noted that he had “a history of a depressive disorder and a personality disorder not elsewhere specified.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted his own version of events, whereby he left Saudi Arabia on July 27, 2001, traveling to Afghanistan via Karachi, to meet an Afghan friend, and, unsuccessfully, to seek a wife. When his Afghan friend returned to Saudi Arabia, he then traveled to Khost, hoping to meet other Arabs, but ended up, as the US-led invasion had begun, traveling to Pakistan with about 30 other people, led by Afghan guides. Seized by the Pakistani military in Parachinar, on December 15, 2001, he was imprisoned in Peshawar, and then handed over to the US authorities on December 27, 2001. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, although his “file [did] not indicate why he was sent to JTF GTMO.”

The Task Force assessed al-Wahab as part of “the Dirty 30″ — mostly regarded as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, despite problems with these claims — although no one claimed that al-Wahab was actually a bodyguard. Instead, a variety of unreliable witnesses claimed that he trained at Al-Farouq: torture victim Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 63), the notorious liar Yasim Basardah (ISN 252), and the British prisoner Richard Belmar (ISN 817), who was also subjected to abuse. Basardah additionally identified him as being in Tora Bora, and Mohammed Hashim (ISN 850, released in December 2009), a notorious Afghan fantasist, “identified [him] as an individual he had been seen with [at] the Abu Hasan Arab Military division in Kunduz, AF, while they were standing outside of their building.”

In conclusion, he was “assessed to be a low-level member of Al-Qaida and its terrorist network,” because of the unsubstantiated allegations outlined above, and it was also noted that, although he had been “erroneously tied to” Amran al-Hawsawi (ISN 368, released in September 2007), “there [was] a possibility that [he had] familial ties with ISN 368 and his brother,” who, it was stated, was “in Saudi custody.” It was also noted that the Saudi Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Investigations (Mabahith) had stated that al-Wahab had been in Chechnya, which was considered significant by the Task Force, although it was not corroborated elsewhere. As a result, although he had “not admitted to being in Tora Bora or attending an Al-Qaida run training camp,” he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Brig. Gen. Hood recommended him for transfer to continued dentition in Saudi Arabia.

Murat Kurnaz (ISN 61, Germany) Released August 2006

In the history of Guantánamo, only a handful of former prisoners have become prominent in the media after their release, helping to publicize both the injustices of Guantánamo and the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” and also the complicity of other governments. One of those is Murat Kurnaz, who wrote a book about his experiences, Fünf Jahre meines Lebens: Ein Bericht aus Guantánamo, which was published in 2007, and who has made frequent media appearances since his release. His book was then published in English in 2008, as Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo.

As I explained in Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, Kurnaz, who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, was an apprentice shipbuilder who was born and raised in Bremen, Germany. The son of Turkish immigrants who had moved to Germany in the 1970s, he was accused of being “a member of Al-Qaida who had been trying to reach Afghanistan to fight against US forces.”

In fact, he went to Pakistan to study with the vast missionary organization Jamaat-al-Tablighi, and was captured on a bus in Pakistan in November 2001. Transferred to the US prison at Kandahar airport, he experienced many of the brutal methods of treatment described by other prisoners, as Amnesty International explained in a case sheet dealing with his predicament in May 2005. He said that “interrogators repeatedly forced his head into a bucket of cold water for long periods” and “gave electric shocks to his feet,” that he was “held for days shackled and handcuffed with his arms secured above his head,” and that on one occasion an officer loaded his gun and pointed it at his head, “screaming at him to admit to being an al-Qaeda associate.”

What I found disgraceful about Kurnaz’s case was that, initially, the German government washed its hands of him, even though it had been established early on in his detention that he had no connection to terrorism. As the Washington Post explained on his release, “By early 2002, US military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information linking Kurnaz to al-Qaida or terrorist activities, according to declassified records in his case.” These were made public in January 2005, when US District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green “criticized the military for ignoring evidence in Kurnaz’s favor and ruled that his detention was illegal,” as the Post explained, noting also that her ruling “was stayed while the government appealed.”

The German government ignored Kurnaz’s plight for four years because, although he was born in Germany, the status of his parents as gastarbeiter (guest workers) meant that, like all gastarbeiter, they were not allowed to claim German citizenship for themselves or their children, and his fate was left in the hands of the government of Turkey, where he had never lived. It was not until Angela Merkel became Chancellor in November 2005 that moves were made to secure his release, which took place nine months later.

In 2008, he was interviewed by a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers for a major review of 66 released Guantánamo prisoners, in which McClatchy confirmed that investigators had found “no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with al-Qaida or making any specific threat toward the US,” and Kurnaz explained — as he has so many times before and since — that when he was seized (in December 2001, in his account), “he was on his way to the airport after a month of studying in madrassas,” as part of “an effort to become a better Muslim man for his new, conservative, Muslim wife from Turkey.” He said that “his primary fear at first was that he’d miss his flight,” but that this changed when “Pakistani police handed him over to American forces for a $3,000 bounty” and he was sent to the US prison at Kandahar airport.

As he explained, “The closest I came to death, I believe, was when they hung me by my hands for five days. It may have been longer. It seemed an eternity.” This type of punishment is more commonly associated with the abusive regime at Bagram, the other prison used to process prisoners for Guantánamo, and it is clearly a form of torture. Describing it further, Kurnaz said that “his wrists were handcuffed together, a chain was connected to them and he was hoisted up with a pulley. The guards took him down only to check his vital signs.”

Kurnaz has also explained that, in Kandahar, another prisoner subjected to the same treatment died. He did not mention this to McClatchy’s reporter, but it is discussed in his book, and in an article published in the Washington Spectator in 2007, he said, “They were hanging me and pulled me up higher than the other times. I could see the man in the other room. He was hanging, too. Maybe they lifted him higher that time, too, I don’t know. I had heard him moaning and breathing; this is the first time I saw him. He was dead. The color of his body was changed and I could see he was dead.”

On another occasion, “he was questioned while he was being dunked in cold water,” and he explained that “when his American questioners kicked him in the stomach while his head was submerged, he began to fear that he’d inhale water and drown.” This story — again, one that Kurnaz has often repeated — was recently picked up on by the psychologist and reporter Jeff Kaye, for an article on the types of water torture used in the “War on Terror,” which I cross-posted here.

After he was moved to Guantánamo, Kurnaz has maintained, his ordeal continued. In his book, he wrote powerfully about the perils of surviving solitary confinement, where those who were regarded as uncooperative were held for at least a month, and often longer, in isolation cells with so little oxygen that it was an effort just to survive. Kurnaz also claimed, as McClatchy described it, that “he was beaten frequently, blasted with pepper spray, shackled to the floor for long periods and sexually molested by three female interrogators.” He added that his weight dropped from 220 pounds to 140.

In the article in the Washington Spectator, he “theorize[d] that much of the torture was a result of the failure of the American soldiers and agents to capture any real terrorists.” As he explained in his own words, “They didn’t have any big fish. And they thought that by torture they could get one of us to say something. ‘I know Osama’ or something like that. Then they could say they had a big fish.”

Speaking to McClatchy about his release, and his life since, he said that, although he learned that his grandfather and his favorite uncle had died and that his wife had divorced him, he thought he had “adapted well to normal life.” He was working as a city researcher in Bremen, had “bought a red sports car and a fast motorcycle, and he dream[ed] of finding a new wife.” As he explained, in conclusion, “Of course, I can never forget my life in prison. But I hold nothing against the people of America. What was done to me was done by their government. I understand most Americans had no idea what was happening to me, or the others, in that horrible place.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Kurnaz was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated May 19, 2006, in which he was identified as Murat Kunn, Murat Karnaz and Mourad Kournaz, born in March 1982, and, in defiance of a lack of evidence, was “assessed to be a member of Al-Qaida’s global terrorism network with membership in the Bremen Al-Qaida Cell and Jamaat al-Tablighi (JT) and probable associations with Lashkar-E-Tayiba (LET).” With the exception of Jamaat al-Tablighi, which is a vast apolitical missionary organization, despite the US authorities’ attempts to dress it up as an organized front for terrorism, Kurnaz had no involvement with the other organizations — Al-Qaida and LET, and the Bremen cell that didn’t even exist.

Despite a lack of evidence of any wrongdoing or planned wrongdoing on Kurnaz’s part, the Task Force persisted in claiming that he “traveled to Pakistan intent on receiving training and participating in hostilities against US and coalition forces operating in Afghanistan in preparation for the commencement of Operation Enduring Freedom,” which, I believe, reveals primarily how, once in Guantánamo, and the longer prisoners were held, the more the supposed evidence against them was often little more than an accumulation of unsubstantiated allegations.

Repeating Kurnaz’s own story, the Task Force noted that, in the mosque in Bremen, he met two Jamaat al-Tablighi members, and, after speaking to them, “decided to travel to Pakistan to learn Arabic and increase his knowledge of Islam.” After he “stayed at a series of JT guesthouses and mosques before settling in Peshawar, PK, to teach the Koran,” he was then seized near Peshawar on a bus, after traveling to Miram Shah, on the Pakistan/Afghan border, with an associate, Mohammed, who was “helping him change his plane ticket for his return to Germany.” Transferred to US custody on December 27, 2001, he was sent to Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to provide information on the following: Jamaat al-Tablighi in Pakistan [and] Jamaat al-Tablighi at the Quba Mosque in Bremen, GM.”

After claiming that Kurnaz was “deceptive in answering questions and contradict[ed] himself on several occasions,” the Task Force also claimed that he was “standing by his cover story to avoid revealing his connections to extremists,” and assessed him as “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” drawing in particular on a claim by former CIA “ghost prisoner” Mohammad Haydar Zammar, described as “the Al-Qaida recruiter of 9/11 lead pilot Mohammad Atta,” who, it was conceded, was being held in a Syrian jail, where torture was rife. Zammar had apparently stated that he had “sent [Kurnaz] to Afghanistan in the days following 9/11,” and an analyst had added that “Zammar’s comment that detainee was sent by him to Afghanistan for terrorist training ‘just like Atta’s group before him’ suggest[ed] that [he] was to possibly be groomed as a suicide operative.”

This was a horrible example of what happens when people who are tortured are shown photos and obliged to identify the people in the photos, and there were other examples in Kurnaz’s file: a statement by Mohammed al-Qahtani, tortured at Guantánamo, who “photo-identified [him] as a German who was captured at Tora Bora,” even though he was not captured at Tora Bora at all.

Despite the lack of evidence against Kurnaz, and the creativity required to conjure up a case against him, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the commander of Guantánamo, recommended his continued detention.

For further information about Murat Kurnaz, see this article in Der Spiegel about Kurnaz’s initial claims that German operatives abused him in Afghanistan, this Al-Jazeera interview in 2008 (when I was also interviewed), this article featuring Kurnaz’s thoughts about the alleged triple suicide at Guantánamo in June 2006 (also see the story of Yasser al-Zahrani (ISN 93, below)), this article featuring his comments to interviewers from the United Nations, this article discussing a Human Rights Watch report about the complicity in torture of Germany and France, and this interview with Kurnaz on Russia Today in August 2011.

Abdel Hadi Sebaii (ISN 64, Saudi Arabia) Released May 2006

In Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdel Hadi al-Sebaii, a police officer who was 31 years old at the time of his capture, went to Pakistan “for charity purposes to build houses,” as he said in Guantánamo, but decided he would be able to do more in Afghanistan. He explained that he “didn’t only go to build houses but anything that would help the poor and needy,” and added that it would cost him up to $300,000 to build a mosque in Saudi Arabia, whereas in Afghanistan it would only cost about $2,000. Speaking of the circumstances of his arrest, he raised the issue of prisoners (himself included) being sold to the Americans. He said that when he entered Pakistan and asked to go to his embassy, having shown the border guards his passport and travel tickets, he was told he would first be required to fill out some forms:

We were getting along famously. They didn’t put me in prison or place any restrictions on me … Suddenly, I was turned over to the United States. I don’t know why I was turned over to the US … My only problem was with the Pakistani government. Why did they do that? Pakistan is the reason I am here. Pakistan was greedy and wanted money, so they sold me. This might have put the US in a very precarious position.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Sebaii was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated May 13, 2005, in which he was identified as Adl Al-Hadi M. Al-Subay and Abdel Hadi Mohammed Badan Al-Sebaii Sebaii, born in August 1971, and it was noted that he had “food allergies to include: wheat, peanut and potato-based products.”

In assessing his story, it was noted that he had been previously assessed as “Retain in DoD [Control]” on January 10, 2004, but his case had been reconsidered, and he was “assessed as a low-level member of Al-Qaida’s terrorist network,” who, in response to a fatwa, “traveled along a known jihadist route to Afghanistan for jihad,” but “used the cover story of traveling to Afghanistan to help build mosques.” Even so, despite his apparent repudiation of his story about traveling to build mosques, it was odd that he was not captured with any fighters, but with two Kuwaitis, Adel Kamel Haji (ISN 60, released in November 2005) and Omar Rajab Amin (ISN 65, see below), who “were traveling together.” He “spent five weeks in their company,” and was captured by Pakistani authorities on December 20, 2001, held in prison in Peshawar, and then transferred to US custody on December27, 2001.

He was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, although no reason was provided. Instead, the Task Force noted that “Bagram processing documents indicate[d] detainee was transferred to JTF GTMO to provide information on the training and tactics of the Saudi Governmental Police Department; however, [he] may be able to provide information on facilitators that aided him in his travels to Afghanistan and Al-Qaida terrorist connections.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that a man he had stayed with in Afghanistan prior to meeting the Kuwaitis, Mohammed al-Afghani, “was actually Majid Bin Muhammad Bin Sulayman Abal Khayil aka Arsala Khan,” described as “a known Al-Qaida and Taliban facilitator that was captured and [was] being held in US custody,” although I have been unable to discover any information about him, and he was never held at Guantánamo. Nothing else of substance was put forward, and, as a result, Sebaii was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Brig. Gen. Hood recommended his transfer to Saudi Arabia for continued detention.

Omar Rajab Amin (ISN 65, Kuwait) Released September 2006

In Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Omar Rajab Amin, who was 34 years old at the time of his capture, had studied at the University of Nebraska and then spent seven years heading a Kuwaiti charity in Croatia and Bosnia, which supported orphans from the war zone. In October 2001, as he explained in Guantánamo, he was inspired by the plight of the Afghan people, and set off for Afghanistan with 3,000 Kuwaiti Dinars (about $10,000) donated by himself and his brothers and sisters. After traveling to the Iranian border, he didn’t find any refugees, and then decided to enter Afghanistan, traveling to Kabul to find people who might need his help, secure in the knowledge that the Americans had stated that the war would be “a political war, an economical war, an information war and an intelligence war.” “The Americans were not stupid,” he added. “They were not going to commit all their troops to go into Afghanistan to die, like the Russians and the British.”

In Kabul, he found an interpreter, and said that they were “working every day from the morning until the sunset … meeting the poor people and the orphans,” until one day his interpreter advised him not to return to the city because it was about to fall to the Northern Alliance. He then began trying to escape from Afghanistan, eventually meeting up with a group of Afghans and other Arabs, who were heading to the border — and giving a lift to Adel Kamel Haji (see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released After the Tribunals, 2004 to 2005 (Part One of Five)“), where they turned themselves in and were sold to the Americans. He added that he would never have entered Afghanistan in the first place if he had known that the Americans “were not going to apply the Geneva Convention, especially to people who worked in charity organisations.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Amin was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated January 6, 2006, in which it was noted that he was born in June 1967, and was “in good health,” although it was also noted that ”[h]is inprocessing Body Mass Index on 12 Jan 02 was 21%,” that he had “a history of latent TB for which he ha[d] refused treatment,” that he “was diagnosed with GERD [Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease aka Acid Reflux or Heartburn] in May 2002,” and that he “had a hemorrhoidectomy performed in July 2004.”

In relating his story, the Task Force noted that he had traveled to the US on a family visit in 1981, when he was 14, and also that he had studied in Arizona and Colorado from 1985 to 1987, and had attended the University of Nebraska from 1987 to 1992, where he “received a bachelor’s degree in agriculture.” These visits undoubtedly counted against him in detention, as anyone who had visited the US was regarded as a possible — or probable – member of an al-Qaida sleeper cell.

From 1994 to 1999, he worked for an NGO, the Kuwaiti Joint Relief Committee (KJRC), in Croatia and then in Bosnia-Herzegovina, providing aid and humanitarian assistance to those affected by the war, and he then returned to Kuwait, where he was employed by the Kuwaiti Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.

In 2001, “[i]nfluencedby the media, [he] decided to travel to Afghanistan for two months,” and, “[i]n light of his experience at an NGO, [he] stated he wanted to try and help the orphans and refugees.” After collecting money from his family and his local mosque, and traveling to Iran and taking a taxi to Afghanistan, Amin “stated he had only been in Afghanistan for two or three days before the coalition began bombing near Kabul,” and that, “after approximately a month, conditions become perilous and he was advised to leave the city.” He said that he left his passport and other documentation with “his government-provided translator,” who “promised [him] that he would forward it to him at a later date,” and that he then traveled to Pakistan with Adel Kamel Haji (ISN 60, described as Adil Kamil Abdullah) and Abdel Hadi Sebaii (ISN 64, see above, described as Abdel Hadi Mohammed). The three men, it was noted, “traveled on foot to the Pakistani border,” were arrested by Pakistani forces in mid-December, and transferred to US custody in Peshawar on December 27, 2001.

He was sent to Guantánamo on January 11, 2002 (the day the prison opened), on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: The inner workings of the governmental ministries, which coordinated relief efforts with the KJRC [Kuwaiti Joint Relief Committee], in both Bosnia and Croatia [and] The refugee community in Bosnia and Croatia between 1993 and 1999, as well as specific information on the civil war in Afghanistan.”

Although there was no reason to doubt Amin’s explanation of his activities, the Task Force assessed him as “an Islamic extremist who used his management position with the KJRC for over six years in Bosnia and Croatia to help facilitate mujahideen activity.” This analysis was based on a claim that his “narrative of his time as Deputy Director of the KRJC is basically empty, devoid of his responsibilities and personalities he met while in Bosnia and Croatia,” which actually means nothing, as he may have been unwilling to name names, knowing that to do so would only endanger any innocent people he had ever met in his travels.

It was claimed that he was “associated with known Kuwaiti terrorism financier Jabir Jalamah,” although this claim came from “a source with direct access but undetermined reliability,” who alleged that Jalamah was “a sheik in Kuwait who collect[ed] money from lesser financiers and funnel[ed] it to the Al-Qaida terrorist network, as well as the Zarqawi and Ansar al-lslam groups.” This was a spectacularly unreliable claim, although there was also little weight that could genuinely be attached to other claims: that “Kuwaiti Intelligence link[ed] detainee to Sulayman Abu Ghayth,” who worked for the Saudi-based humanitarian aid charity Al-Wafa in Afghanistan, but was “listed as the ‘official spokesman for the Al-Qaida organisation’ by Kuwaiti State Security,” and that Amin “possibly assisted in delivering funds to the director of Al-Wafa.”

The Task Force alleged that Al-Wafa was a front for terrorist-related activities (although this was never proved), and that the organization’s director, Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi (ISN 5, released in December 2007) had stated that “a group of six Kuwaiti nationals visited him in Afghanistan during late September 2001.” This may be true, and it may also be true that Amin was one of them, but nothing proves that any of these men had any purpose in mind beyond providing donations to support Al-Wafa’s humanitarian work, or that any of them actually knew about Abu Ghayth’s purported connections to Al-Qaida.

What was most significant, in the list of “Reasons for Continued Detention,” even though it was indicative of the exact opposite was the following note:

During a Kuwaiti delegation visit in January 2004, the Kuwait State Security (KSS) interrogated detainee. The KSS believed Amin was not dangerous and would release him directly if he was returned to Kuwait. Amin admitted he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and does not blame the United States for arresting him.

Despite this assessment, which should have led to Amin’s immediate release (although he was not freed for another two years and eight months), the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and as posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for continued detention, even though it was also conceded that he was “a low threat from a detention perspective,” as he was “mostly well behaved while in Camp Delta and ha[d] not taken part in any voluntary total fasts, made any jihadist statements, and ha[d] only rarely conducted PT in his cell.”

Yusif Khalil Nur (ISN 73, Saudi Arabia) Released June 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I explained how Yusif Khalil Nur, who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, was a survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, which took place in an ancient fort in northern Afghanistan, where hundreds of Taliban foot soldiers (and some civilians swept up by mistake) were taken after surrendering as part of the fall of Kunduz, the last Taliban-held city in the north. Most of these men died after some staged an uprising, which was put down with savage force, and the survivors huddled underground in a basement, as the Northern Alliance and their US allies bombed them, attempted to set them on fire, and finally flooded the basement.

Nur, who was wounded in the uprising, said in Guantánamo, “I didn’t fight. I was just sitting there, and I got injured.” In his review board hearing, he insisted that he had not traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, telling the board, “When I went to Afghanistan it wasn’t in my will to go and fight for the Taliban. I went there to visit my brother … The main reason was my brother, not the Taliban or the Northern Alliance … It doesn’t make any difference to me who is the Taliban and who is the Northern Alliance.” He did, however, admit that he traveled to Khawaja Ghar and received training in the use of hand grenades, and also admitted that he had traveled to Afghanistan previously, when he had been trained to use a Kalashnikov.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Nur was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated December 11, 2005, in which he was also identified as Yusef Khalil Abdullah, born in March 1982, who had “a history of malnutrition as a result of hunger striking and a gunshot wound to the abdomen upon detainment,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

Nur’s brother, according to the Task Force’s account, was Abdul Rahman Abdullah Nur, described as “a known Taliban member and assessed Al-Qaida recruiter,” and it was clear that Yusif was under his spell. Having traveled to Afghanistan in 2000, with his brother’s help and financial assistance, when he studied as the Malik Center in Kabul (described as “an Al-Qaida training facility”), he left to attend the Hajj, returning in March 2001, where he was reunited with his brother on the Taliban’s “secondary line” near Kabul. The two then stayed in a guest house while awaiting transportation to the front lines at Khawaja Ghar, which was where Nur’s brother trained him to use hand grenades, and then traveled to the front lines, where he stayed for six months.

The Task Force noted that, according to Nur, “When the coalition bombing campaign began, [t]hey decided to depart Afghanistan,” but were informed that the borders were closed. They then retreated to Kunduz, where they stayed in a guesthouse “until a deal was made between the Taliban and General Dostum, for safe passage to Kandahar.” Instead, however, “Dostum’s men told Taliban forces to surrender their weapons and took them to the fortress in Mazar-E-Sharif” (actually, Qala-i-Janghi, where the massacre took place that left only 86 survivors). In the file, the only mention of the massacre was that Nur “was wounded in the stomach during the uprising.”

From Qala-i-Janghi, he was taken to the brutal, overcrowded prison in Sheberghan, run by General Dostum, and then transferred to US custody. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Abd Al-Salam Al-Hadrami – a former senior ranking Arab fighter supporting the Taliban and senior Arab officer who commanded over 150 fighters, Gharib Al-Sunai — a senior ranking Arab fighter supporting the Taliban who assumed command of the Arab element after Al-Hadrami’s death, Abdul Rahman Khalil Abdullah Nur — A known recruiter and suspected trainer of Arab fighters supporting the Taliban [and] Combat operations involving his Arab element of the Taliban.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as “a member of Al-Qaida” who served in Osama bin Laden’s 55th Arab Brigade, and “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was, however, noted as being “of low intelligence value,” and “a medium threat from a detention perspective,” who had “recently been somewhat compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff,” but “did provide moderate support to the 2005 voluntary total fast by refusing 33 meals in August, as well as 9 meals in September.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Hood recommended him for continued detention.

Najib Lahcini (ISN 75, Morocco) Released February 2006

in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (1) – The Qala-i-Janghi Massacre,” I told the story of Najib Lahcini, who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, and was, I thought, probably a survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, although no mention of it was made in the available documentation. It was alleged that Lahcini, who, it was stated, had entered England illegally and had been persuaded to travel to Afghanistan “by a man he had met at the Baker Street mosque” in London, lived at a Taliban guest house in Jalalabad, “near the Taliban intelligence center,” attended a Taliban training camp for a month, and then spent another month in the mountains near Jalalabad, digging trenches with the Taliban. It was also stated that he was sent to Khawaja Ghar, but was forced to retreat by US bombing, and that he subsequently surrendered to General Dostum’s Northern Alliance forces near Mazar-e-Sharif. More vaguely, it was alleged that he “may have trained” at al-Farouq, and “was possibly in charge of a group of 20 fighters in Zormat,” in Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan, although both these allegations, I thought, sounded suspiciously like confessions obtained from other prisoners under duress.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Lahcini was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated June 3, 2005, in which he was identified as Najeb Lahassini (or Lahassimi or Lahassihi), born in September 1978, and it was noted that he was “in good health with the exception of chronic traumatic orthopedic injuries,” and was “followed by Behavioral Health Service for Personality disorder.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he had repeatedly tried to leave Morocco from 1999 onwards, and had finally managed to reach the UK in January 2001, via Spain and France, where he sought asylum. In London, he met a Sudanese man, Hamed, “who offered him food and a place to stay,” and he then “became a devoted Muslim,” and, in May 2001, agreed to travel to Afghanistan with Hamed to live “as a true Muslim.” In Jalalabad, they stayed for five months with a man named Abu Mohammed Al-Jazeeri, who Hamed had fought with against the Russians, and who, in July and August 2001, apparently provided weapons training to Lahcini, Hamed and “others who stayed at his home.”

After September 11, 2001, Lahcini said, he “was “sent to the mountains outside of Jalalabad, AF, along with Hamed and approximately one hundred other Arab fighters,” where they reportedly “prepared defensive positions,” and in late November 2001, he “and the others in his fighting group were told to retreat to Mazar-e-Sharif, AF, where they would surrender their weapons to the Afghan Duston (aka Dostum) Army. Thereafter, they would travel to Kandahar, AF, and be allowed to return to their home country.” Instead, of course, he and “approximately three hundred fighters” (other reports suggested, convincingly, that there were at least 450 prisoners) were taken to Qala-i-Janghi, where the notorious massacre took place, which was described in his file as follows:

Sometime throughout the detention process, some of the prisoners broke free and overpowered several troops. These prisoners took over the prison’s weapons and engaged Dostum’s troops. Detainee was untied by one of the prisoners as the fighting broke out. Shortly after being untied detainee claims an RPG round severely damaged his left arm. After being hit by the RPG he laid in the courtyard while the gunfight continued between the prisoners and Dostum’s troops. Detainee advised the fighting continued for five days. Some time during the fighting all the injured prisoners were placed in the basement of courtyard house number two (Analyst note: this was done by the Arab fighters). Detainee claims on the seventh day Dostum’s troops began pumping water into basement and between one hundred to one hundred and thirty prisoners drowned, including his friend Hamed. On the eighth day of fighting, the surviving prisoners were taken out of the basement and placed on stretchers, then taken to a Red Cross shelter.

He was then “taken to a hospital in Sheberghan, AF, where he remained for thirty days,” and was then turned over to US forces and taken to Kandahar. He was sent to Guantánamo on February 7, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Arab foreign fighters.”

In the Task Force’s assessment, what was missing from Lahcini’s account was a confession that he had been part of Osama bin Laden’s Arab Brigade, and had fought in Kunduz, where he was reportedly identified as having been seen by other prisoners. However, as he had what was described as an “extreme uncooperative disposition,” he had not provided the information the Task Force desired, and had also not responded to allegations made by other prisoners, including extremely dubious claims made by torture victim and CIA “ghost prisoner” Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016), who said that he “might possibly be a Yemeni national who may have trained at Al-Farouq camp” (he was a Saudi), and who was also responsible for the claim that he “was possibly in charge of a group of 20 fighters in Zormat.”

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as “a member of Al-Qaida,” who was “a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour pattern” had been “one of hostility and aggression directed towards the guard force and staff.” He was also assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and as “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” As a result, it was perhaps surprising that Brig. Gen. Hood signed a memo that updated a recommendation to “Retain in DoD [Control],” dated November 11, 2003, and, instead, recommended his transfer to continued detention in Morocco.

In November 2006, Lahcini and the other two Moroccans released with him in February 2006 — Muhammad Hussein Ali Hassan (ISN 123, see Part Two of this series), and Mohammed Laalami (ISN 237, also identified as Suleiman al-Alami, see Part Four of this series) — were sentenced by a criminal court in Salé. As Jurist described it, Laalami (identified as Mohamed Slimani) was “sentenced to five years in prison for his alleged role in creating and participation in a ‘criminal gang, practice of activities in a non-recognized association and organization of un-authorized public meetings,’” and Lahcini (identified as Najib Houssani) and Hassan (identified as Mohamed Ouali) “each received three year sentences for falsifying administrative documents.” Jurist added that the charges were “related to the men’s connection with Salafia Jihadia [an offshoot of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group] and unrelated to their detention at Guantánamo Bay.”

However, in May 2007, Laalami (described as Mohamed Slimani Alami) had his sentence quashed, and was acquitted of all charges, and Lahcini and Hassan had their sentences reduced to one-year suspended sentences.

Ilkham Batayev (ISN 84, Kazakhstan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Ilkham Batayev, who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, was another survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre. In Guantánamo, he said that, after traveling to Tajikistan to sell apples, he was kidnapped by thugs working for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), and transported to Kunduz, where he was forced to work as an assistant to a Taliban cook. In the chaos surrounding the fall of Kunduz, he saw his chance to escape, and hopped in a car with some other men who were hoping to escape to Iran, but was captured by Northern Alliance soldiers and taken to Qala-i-Janghi. Sick with malaria, and in pain from a recent operation to remove his wisdom teeth, he decided to leave the basement behind everybody else on the Sunday morning, when the massacre began, but was injured by a grenade as soon as he emerged, and then crawled back underground, where he spent the next six days hallucinating because he had lost a large amount of blood.

Batayev was also subjected to one of the most risible claims in the whole of Guantánamo’s history, which is full of implausible allegations, as I explained in Chapter 15 of The Guantánamo Files, in a section dealing with false confessions, when I noted that he “was reportedly caught smuggling $600,000, which, if true, suggests that he managed to keep the money safe while trying not to drown in the basement of the Qala-i-Janghi fort.”

In 2008, he was interviewed by a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers for a major review of 66 released Guantánamo prisoners. Interviewed in Abay, a “small town on the Kazakh-Uzbek border, a 12-hour train ride and a three-hour car trip from the nearest large Kazakh town,” Batayev “refused to talk about how he — a coach at a sports clinic, the son of a supervisor at a state-run cotton business — got from his home in rural Kazakhstan to the badlands of Afghanistan,” telling the reporter, “This is ancient history … I don’t want to say anything about it.”

As a result, McClatchy’s team was left with what was regarded as Batayev’s implausible story about traveling to Tajikistan to sell apples, which, as was noted, would have involved him “hav[ing] to travel all the way through another country, Uzbekistan, to go sell apples in Tajikistan, a country that has plentiful apple orchards of its own.”

This doesn’t mean that the US authorities’ version of events was true — that he wasn’t kidnapped by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan whilst on a trip to sell apples, but was a willing volunteer — and it is not necessarily persuasive that, as was asserted in Guantánamo, representatives of a foreign government — presumably Kazakhstan, whose agents visited Batayev in Guantánamo — confirmed his membership in the IMU,” as the Kazakh authorities may have lied, and it was impossible to be sure what the truth was when that absurd claim about having $600,000 on him was contained in the allegations.

However, it was noted that, while he was imprisoned in Afghanistan in 2001, before his transfer to Guantánamo, he was interviewed by a Kazakh journalist, and, in that interview, “said he was hiking in the mountains in Tajikistan with some friends when a gang of men loyal to Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader Juma Namangani kidnapped them.” It was also noted that he later told his American lawyer, Thomas R. Johnson Jr., that “he’d gone to Tajikistan to buy goods to bring back to Kazakhstan and sell,” but that, in the market in Dushanbe, “he met a trader who invited him to his orchards.” Once there, however, “a group of armed men kidnapped him” and took him to Afghanistan.

Although there are different points of view about whether or not the Taliban-linked IMU kidnapped people and took them to Afghanistan to fight, Johnson told McClatchy, “I never saw any credible information anywhere linking him” to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, adding, “I would feel completely confident going into a court of law in the United States and getting an acquittal based on the information in their files.” He also spoke about the absurd allegation regarding the $600,000 he reportedly had in his possession, calling it “ridiculous,” and explaining that “the first time that he was ever interrogated somebody said $600 … the amount has only grown.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Batayev was an “Update Recommendation to Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated July 25, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in July 1973, and it was revealed that he had been initially identified as an Uzbek, and had previously been recommended for “Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD) on 23 February 2004.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that he “graduated from a physical training college in Kazakhstan in 1992,” and then “worked as a youth sports instructor and a fruit vendor” prior to allegedly joining the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), supporters of the Taliban identified as “a Tier 1 target, which is defined as terrorist groups, especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests.”

In explaining how he ended up with the IMU, the Task Force shed light on the earlier discrepancies between versions of Batayev’s story, stating that, although he initially claimed he was kidnapped by a man named Makhmudzhon Kirgizov, he “later changed his story under questioning from the Kazakhstan National Security Committee (KNB) in early October of 2002.” He was then flown to Kunduz in January 2001, “by civilian helicopter,” ending up in an IMU training facility near Mazar-e-Sharif, where, he said, he “declined to participate in the training and did not participate in any military activity.”

Instead, he said, he “worked as a cook’s assistant in a guesthouse” until July 2001, when he was hospitalized with malaria (until September 2001). He then reportedly contracted pneumonia in October 2001, and was then taken to Qala-i-Janghi, where he “was wounded during the battle at the prison.” He was then held for a month in Kandahar, and was sent to Guantánamo on February 7, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif.”

In assessing his story, which involved detailed claims about his involvement with the IMU, the $600,000 became $60,000 in counterfeit money, which was apparently discovered in 2000 in the possession of a group of men (of which Batayev was one) by the Tajik Ministry of Internal Affairs,” and which apparently led to the Task Force’s bold claim that he “was involved in money laundering and counterfeiting operations with the IMU,” even though this had not been proved. Other claims were that he had been involved with the IMU since 1998, and, as a result, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” although it was also noted that, in Guantánamo, his “overall behaviour pattern ha[d] been compliant and often respectful to the operations of the Camp and the guard force.”

Yasser Talal Al Zahrani (ISN 93, Saudi Arabia) Died in Guantánamo June 2006

As I explained in Chapter 19 of The Guantánamo Files, Yasser al-Zahrani was one of three prisoners who died at Guantánamo on June 9, 2006. having allegedly hanged themselves in a coordinated suicide pact. The other two were Ali Abdullah Ahmed al-Salami, a Yemeni, and Mani al-Utaybi, another Saudi.

As I discussed in two articles, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo” and “WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo,” al-Zahrani was just 17 years old when he was seized, and was, therefore one of at least 22 juveniles at Guantánamo who should have been rehabilitated rather than punished, according to America’s obligations under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which the US ratified on December 23, 2002. However, only three juveniles were ever treated differently from the adult prisoners (as described in “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Ten of Ten)”), whereas al-Zahrani and the others were treated as harshly as all the other prisoners — or, in al-Zahrani’s case, worse than most, as he was a long-term hunger striker, who had been force-fed on a daily basis for many months before his death.

The administration’s response to the deaths was extraordinarily callous. Rear Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of Guantánamo, said, “This was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare committed against us,” and Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, described the suicides as a “good PR move to draw attention.” Stung by international criticism, the administration rapidly back-tracked, and Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, was put forward to say, “I wouldn’t characterize it as a good PR move. What I would say is that we are always concerned when someone takes his own life, because as Americans, we value life, even the lives of violent terrorists who are captured waging war against our country.”

In an attempt to stifle further dissent, and to bolster their view that the three men were hardened terrorists, the Pentagon released details of the allegations against them, which served only to highlight almost everything that was wrong with the system at Guantánamo. Al-Zahrani, who survived the Qala-i-Janghi massacre in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, was accused of being “a front line fighter for the Taliban who facilitated weapons purchases for offensives against US and coalition forces,” even though this scenario was highly unlikely (to say the least) for a 17-year old who had only recently arrived in Afghanistan. Similarly deluded and/or heartless allegations were also levelled against the other two prisoners.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Zahrani was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated March 20, 2006, in which it was confirmed that he was born on September 22, 1984, and was therefore, just 17 when he was seized. It was also noted that he had “a history of rheumatoid arthritis,” and that he “went on three hunger strikes in the past, most recently in July 2005,” although it was not noted that he maintained this hunger strike until his death (or shortly before his death), and that, although he weighed 118 pounds on arrival at Guantánamo, his weight dropped to just 87 pounds in January 2006.

The Task Force also noted that he had “a history of dehydration due to hunger strike treated with intravenous fluids,” that he “had surgery to remove a cyst from his lower back while detained,” that he had “a history of recurrent Pilonidal cyst,” and that he “suffered a gunshot wound to his right calf prior to his detention.”

In telling his story, the Task Force noted that his father was a senior official in the Saudi Interior Ministry, and that, after completing the eleventh grade in June 2001, al-Zahrani stayed at home for two months until, after “hearing that sheikhs from neighboring towns were saying jihad in Afghanistan (AF) was a religious duty, [he] decided to travel to Afghanistan.” He reportedly “financed the trip himself with savings he had earned selling perfumes to hajj pilgrims,” and “intended on returning in approximately October/November 2001.”

On arrival in Karachi, Pakistan, after being met by a go-between, he was apparently taken to Kunduz, where he received weapons training in a place call the Talban Center, and “was then assigned a guard position at a second line post between Kunduz and Tallogan.” He and his group then retreated Kunduz which fell approximately nine days later, when “a deal was struck with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance allowing fighters to leave with their weapons and travel to Mazar-e-Sharif, AF, where they would surrender.” They were then taken to the Qala-i-Janghi prison,” where al-Zahrani was one of 86 survivors of the uprising and subsequent massacre. As was explained in his file:

The day after they arrived at the prison, detainee and others were taken to a square in the prison yard. Detainee heard gunfire and explosions coming from the prison and then a firefight ensued injuring detainee in the leg and foot. He fell to the ground and remained in the same position until nightfall, when other prisoners retrieved him and carried him back to the underground prison. They remained there for seven days before they were forced to surrender. Detainee was removed from the prison, taken to a prison/clinic in Sheberghan, AF.

After a month, he was transferred to US custody, and was initially screened on December 29, 2001. He was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban training center in Kunduz [and] Taliban training center outside Kunduz used as a rear operating base.”

In assessing his story, it was noted that he had “provided a fairly consistent timeline that ha[d] been corroborated (for the most part) by other detainees,” and this was indeed the case, as he was identified by John Walker Lindh (the US citizen who was seized at Qala-i-Janghi, but was never held at Guantánamo), who said that he “was approximately 17 years old and was always joking and talking.” Lindh also said that he “was involved in food services,” along with Ghaleb al-Bihani (ISN 128, still held, who lost his habeas corpus petition for being a cook).

Al-Zahrani was also identified by Ali al-Tayeea (ISN 111, released January 2009), who was the source of unbelievable claims that he “trained at Al-Farouq, that he “purchased weapons for the Taliban,” and that he “was a money courier and a man with a suspicious nature.” Al-Tayeea was known as a notoriously unreliable witness in Guantánamo, and it was noticeable that an analyst had noted that his identification of al-Zahrani “as attending training at Al-Farouq [was] a contradiction to detainee’s story in which he indicate[d] he attended training outside Kunduz with seven others for one month,” and also noted that “[n]o other reporting identifies detainee as a money courier or weapons broker,” even though the latter claim was shamefully used by the Pentagon after al-Zahrani’s death.

It was also noted that, “When shown detainee’s picture, senior Al-Qaida detainees were unable to identify detainee,” and, as an analyst explained, “While not conclusive, this suggests that detainee lacked both experience and rank within the organization,” which was, of course, true as far as it went, although it stopped far short of recognizing that, in analyzing Al-Qaida, there was a big difference between the leadership interested in pursuing acts of international terrorism, and the much bigger military side of things, which was only concerned with supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed al-Zahrani as “a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and hostile to the guard force and staff,” and amongst the behavior noted was a description of him as “a major participant in the voluntary total fast of 2005-2006.” He was also “assessed to be a jihadist who traveled to Afghanistan (AF) to fulfill what he perceived to be a religious duty,” and was described as being “of low intelligence value,” and as “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.”

It was also noted that, “If a satisfactory agreement can be reached that ensures continued detention and allows access to detainee and/or to exploited intelligence, detainee can be Transferred Out of DoD Control (TRO).”

That, of course, never happened, as al-Zahrani died less than three months after this updated assessment was completed. However, the claim that the men committed suicide was doubted by the men’s fellow prisoners at the time, and also by other commentators, although it was not until December 2009 and January 2010 that serious doubts were expressed in a concerted and thoroughly researched manner.

In December 2009, the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey published a 136-page report, “Death in Camp Delta” (PDF), which comprehensively undermined the conclusion of the official investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and in January 2010, Harper’s Magazine published an extraordinary article by law professor Scott Horton (which I discussed here), revealing the story of Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, and a number of other soldiers — the tower guards who “had the responsibility and ability to observe all activity in the camp, [but] were not interviewed” by the NCIS — who suggested that, earlier in the evening on which the men allegedly committed suicide, they had been taken from the cell block in which they were held to a secret facility outside the main perimeter fence of Guantánamo — known to the soldiers as “Camp No” — where they had either been deliberately killed, or had a died as the result of particularly brutal torture sessions. “They didn’t die in their cells,” Sgt. Hickman explained to me in March 2010.

Despite these claims, the Justice Department shut the door on a proposed inquiry in November 2009, and an attempt by family members (including al-Zahrani’s father) to pursue accountability in the US courts was turned down in September 2010, and is currently being appealed.

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

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, 700,000-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

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Freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington continues his 70-part, million-word series telling, for the first time, the stories of 776 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Adding information released by WikiLeaks in April 2011 to the existing documentation about the prisoners, much of which was already covered in Andy’s book The Guantánamo Files and in the archive of articles on his website, the project will be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 19 of the 70-part series. 247 stories have now been told. See the entire archive here.

In late April, WikiLeaks pushed Guantánamo back onto the international media’s agenda by publishing thousands of pages of classified military documents — the Detainee Assessment Briefs — relating to almost all of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002, which drew on the testimony of witnesses — in most cases, the prisoners’ fellow prisoners — whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.

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

I began, in May and June, with a five-part series, “WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo,” telling the stories of 84 prisoners, released between 2002 and 2004, whose stories had never been told before. These men and boys were amongst the first 201 prisoners released, and unlike the other prisoners, for whom information was released to the public from 2006 onwards, as a result of court cases involving Freedom of Information requests, no information had been officially released about the first 201 prisoners.

“WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo” was followed by a ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004,” published from June to August, in which I revisited the stories of 114 other prisoners released in this period, adding information from the Detainee Assessment Briefs to what was already known about these men and boys from press reports and other sources.

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

For the next phase of this 70-part project (with 18 parts now complete), I have turned my attention to the period from September 2004 to the end of 2005, when 62 prisoners were released (see Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Five). This was the period in which, after the prisoners won a spectacular victory in the Supreme Court in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, when the Supreme Court granted them habeas corpus rights (in other words, the right to ask an impartial judge why they were being held), lawyers were allowed to meet the prisoners for the first time, and the secrecy that was required for Guantánamo to function as an interrogation center beyond the law was finally broken.

However, although the Bush administration allowed habeas petitions to proceed, Congress attempted to strip the prisoners of their habeas rights in the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005, and the administration also responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling with its own inferior version of habeas, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adel Al Zamel (ISN 568, Kuwait) Released November 2005

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Adel al-Zamel, who was 38 years old at the time, was one of at least 15 prisoners seized in house raids in Karachi that led to the capture of Abdu Ali Sharqawi (ISN 1457, aka Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj, and also known as Riyadh the Facilitator), who was regarded by the US authorities as a significant figure in Al-Qaida, although it was by no means clear that those seized in the raids had any connection with Sharqawi, or, indeed, whether his role was overplayed by the US authorities.

In Guantánamo, al-Zamel told his tribunal that, in 2001, he became the manager of the Kabul office of the Saudi humanitarian aid charity Al-Wafa, and took his wife and their eight children to Afghanistan, unaware that the humanitarian charity was under suspicion for activities related to terrorism (although noticeably, these were never proved, despite numerous Al-Wafa members, and the organization’s director, being held at Guantánamo).

Al-Zamel also said that he gave up his job in August 2001 after a disagreement with a more senior figure, who, he felt, was arrogant and was squandering money that had been given in good faith for charitable purposes. He then moved his family to Pakistan in September, but returned to help the family of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith move to Pakistan as well. He added that he had met Abu Ghaith on a few occasions in Kuwait, but insisted that he did not know, until after 9/11, “when he appeared on TV,” that he was a spokesman for Al-Qaida. Speaking of his capture, he denied all knowledge that he was staying in a safe house, as alleged, and said that he had been there for 16 weeks awaiting the opportunity to return to Kuwait.

In Chapter 14, I explained that, speaking of his time in Bagram, al-Zamel said, in an interview after his release (in which he was identified as Adil al-Zamil), “While walking to the place of interrogation, the guards would continuously hit me on my head with sticks, and every time I denied their accusations during interrogations (of being tied to Al-Qaida) the guards would hit me even more, hold me high up and then fling me to the floor.” He added that he was hooded and “stripped naked in front of women officers while they clicked photos, laughing all the time,” was intimidated by interrogators placing a gun on the table during interrogations, and was “suspend[ed] with one hand tied to the ceiling during interrogations, making it almost impossible to either sit or stand straight.”

Speaking of his transfer to Cuba, al-Zamel said, “I call the journey to Guantánamo ‘the journey of death.’ I discreetly wished that the plane would fall to end the pain I felt.” He also explained that, in Guantánamo, he was a victim of a monstrous policy whereby medical treatment was dependant on cooperation with the interrogators.

He said he was beaten on the head with handcuffs, but was refused medical treatment for several weeks until his wound became infected. He also said that the guards “used to give me pills which I didn’t know what they were, I think they were drugs because I was sleeping almost all the time.”

In an interview for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners in 2008, al-Zamel maintained that he had traveled to Afghanistan purely for humanitarian purposes. “A former employee of the Kuwaiti national housing authority,” he confirmed that he moved to Kabul in August 2000 to head a branch of what McClatchy described as the “the Wafa Humanitarian Works Organization,” left Afghanistan in January 2002, and was seized in Pakistan the next month. Refuting the US authorities’ unsubstantiated claims about Al-Wafa, he said that “his work was solely charitable, distributing food and overseeing small infrastructure projects,” and that he was “merely an employee.”

According to the US military, however, “he was a key organizer and co-founder of its offices in three Afghan cities,” and in his tribunal and review board the authorities claimed that he “had prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks and knew at least two members of bin Laden’s inner circle,” although this seems particularly suspect, as there are counter-arguments that Al-Wafa and bin Laden did not see eye to eye. Nevertheless, McClatchy noted that, in his interview, he failed to mention Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, although, to be fair, that could be simply because of the negative connotations attached to Abu Ghaith’s name, if al-Zamel’s version of events as explained at Guantánamo was true.

Whatever the truth, the connection haunted him in Guantánamo. He said that, on arrival, when “he was still sore from being punched in the face and kicked in the gut for two and a half months while in US military custody in Afghanistan,” and was being examined by a doctor,  an interpreter “looked at him, grinned and whispered over and over: ‘Do you want to kill yourself? Do you want to kill yourself?’” He was then taken to interrogation, where a soldier “with a tattoo of a dragon stretching down his forearm shoved a piece of paper in Zamel’s face” which featured a simple diagram — the letters “UBL” (for Osama bin Laden, or Usama bin Laden as the US military called him), an arrow to Abu Ghaith, and another arrow to his own name.

A McClatchy reporter spoke to al-Zamel in Kuwait, describing him as “a small, thin man with dark rings under his eyes. When speaking with friends, he jokes often, flashing his teeth in wide grins, and he talks in energetic bursts. When he’s silent, when his face is still, he looks tired and old.” Speaking of Guantánamo, he stressed to the reporter, “You must understand, the psychological torture was much worse than physical torture,” and spoke about the solitary confinement (for a month) to which all new arrivals were subjected.

After the guards took him “to what looked like a small metal box,” he said, “The cell was hot. I couldn’t sleep at night. The pillow was soaked with my sweat. There was a small opening in the cell wall; I used to push my nose to it. I used the bathroom on the floor; there was nothing else to do.” He added, “I thought they were going to kill me, and then I thought they were going to leave me in there until I died. I was losing my mind. I started to think that one day they were going to open the door and let a lion in to eat me. The world was getting smaller and smaller.”

After his introductory month in solitary, he was taken to a regular cell, and “was interrogated every day after that for at least a month, pushed to confess his ties to Al-Qaida and to describe what he knew about bin Laden.” He told the reporter, “They asked me what I thought about the events of Sept. 11, and I did not reply. If I said I denounced those events, they would call me a liar. If I said I supported it, they would call me a terrorist.” When the interrogators “thought he wasn’t telling the truth,” he added, “he was sent back to solitary.”

He also said that, in his last year at Guantánamo, after the torture program had largely been brought to an end, following the arrival of lawyers after the Supreme Court granted the prisoners habeas corpus rights in June 2004, the interrogators nevertheless “began to threaten to send him to Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan or Morocco, where security agents would torture him in ways that he couldn’t imagine.” He said that he took the threats seriously, and that finally he cracked. “I told them, ‘I am Osama bin Laden. Please kill me,’” he said. “I just wanted it to end.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to al-Zamel was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated April 17, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in August 1963, and the outline of his story — working for al-Wafa as an office manager, and then resigning and being caught in a house raid in Karachi — were repeated, along with a claim that he had been part of a group involved in an assault in Kuwait on a female student.

It was also stated that he was sent to Guantánamo on May 1, 2002, allegedly to “provide general-to-specific information on: Personalities and activities associated with upper echelons of the Al-Wafa organisation, Information about Al-Qaida and Taliban associated safe houses in the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul,” described as “a known former diplomatic district taken over by the Taliban and Al-Qaida for quarters and training,” plus “information about the Takfir Al-Hijra movement, [a] Kuwaiti Islamist group who seeks a return to Islam as practiced at the time of Muhammad, [and who] have conducted vigilante activity against young Kuwaitis engaged in what they perceive as immoral behaviour.”

This was a seemingly impressive list of reasons for his transfer, although, as I explained in my article, “How to Read WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files” (originally published on WikiLeaks’ website when the Guantánamo files were first published, as part of my work liaising between WikiLeaks and its media partners):

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

In seeking to justify his detention, the Joint Task Force claimed that details of his timeline had been “conflicting and vague,” and also cited the concerns of the Kuwaiti Security Service (KSS), which, it was alleged, had reported that al-Zamel was a member of Takfir Al-Hijra, described as “an anti-Kuwait government group”), had claimed that Abu Ghaith had “close relationships with members of this group, specifically naming the detainee,” and had also stated that al-Zamel “was convicted and sentenced (in absentia) to one year in prison by the Kuwaiti government,” and was “considered to be a ‘Most Dangerous Extremist.’” If all this was true, it was a wonder that al-Zamel was freed on his return to Kuwait, and, along with the four other Kuwaiti prisoners released in November 2005, was acquitted by a Kuwaiti court in May 2006 of “charges that they collected money for Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network” and of fighting alongside the Taliban.

In Guantánamo, however, until diplomatic pressure was exerted on behalf of al-Zamel and the other four men, he would not have been released. He was assessed as being “of high intelligence value,” as a result of the claims against him, and it was also noted that JTF GTMO regarded him as “a member of the Al-Qaida support network, an Islamic Extremist, and to have traveled to Afghanistan with the intent to evade capture.” It was also suggested that he moved his family and Abu Ghaith’s family to Pakistan prior to 9/11, suggesting he “had knowledge of the attacks prior to their execution,” and it was also stated, with the addition of the information reportedly from the Kuwaiti Security Service, that he had been determined to pose “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “retained under DoD control,” even though, in reporting his behavior, the Task Force failed to portray a man who was a threat.

After noting that his “overall behavior ha[d] been generally compliant and non-aggressive,” the Task Force stated that his “only aggressive incident occurred on December 31, 2003, when he kicked dirt and gravel at a military working dog and handler,” adding, “Every other action [he] has completed is minor passive aggressive.”

Sa’ad Al Azmi (ISN 571, Kuwait) Released November 2005

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Sa’ad al-Azmi, who was 22 years old at the time, was, like Adel al-Zamel (see above), one of at least 15 prisoners seized in house raids in Karachi that led to the capture of Abdu Ali Sharqawi (ISN 1457, aka Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj, and also known as Riyadh the Facilitator), who was regarded by the US authorities as a significant figure in al-Qaeda (and was tortured, as a US judge explained in 2010), although it was by no means clear that those seized in the raids had any connection with Sharqawi, or, indeed, whether his role was overplayed by the US authorities.

In Guantánamo, al-Azmi said that he was a friend of Adel al-Zamel, and that he spent three weeks with him in Kabul, and then ended up with him in the Karachi house. “The people I was arrested with were civilians,” he said. “They were not wearing uniforms. I did not know anybody there except al-Zamel.”

In Chapter 15, drawing on an interview after his release (in which he was identified as Saad al-Anzi), he spoke about the abuse he suffered at Guantánamo. He stated that, during one interrogation, the guards beat him so hard that they broke his leg, and he also spoke about the abuse he suffered as part of the implementation of specific “enhanced interrogation techniques” between late 2002 and the summer of 2004, which included the exploitation of prisoners’ phobias, through the use of dogs in al-Azmi’s case, as he said he was bitten by dogs while being hooded.

He was also subjected to levels of treatment introduced under the watch of Maj. Gen. Miller, which were entirely dependent on the prisoners’ cooperation with the interrogators. The most compliant, in Level 1, kept all their “comfort items” and also received a bottle of water a week, and the levels were graded down to Level 4, which involved prolonged isolation, in which the supposedly uncooperative prisoners were held completely naked, or were allowed just a pair of shorts, and all other “comfort items” were removed. Sa’ad al-Azmi was one of those who experienced Level 4 deprivation when he was held naked for two months.

Al-Azmi also spoke about medical mistreatment at Guantánamo, saying that he was “sprayed by a mysterious ‘red solution’ causing a burning sensation to his skin,” and, in response to claims that female interrogators were “sexually provocative” as “a way to break down devout Muslims,” he “confirmed that those incidents occurred to him too during his interrogations at Guantánamo.”

In an interview for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners in 2008, al-Azmi maintained that he was an innocent man, detained for no apparent reason, although the McClatchy team was clearly alarmed by the many holes in his story. For example, he told the reporter that he’d never been to Afghanistan, contradicting what he said in Guantánamo, and failed to mentioned Al-Wafa or his connection with Adel al-Zamel, claiming instead to have been seized in a hotel room in Peshawar “during a routine police check of guests’ passports” in August 2001.

While this section of his story did not make sense, given what is known of the circumstances of his capture, it is probable that what he told the reporter about his experiences in Pakistani and US custody was more accurate. In Karachi, he said, “he was put into a dimly lit cell with about two dozen other men,” and “they were taken out one by one to an interrogation room where two American men — one tall and thin, one short and stocky with glasses — sat behind a table” and “introduced themselves as CIA officers.” They asked him about Al-Qaida, refusing to believe his story about being a businessman.

Al-Azmi added that “he spent about a month in that jail and was interrogated three or four more times,” and was then flown to Kandahar, where after two weeks, in which “American troops punched, kicked and humiliated him,” he was flown to Bagram, where he was held for a month and a half, and was then flown back to Kandahar for about three months before being sent to Guantánamo.

In the Documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to al-Azml was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated April 17, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in May 1979, and the Task Force established a narrative based on a variety of “claims” he had apparently made: that “he worked for Al-Wafa in Kabul,” that “one month after the ’9/11′ attacks (approximately October 2001), he moved to Peshawar,” and that, “in December 2001,he went to Karachi, PK, and stayed with Aziz from the Al-Wafa Organization,” and was captured in Karachi in February 2002.

It was also stated that he was sent to Guantánamo on May 1, 2002, allegedly to “provide general-to-specific information on: Personalities involved with Takfir Al-Hijra, The Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul,” described as “a known former diplomatic district taken over by the Taliban and Al-Qaida for quarters and training,” The Al-Wafa Organization stationed in the Wazir Akhbar Khan Area of Kabul, The Sanabel Association for Relief and Development NGO located in Wazir Akbar Khan Area of Kabul, [and] Aziz (LNU) who provided Arabs fleeing Pakistan with a means to leave the country.”

In seeking to justify his detention, the Task Force assessed him as “a member of Al-Qaida who has traveled extensively in the West, including travels to countries such as Switzerland, Germany and Bosnia,” although, with the exception of Bosnia, these claims seem more to mark him out as a Kuwaiti from a reasonably well-off family than as some sort of Al-Qaida scout, and Bosnia, of course, was a prime destination for the support of the Muslim population during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.

It was also reported that, like Adel al-Zamel, he was involved with Takfir Al-Hijra, an extremist group that had attacked a female student in Kuwait, and that he was “wanted by the Kuwaiti government for crimes he committed while affiliated with several terrorist groups,” which was very vague. It was also stated, again in a very vague manner, that he “likely ha[d] knowledge of the Sanabel Association for Relief and Development NGO,” which was regarded as a front for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organization opposed to the rule of Col. Gaddafi in Libya. The LIFG was also regarded by US authorities as being intimately involved with Al-Qaida, although that remains largely disputed.

As a result of the claims against him, al-Azmi was assessed as being “of high intelligence value,” and as “a member of Al-Qaida and/or its worldwide network,” who had “numerous close associations with known members of Al-Qaida or Al-Qaida associated organizations,” and “may have connections with European-based Al-Qaida members,” including an alleged “Spanish Cell” that later came to nothing when subjected to scrutiny. It was also assessed that his “travels to Bosnia were likely to obtain military training and participate in Jihad,” and as it was also claimed that he was “part of a large Al-Qaida contingent in Pakistan at the time of his capture, where he was living in an Al-Qaida safehouse with a key Al-Qaida facilitator,” and that he was a convicted Islamic extremist with known terrorist associations in Kuwait and he remains committed to Jihad.” As he was also allegedly “still wanted by the Kuwaiti movement for crimes he committed under Kuwaiti law,” the Task Force assessed him as “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and its allies,” and Brig. Gen. Hood recommended that he be “retained under DoD control.”

It was, however, noticeable that the Criminal Investigative Task Force disagreed, although, “in the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders,” CITF was obliged to “defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [he] poses a high risk.” Even so, on his return to Kuwait, he, along with the four other Kuwaiti prisoners released in November 2005, was acquitted by a Kuwaiti court in May 2006 of “charges that they collected money for Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network” and of fighting alongside the Taliban.

Saeed Abdur Rahman (ISN 581, Pakistan) Released March 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Saeed Abdur Rahman is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (9) – Seized in Pakistan (Part One),” I explained how Saeed Abdur Rahman, who was 36 years old at the time of his capture, was, as I described it, an “unfortunate victim of Pakistani zeal (or opportunism).” In Guantánamo (where, absurdly, he was identified as Shed Abdur Rahman), he said that he was at home in his village, scraping a living as a poor chicken farmer, when the police raided his house in January 2002, arresting him and telling him that he could not bribe his way to freedom.

Delivered to the Americans, he was accused of being Abdur Rahman Zahid, one of the Taliban’s deputy ministers of foreign affairs, and was later accused of having been a Taliban military judge and a prison guard in Kandahar, who “tortured, maimed and murdered” Afghan prisoners, even though Rahman said that, after he was handed over to the US forces, “An American told me I was wrongfully taken and that in a couple of days I’d be freed.”

What made these allegations all the more incomprehensible was that, in December 2001, Mullah Khaksar, a former Taliban minister who had actually been working as a spy for the Northern Alliance since 1997, said that Abdur Rahman Zahid “had deliberately created the impression that he entered Pakistan, but had in fact returned to his home village in Logar province.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 30, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Mollah Shed Abdul Rehman, born in 1965, it was also noted that, as well as being diagnosed with latent tuberculosis (in common with many of the prisoners), he had also been diagnosed with “Chronic Acute Hepatitis B,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force first acknowledged that he had been identified as an Afghan, but that a request had been sent to the relevant department to change his nationality to Pakistani, and then ran through the sad account of his capture, noting that he was “arrested by Pakistani authorities while in his home in the fall of 2001,” when he “was arrested and charged with the theft of antiquities even though [he] state[d] that they had no proof.” After being imprisoned in Quetta for 36 days, he was, by his own account, then “sold” to the US authorities in Kandahar.

He was sent to Guantánamo on June 17, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because of his knowledge of the Sorkhab refugee camp, and information on fighting with the Mujahideen forces against the Russians.” These alleged reasons for his transfer expose clearly how desperate were the attempts to make sense of the process of sending prisoners to be the victims of an experimental offshore interrogation camp, when the very fact of detention — and some crazed ideas about creating a global “mosaic” of intelligence, no matter how small and seemingly irrelevant the components — was much more significant than whether there was any rational basis for the exploitation of the prisoners.

In his letters home, it was noted that he “wanted his family to keep up the chicken farm and to inquire about his ‘amanita’ which is translated as something precious or valuable that is given to someone else for safekeeping.” The confusion regarding his identity was also raised, with the Task Force noting that a name “very similar to the detainee’s” (Abdul Rehman, which is a very common name indeed) “was found in sensitive reporting identifying Taliban plans to send 39 individuals to Russia and countries of the Former Soviet Union to carry out unspecified terrorist acts.” Refusing to acknowledge that there was no reason to link this individual to the chicken farmer in their custody, the Task Force added, “There was a passport number associated with the document, however the US does not have a copy of detainee’s passport to match the passport numbers.”

In conclusion, the Task Force stated, “Based on current information, detainee [581] is assessed as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee is of low intelligence value to the United States. Based on the above, detainee pose a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” As a result, Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III, who signed the memo, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Karama Khamisan (ISN 586, Yemen) Released August 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Karama Khamisan is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I told the extraordinary story of how Karama Khamisan (also identified as Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan), a former Yemeni soldier who went to Afghanistan as part of a drug smuggling ring, and was held as a human guarantor until the deal was completed. was seized at the same time as two other men who also ended up at Guantánamo — Brahim Benchekroun, a Moroccan (see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Seven of Ten)“), who said after his release that he was “rounded up by the Pakistani security forces at the end of 2001″ near Lahore, “at the time of the first round-ups of Arabs in the Koranic schools,” and Ahmed Errachidi (ISN 590, released in March 2007), a Moroccan chef, who had been living in the UK for 18 years, and who was seized in Islamabad, where he had been working in a jewelry store after visiting Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid to those affected by the US-led invasion. Khamisan explained that, following the US-led invasion, the drug dealers fled, leaving him near the border with Pakistan, where he was captured by Pakistani villagers.

Benchekroun described what happened to the three men once they were in Pakistani custody. “We were looking through the makeshift blindfolds that the Pakistanis had put on us,” he said, adding that Errachidi spoke English and was following the negotiations, when “people showed up with black suitcases and started bargaining with the Pakistanis over the price for handing us over.” When they agreed on a price of $5,000 a head, Benchekroun explained, they all applauded. He also said that Khamisan was singled out for unusual treatment: “The Pakistanis made him grow a beard and learn to pray. I taught him the basics about washing myself. We didn’t understand that it was so that they could sell him to the Americans, too.”

In Chapter 14, drawing on an interview conducted after his release (in “Guantánamo: Lives Torn Apart — The Impact of indefinite detention on detainees and their families,” an Amnesty International report from February 2006), I explained how Khamisan had a tough time in the US prison at Bagram airbase. Kicked and beaten while hooded, stripped naked and beaten with batons, he was then transferred to Kandahar, where he was “threatened with electric shocks,” and where, in a sign that Abu Ghraib-style abuse was already being practiced, “he and a group of other detainees were stripped and piled on top of each other naked, whilst the US officials, in full military uniform, laughed at them and took photographs of the pile of naked bodies.”

In Chapter 15, I explained how Khamisan also suffered in Guantánamo, ending up in isolation after being sexually threatened. He explained that on one occasion he was “taken to the shower room where guards attempted to sexually abuse him. As he pushed them away, ten guards entered the room and beat him before transferring him to a solitary cell where he was held for 25 days, naked. He said that he was only taken to use the toilet and shower once in this entire period and that he ate no solid food in order to avoid having to defecate in his cell.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Khamisan was an “Update of Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated December 6, 2003, in which it was noted that he was born in 1970, and had been diagnosed with latent tuberculosis (along with many other prisoners), and had been “treated for Gum Disease,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

The information about the circumstances of his detention were not included with this document (they were “Same as previously stated” in an earlier assessment), but reasons for his continued detention were given, including a far-fetched sounding claim that he was “a criminal who was jailed in Yemen for attempting to kill the governor of his province, which he stated he did ‘just for the heck of it.’” He also claimed he “escaped prison while being transferred to a minimum-security facility, and he may still be wanted in Yemen for this crime.”

It was also claimed that he “was asked a series of questions concerning his attitude toward the US during which [he] stated that he speculated that Osama bin Laden attacked the US because the US was killing Palestinians,” which he further explained by stating that Israel and the US were “exactly the same,” and adding that “any Arab would say the same thing abut the relationship between Israel and the US.” The oppression of the Palestinian people was indeed a major motivation behind bin Laden’s jihad against the US (along with the presence of US military bases in Saudi Arabia), but it was inadvisable to say that in Guantánamo, or, I suspect, to criticise Israel either.

Nevertheless, although he was described, unconvincingly, as someone who “continues to express his commitment to Jihad during interrogations” (as he was not in Afghanistan for jihad), it was clear that, as he said, he was a member — whether willingly or not — of a drug-dealing group, which made the Task Force’s claim that his associate, “Mohammed,” had been “identified through reporting as being a supporter of the Taliban” rather dubious, despite the further information that “Mohammed and his criminal group ha[d] reportedly provided transportation, equipment and funding for the Taliban, who in turn protected him and supported his narcotics business.”

However, the most alarming part of the document relating to Khamisan was the reference to an allegation against him that was taken seriously by the authorities, even though, to skeptical eyes, it was nonsense, made by Yasim Basardah (ISN 252), a Yemeni known as the most notorious liar in Guantánamo, who told interrogators that Khamisan was “a trainee at the Al-Farouq training camp and part of an Arab group fighting the Northern Alliance where his alias was ‘The Murderer.’” As was conceded, however, “After further investigation it has been determined that this was a misidentification [a polite term for an outrageous lie] and in fact the detainee is known as ‘Karama the Hashish dealer,’ which substantiates other reporting concerning this detainee and some of [his] statements.”

In conclusion, he was “assessed as not being a member of Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader,” although he was also assessed as being “of intelligence value to the United States, and of posing “a medium threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” and, as a result of Basardah’s allegations being discredited, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

On his return from Guantánamo, as the human rights NGO Al-Karama for Human Rights explained in April 2009, Khamisan (identified as Karama Khamis Said Khamisan) was held incommunicado for several months before being acquitted by the State Security court, on March 13, 2006, “on charges of trafficking narcotic.” An appeal was dismissed on April 30, 2006, and he was freed on May 10.

Al-Karama noted that he suffered from “a serious stomach ulcer that he contracted as a result of the torture he had suffered at Guantánamo,” for which he received medical treatment, but also explained that, on March 16, 2009, almost three years to the day after his acquittal, he disappeared while making his usual visit to his doctor. As Al-Karama also stated, “His family remained without news of him for over a week. Finally they learned that he was arrested while leaving a mosque by an officer of political security services and taken to its headquarters at Al-Ghaida in Al-Mahra governorate. Having found out this information, his family was able to receive confirmation of his detention and was even allowed to visit him. They later learned that no case had been filed against him. Since this single visit and despite many attempts by his family, the security policy refuse give any further concerning his future, to the point that he is now completely cut off from the outside world.”

Al-Karama appealed to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, asking it to urgently intervene with the Yemeni authorities, and Khamisan was finally freed August 16, 2009, after five months in secret detention. “Throughout this whole period,” as Al-Karama noted, “he was never brought before a judge nor were any charges brought against him.”

Khalid Al Asmar (ISN 589, Jordan) Released July 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Khalid al-Asmar is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I told the story of Khalid al-Asmar, who was 38 yeas old at the time of his capture, drawing on statements he made in Guantánamo (where he was described as Khalid al-Asmr), and in “Abandoned to their fate in Guantánamo,” an article by Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, for Index on Censorship in 2005, based on interviews with former Jordanian prisoners after their release. The section on al-Asmar is cross-posted here.

Al-Asmar explained how he had been captured by the Pakistani police. A former mujahideen fighter against the Soviet Union, he married an Afghan woman, Fatima, whose parents and sister had been killed in a Soviet bombing raid in 1984, and moved to Pakistan, where he supported Fatima and their seven children by selling herbs and honey. In 2000, they returned to Afghanistan, settling in Kabul, which, at the time, was relatively safe, but when the war came to the city in November 2001 and US bombers planes destroyed a warehouse behind their home, they bundled the children into their white Toyota Corolla and set off for Pakistan once more.

Unfortunately, the US military associated white Toyotas with the Taliban, and, on the way to Pakistan, they were targeted twice by US bombers, narrowly avoiding death on both occasions when the Americans’ rockets failed to hit their target. When they reached Islamabad, al-Asmar found work and also contacted a Libyan charity that arranged flights to Jordan, where his parents still lived, but the day before their proposed departure he called his wife to say that he had been detained by the Pakistani police, and told her to leave without him. “I wasn’t worried,” Fatima said, “because I knew Khalid had done nothing wrong,” but seven months later she heard that he was in Guantánamo. Acknowledging that her husband may have aroused suspicion because he fought with the mujahideen, she said that he saw the Taliban’s role as different to that of the mujahideen. “This was a war for power,” she said. “Khalid wanted nothing to do with it. He said it was not for God.”

In an interview for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released  Guantánamo prisoners in 2008, in which he was identified as Khaled al-Asmr, he explained how, in the three and a half years he was held in US custody, he persistently “told American interrogators that he hadn’t known bin Laden in the 1980s, when both of them were in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet army.” In his tribunal, he said, “The interrogators, every time they ask me, ‘Have you met Osama bin Laden?’ my response is that I’ve never met Osama bin Laden. What I told them is that I have seen Osama bin Laden from a distance for a period of maybe a few minutes.”

In his interview with McClatchy, however, he explained that he had, in fact, met bin Laden in the 1980s, and had “spent many hours chatting” with him, although he “didn’t remain in contact” with him afterwards. Primarily, at that time, he had worked with the “Services Office” (Maktab al-Khadamat), headed by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, a mentor of bin Laden, who was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in November 1989. In some ways, Assam’s organisation was the precursor to al-Qaeda (literally, “the base”), but it was dedicated to tracking, recording and providing money for the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and was not, as Al-Qaida’s “base” of contacts later became, an organization dedicated to terrorist attacks on the US and its interests. Al-Asmar admitted knowing Abdullah Azzam, but “said his relationship with Azzam had been indirect, that he’d worked with Azzam’s wife in an offshoot group.”

In Guantánamo, he was also accused of working for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, tarred as a front for terrorism, despite being a vast charity involved in important humanitarian operations around the world. He “denied that he was a member of Al-Haramain, but said that he dealt with the group occasionally through his food-trading business.”

In his interview with McClatchy, however, he reportedly “admitted to a long-standing relationship with Al-Hamarain and Azzam,” and told the reporter that, although he knew nothing about Al-Qaida’s operations, “he could have provided a thorough sketch of bin Laden and those around him,” which, McClatchy editorialized, was “possibly crucial information that might have helped the Americans better understand the terrorist mastermind in the early days of 2002.”

As it was, the Americans’ treatment of him meant that cooperation was out of the question. Describing his trip from Pakistan to Bagram he said that he and others picked up in Islamabad “sat on the ground of an airstrip, shackled, with hoods over their heads, and listened as someone walked passed them and counted out loud the number of prisoners. When the counting stopped, a man speaking English with an American accent said to the Pakistanis, ‘You’ve got seven of them here. We’ll give you $5,000 for each one.’”

He added, “Then they (US soldiers) started hitting and kicking me. They lifted me up to take me to the plane, still hitting me in the back and hitting me on my face, saying, ‘Taliban, huh?’” As a result, he said, “he decided to tell the Americans as little as possible,” although the reporter added, “It’s hard to know whether he’d have spoken more freely had he been treated better.”

After three weeks at Bagram, he was sent to the US prison at Kandahar airport, where he stayed for about three and a half months, and “faced harassment,” including “alleged fondling of his sex organs, which he said unsettled him more than rough treatment did.” As he explained, “Once they said, ‘We will conduct a medical checkup.’ They took me to a clinic, but instead of doing a checkup, a female soldier played with my sexual organs. When she was doing this, I prayed to God to help me, and my penis did not move.” He said the soldier in question “had brown hair and looked to be in her 40s,” and “didn’t do anything else during the exam but stroke his penis, wearing latex gloves.” He added, “There were male soldiers watching it happen. They were laughing and making jokes.” After this, he said, he was taken to interrogation. The interrogator “didn’t mention the episode in the clinic, Asmr said, but grinned, asked how his day was going and wondered aloud whether he might be ready to talk.” “No,” was his reply.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to al-Asmar was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated March 6, 2004, in which he was identified as Khalid al-Asmr or Khalid al-Asmr Wahad, born in December 1963. In running through his story, the Task Force stated that in 1985 he traveled to Pakistan to work with the vast missionary organisation Jamaat al-Tablighi, which, outrageously, the authorities at Guantánamo claimed was a front for terrorism, and confirmed that he then worked with Sheikh Abdullah Azzam coordinating aid to various groups involved with the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who was funded by the US in the 1980s, but is now an implacable enemy of the US). Despite his evasiveness, the Task Force also recognized that, “In late 1987/early 1988, [he] met UBL [bin Laden] in the company of Sheikh Abdullah Azzam.”

Moving to the events preceding his capture, it was noted that, in June 2000, he traveled to Kabul, where he was “an ‘unofficial’ employee of Al-Haramayn Islamic Foundation” (aka Al-Haramain), which, despite being a huge charity with a global reach, was described as “a Tier 1 NGO; which is defined as having demonstrated sustained and active support for terrorist organizations willing to attack US persons or interests, according to the Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism CounterTerrorism Tiers, dated 10 December 2003.”

In late September 2001, he and his family fled to Peshawar, and “applied to the Qadafi Foundation [aka the Gaddafi Foundation] for assistance in returning home,” but “was arrested by Pakistani police in Islamabad, PK, and was subsequently turned over to US Forces.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on June 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that he “may be able to provide general or specific information on: Maktib Al-Kadmat [aka  Maktab al-Khadamat, Abdullah Azzam's "Services Office" for mujahideen in Afghanistan] and Al-Haramayn, [and the] Al-Khadafi Committee for Repatriation [aka the Gaddafi Foundation].”

In its assessment, the Task Force was deeply suspicious of his connections, noting that “he denie[d] having belonged to Al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization irrespective of the fact that JT [Jamaat al-Tablighi] and Al-Haramayn have been associated with Al-Qaida (which was not necessarily true, of course), and also drawing on a claim that he “spent a number of years associating with such individuals as Azzam and UBL,” which was true with reference to Azzam, but not bin Laden, and which, in addition, completely overlooks the fact that, in the 1980s in Afghanistan, he (and Azzam and bin Laden) were allies of the US (whether financially supported or not) and not enemies.

In conclusion, he was assessed as being “of high intelligence value,” and of  posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its allies and interests,”  in particular because his connections suggested to the US authorities that he had “more ties to Al-Qaida than he claim[ed],” even though he was extremely well-behaved in Guantánamo, and was described as being “on the best behaviour level and liv[ing] with detainees who [we]re equally cooperative and non-aggressive.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “retained in DoD control,” although it was noticeable that the Criminal Investigative Task Force disagreed with the Task Force’s assessment, because, “in the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [he] poses a high risk.”

Padsha Wazir (ISN 631, Afghanistan) Released April 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Padsha Wazir is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (11) – The Last of the Afghans (Part One) and Six “Ghost Prisoners”,” I told the story of Padsha Wazir, a shopkeeper from a village near Khost, Wazir, who was married with three children and was 29 years old at the time of his capture. In Guantánamo, he told his tribunal that the allegations against him — that he was involved with the renegade warlord Pacha Khan Zadran in a military capacity, and that he was responsible for  “securing” a village for him — were a pack of lies. The baleful influence of Zadran (one of the most dubious US allies in the years following the US-led invasion) permeates many of the Afghan stories in Guantánamo, and Wazir was clearly another victim.

Wazir added that he had only ever seen Zadran “for five minutes and that was after the Taliban left and the Americans came. He was with the Americans.” He explained that he was actually working with the local commander, Mohammed Yousef, helping to secure the area for the Americans, and also stated that he was arrested at a checkpoint, with his brother and two friends, while traveling to Miram Shah in Pakistan to see members of his family. He pointed out that, although the other three were released on the spot, the commander at the checkpoint (one of Zadran’s men), told lies about him to an American soldier after he refused to hand over his gun, for which he had a permit, which led to his capture and transfer to Guantánamo.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Wazir was an “Updated Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated November 22, 2003, in which he was identified as Bacha Wazir, born in 1972. In this document, the circumstances of his capture were not discussed, but the Task Force was deeply suspicious abut him although not necessarily with any reason. It was claimed that he “ha[d] not been forthright in his interviews.” He “claims to be a ‘simple shopkeeper,’” the Task Force noted, but “[t]his claim remains unverified.” The Task Force also speculated that he “may have connections to various persons affiliated with the former Taliban regime,” and that he “may be a Mid to High-level Taliban supporter and may have facilitated hostile actions against US interests.” It was also stated that he “need[ed] to be fully exploited concerning his suspected involvement with the local HiG insurgent movement [Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, the organization headed by Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar].”

As a result of these doubts, he was “assessed as being a probable Taliban leader however not a member of Al-Qaida,” and as being “of intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a medium threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “[r]etain[ed] under DoD control,” although it was noticeable that the Criminal Investigative Task Force did not agree with this assessment. On November 6, 2003, CITF “categorized [him] as a Low Threat,” but CITF’s Behavioral Sciences Consultation Team was asked to “reevaluate their threat assessment.” The result of this is not known, but 17 months later he was finally freed.

Mushtaq Ali Patel (ISN 649, France) Released March 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Mushtaq Ali Patel is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, I told the story of Mushtaq Ali Patel, born in India but a French national through his marriage to a Creole woman from Réunion, who was 39 years old at the time of his capture. Patel explained at Guantánamo (where he was identified as Mustaq Ali Patel), and after his release in an article in Libération (translated for Cageprisoners) that, although his wife and child were living in France, he had been working in Iran, where he taught at an Islamic school and traded in clothes and jewelry.

After setting out for Pakistan, via Afghanistan, in October 2001, he was abducted, in the countryside near Herat, by three Afghans, including a policeman, who stole his passport and his money, beat him with their fists and with electric cables, and took him to a police station in Ghazni, where he was forced to say that he was a Saudi, born in Medina, and that his name was Haji Mohammed. After several months, he was taken to Kabul to “some kind of a house that was like a prison,” where he was sold to the Americans for $5,000. He said that the Americans threatened him with death “and to cause problems to my family,” and then transferred him to Bagram, where they had “very hard attitudes,” and Kandahar, where he was “badly mistreated, interrogated in bad ways.”

Alarmingly, Patel’s weight in Guantánamo was disturbingly low throughout his detention, as was apparent from the weight records released by the Pentagon in 2007, which I analysed for a short report for Cageprisoners in June 2009, entitled, “Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation” (introduction here, report here). In that report, I noted how he had been chronically underweight throughout his detention, weighing just 89 pounds on arrival, and dropping to 76 pounds in November 2002, which was more or less where his weight remained for an alarmingly long period of his imprisonment. In his Libération interview, it became apparent that he had been very ill at Guantánamo, as he explained:

I became sick at Guantánamo. They took me to the health clinic. I stayed in hospital for 4 to 5 months the first time. I had chest and throat problems, and headaches. They gave me medication. I don’t know what it was. I slept sometimes, but not all the time. I was in bed. I had one foot and one hand enchained. I never got out, ever. I wanted to leave, but they did not let me. I was anguished being restrained all the time. They forced me to take medication, pills. I said “no,” but they forced me. That was the hardest time at Guantánamo. Some of the medicines had an effect on my sleep, kept me from sleeping and created respiratory problems. I could have refused to take them, but it was difficult as they forced me to swallow them in front of them. Sometimes there was the same medication for everyone, and you had to swallow it immediately.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Patel was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated March 27, 2004, in which he was identified as Mustaq Ali Patel and Mohammed Ibn Ismael al-Akram (as well as Mohammed Haji and Haji Muhammed), born in January 1961, and his health issues were described in depth. The Task Force noted that he had “multiple psychiatric diagnoses, including depression and schizotlpal personality disorder, but [wa]s otherwise in good physical health.” It was also noted that his medications included “synthroid, celexa, zprexa, zantac, a multivitamin, and simethicone.” The Task Force added, “Schizotypal personality disorder is often characterized as having a belief in clairvoyance or telepathy, the use of metaphorical speech, paranoid ideations, and severe mood disorders. It is likely a genetic relation to schizophrenia, but the two should not be confused with each other.”

Because of his severe mental health problems, he told different stories about himself. In one version, he “claimed he was born in Medina, Saudi Arabia and claimed to be an ‘orphan,’ only to acknowledge later that his parents [we]re citizens of India and currently alive,” that they lived in India, and “were previously employed as foreign laborers in Saudi Arabia,” where, “[b]ecause they are not Saudi, the Saudi government will not grant citizenship to a non-Arab, regardless of birthplace.” In another version (the true one), he said that he was born in Shepura, India,  and was a French citizen by marriage (on Réunion), which the French government confirmed.

Clearly bewildered by him, and unprepared for what to think when confronted by someone with such severe mental health issues, the Task Force noted that, during interrogation on March 23, 2004, he admitted that his stories about the orphanage, about living in Saudi Arabia, and about selling fruit were lies, and that he traveled to France when he was 22 or 23, sold radios for a living, “had $10,000 USD on his person when captured,” and had lived briefly in Germany and Turkey, but had been living in Mashad, Iran, for 15 years before his capture in Afghanistan.

He was sent to Guantánamo on June 8, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide general-to-specific information on Taliban and Al-Qaida forces operating in Kunduz and Takhar provinces as well as various illegal activities taking place in Afghanistan.”

In assessing him, however, the Task Force described him, without mentioning any mitigating factors, as someone who had “never been cooperative or forthright during his detention” and had “not revealed his true name or any of his affiliations.” He was also described as “a possible Al-Qaida operative based on his circumstance of travels and his suspected affiliations.”

Assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” he was also assessed as being “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its allies, and interests until his true identity is known.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Hood recommended that he be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention until his true name and extremist affiliations have been determined,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force disagreed with JTF GTMO on the assessment of Patel as “a high risk,” which, presumably, helped lead to his release a year later.

Mamdouh Habib (ISN 661, Australia) Released January 2005

In Chapter 16 of The Guantánamo Files, drawing mainly on an article published after his release (and not on the unsubstantiated allegations for his tribunal at Guantánamo), I explained how Mamdouh Habib, who was 47 years old at the time of his capture, was one of several dozen prisoners at Guantánamo who were subjected to “extraordinary rendition,” and were transferred to other prisons for torture, before their transfer to Guantánamo.

Habib, seized in November 2001, was traveling on a bus from Quetta to Karachi when it was stopped by Pakistani soldiers. Plucked from his seat as a suspected militant, he was moved from jail to jail for three weeks, interrogated by US agents and “repeatedly tortured” by the Pakistani authorities.

Born in Egypt, he left at the age of 18, drifted to Europe and settled in Australia in 1980, where he became a citizen, married a Lebanese woman, had four children, and ran a cleaning business. He later opened a coffee shop in a suburb of Sydney, but became “chronically depressed” and ended up on a disability benefit. In summer 2001, seeking “a purer Islamic lifestyle,” he set off for Pakistan to look for work so that he could bring his family over to join him, but when he was captured it became apparent to the Americans that they had caught someone with a radical history.

Habib admitted that one of his reasons for leaving Australia was because he was “caught between police who suspected him of terror links and an often hostile Muslim community that was sometimes suspicious of his activities,” and these suspicions were triggered after a visit to the US, when he met followers of the Egyptian-born cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman. Also known as the “Blind Sheikh,” Abdel-Rahman was a major source of inspiration for Osama bin Laden, and was serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to blow up several New York landmarks.

Habib’s troubles began when he stayed in touch with Abdul Rahman’s associates in New York on his return to Sydney, and spoke out in his defense, but although there was nothing in his activities to suggest that he was actually involved in any kind of terrorist activity, as soon as the Americans found out about his history they rendered him to Egypt. For six months, he was “suspended from hooks on the walls while his feet rested on a rotating metal drum that delivered electric shocks,” “kicked, punched, beaten with a stick and rammed with what can only be described as an electric cattle prod,” and handcuffed and left in a room that gradually filled with water until it was just beneath his chin. “Broken” by the Egyptians, he made a number of false confessions — in particular, that he “trained several of the September 11 hijackers in martial arts and had planned to hijack a plane himself” — which were then used against him after he was transferred to Guantánamo, via Afghanistan, in June 2002.

In Guantánamo, he continued to be treated brutally, and several prisoners reported his suffering. The British prisoners Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed (see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Two of Ten)“) said that he was “in catastrophic shape, mental and physical,” and that, as a result of his torture, “he used to bleed from his nose, mouth and ears when he was asleep.” Habib also made allegations about his treatment in Guantánamo — in particular that he was “smeared with the menstrual blood of a prostitute” during an interrogation — and complained vociferously about being kept in solitary confinement in Camp Echo: “They use every possible [way] to make me crazy. They put me in isolation all the time. I never see the sun. I never have shower like a human being. I never have soap. I never have cup to drink. I never treated like a human being.”

Habib was also one of the many prisoners for whom it was made clear that medical treatment was dependent on cooperation, as he was told by medics that he would only be given treatment for the internal bleeding he suffered in Egypt if he cooperated with his interrogators.

Given this catalogue of abuse, and the allegations against him, it came as a surprise to everyone — including the Australian authorities — when he was released from Guantánamo in January 2005, and returned to Australia as a free man, but for those watching closely, it was engineered by the Bush administration in the hope that his story would then disappear, as it had been acutely embarrassing when details of Habib’s rendition and torture were included in a US court filing and exposed in the Washington Post on January 6, 2005, just three weeks before his release.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Habib was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” dated August 6, 2004, in which Habib, described as being born in June 1955, was diagnosed as having “a history of depression and behavioral disorders, benign prostatic hypertrophy, hungerstriking, and had a knee surgery performed.” It was also noted that he “carries the Hepatitis B virus.”

In telling Habib’s story, the Task Force described how he had served in the Egyptian army from 1975 to 1978, and then moved to Australia in 1980, where he initially lived with his sister. Other key events mentioned were his visit to New York in December 1992, to visit another two of his sisters, a brief visit to Afghanistan in 1999, and the last fateful journey in 2001, which allegedly involved him attending “a military training base,” where he stayed for “only 3 to 4 days,” before returning to Kandahar, where “he was told to leave because the US had began [sic] its bombing campaign.”

It was then noted that, when Pakistani forces seized him on a bus from Quetta to Karachi in October 2001, it was reportedly “with two Germans who were suspected Al-Qaida members from Hamburg, Germany” (about whom, to the best of my knowledge, nothing further has been heard, although they were identified as “Tier III personalities in the Hamburg 9/11 cell”). He was then “held at a Pakistan military base in Quetta, PK, and was subsequently transferred to Egyptian control” — a careful reference to his rendition to torture, which was followed up with the breezy-sounding statement that he “spent six months with Egyptian interrogators” before being transferred back to US custody.

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 5, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because he “may be able to provide specific information on the students, staff, and curriculum of the Al-Qaida intelligence and operations course,” because “he may also be able to provide general information on key Al-Qaida support network figures with whom he had personal contact,” and because he “may be able to provide specific information on the support network of Lashkar-e-Tayiba in Kashmir.”

In seeking to justify his detention, the Task Force drew also on the details of his US visit in 192 and the lies about him training the 9/11 hijackers that were extracted under torture, claiming that he had been “linked to the 11 Sept 2001 hijackers, Al-Qaida, Lashkar-e-Tayiba of Pakistan, Al Gamma Al Islamia [Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya] of Australia, German 9/11 cell and conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing,” and noting that he was “suspected of being a money courier and a terrorist operations facilitator, due to his extensive international travels.”

Analyzing Habib’s purported connection with terrorists in the US, the Task Force claimed that, as well as visiting in 1992, when he “allegedly befriended” Ibrahim El-Gabrowny, who was later convicted for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, he had made a previous visit (or perhaps more than one). It was claimed, for example, that he attended the trial of the Egyptian-born US citizen El-Sayyid Nosair, for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, but this took place in 1991.

El-Gabrowny was Nosair’s cousin, and the Task Force claimed that, in discussions with Habib, he told him “he desired to move away from the US,” and Habib suggested that he  move to Australia “because it was a quiet place to live for Muslims.” An analyst also noted that “Immigration records and external investigations show that [Habib] was also in New York during 1988/89.”

These alleged connections may not prove anything more than that Habib moved in circles where he met Egyptian-born US citizens while in America, as might be expected, but the US authorities were desperate to tie him to terrorism, claiming that, because he had a cleaning business involving the Australian military, which collapsed, leaving him in debt after a court case, that was a reason for him to have possibly been a courier or “financial operator” for Al-Qaida.

The most shocking information in Habib’s file, however, concerns the false statements that he made while being tortured in Egypt. As the Task Force explained, coyly:

While in the custody of the Egyptian Government, under extreme duress, [he] alleged that he made the following admissions of guilt, which he now denies:

• He trained six of the 9/11 hijackers in the use of martial arts
• He also taught them how to use a knife disguised as a cigarette lighter He was en route to hijack a Qantas flight with his friend Jamal (LNU)
• His friend Rakim (LNU) was going to conduct a simultaneous operation from Thailand
• He had information on his home computer to be used to poison an unidentified river in the United States
• He fought in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan

Habib “retracted all the above statements during an interrogation in Jan 2003. He claimed he lied to Egyptian authorities when he admitted to the above statements.”

Despite this, the US authorities (obviously drawing heavily on the co-operation of the Australian government) followed up on the fact that a member of a mosque in the town where Habib lived in Australia was arrested in connection with a terrorist plot (and another was “implicated’ in it), to throw further innuendo his way, claiming that these two men were connected to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Tayiba, and that Habib was too. This was designed to appear significant, even though it was conceded that Habib had “a hostile relationship” with the mosque.

Another dubious claim came from one of Habib’s fellow prisoners at Guantánamo, Mohamedou Ould Slahi (ISN 760), who stated that he “ha[d] ‘strong knowledge’ of the Egyptian Islamic extremist group, Al-Gamma Al-Islamia [Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya] in Australia,” and an analyst noted, “Al-Gamma Al-Islamia has a strong following in Germany. This may explain why the detainee was captured with the two Germans, who also may be members of Al-Gamma Al-Islamia.” This was tenuous, to say the least, partly because it has not been established that Habib was with the two Germans whose whereabouts are unknown, other than being on the same bus as them, but also because Slahi is one of the most well-known torture victims at Guantánamo, whose testimony is therefore untrustworthy, and there is no evidence that he ever met Habib.

In conclusion, the Task Force described Habib as being “of high intelligence value,” and “a high risk,” and Brig. Gen. Hood recommended that he be “retained under DoD control.” However, in a recap of reasons he was regarded as threat, in which it was noted that there were “serious intelligence gaps” regarding his activities, the most telling phrase concerned the results of his interrogation and torture in Egypt, which prompted the Task Force to ask, “Was any of the information that he provided to the Egyptians valid?”

Since his release, Habib has campaigned against both the US and Australian governments for their roles in his detention, rendition and torture. He has undertaken numerous interviews, and also, with Julia Collingwood, wrote a book, My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, which was published in November 2008, and in February 2011, as the Mubarak regime fell in Egypt, and, briefly, it looked as if Omar Suleiman would take over, Habib told the Australian (as I reported here) that this would be unforgivable because, after he was rendered to Egypt, “Mr. Suleiman helped torture him.”

The Australian also explained that, in his book, Habib “wrote that Mr. Suleiman had often been present during his interrogations,” and also noted:

“I was sitting in a chair, hooded, with my hands handcuffed behind my back. He came up to me. His voice was deep and rough. He spoke to me in Egyptian and English,” Mr. Habib writes. “He said, ‘Listen, you don’t know who I am, but I am the one who has your life in his hands’.”

Mr. Habib writes that Mr. Suleiman had told him that he wanted him to die a slow death: “No, I don’t want you to die now. I want you to die slowly. I can’t stay with you; my time is too valuable to stay here. You only have me to save you. I’m your saviour. You have to tell me everything if you want to be saved. What do you say?”

When Mr. Habib said he had nothing to tell him, he says Mr. Suleiman had said: “You think I can’t destroy you just like that?”

They had taken Mr. Habib to another room and then Mr. Suleiman had said: “Now you are going to tell me that you planned a terrorist attack. I give you my word you will be a rich man if you tell me you have been planning attacks. Don’t you trust me?” Mr. Habib had replied that he did not trust anyone. “Immediately he slapped me hard across the face and knocked off the blindfold; I clearly saw his face,” Mr. Habib writes.

Mr. Habib alleges Mr. Suleiman said: “That’s it. That’s it. I don’t want to see this man again until he co-operates and tells me he’s been planning a terrorist attack.”

Mohammed Anwarkurd (ISN 676, Iran) Released August 2005

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (11) – The Last of the Afghans (Part One) and Six “Ghost Prisoners”,” I explained how Mohammed Anwarkurd, who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, said in Guantánamo (where he was identified as Mohamed Anwar Kurd) that he went to Afghanistan on a shopping expedition. He said that he had gone to buy electronic equipment for his brother, because it was cheaper than in Iran and could be sold for a profit, but was seized by the Taliban, who stole his money and conscripted him. He added that he “did not want to tell them that he was from Iran as he had heard that they killed Iranian diplomats.” Presumably captured by anti-Taliban forces at a later date, he was accused of traveling to Afghanistan to buy a pistol to kill three people who had destroyed his mosque, or, alternately, of planning to assassinate two key Shia leaders in Zahedan, his home city.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated April 8, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Mohammed Anwar Kurd, born in 1979, it was also stated that, as well as having latent tuberculosis, in common with many of the prisoners, he had also been diagnosed with h. pylori (the bacteria responsible for most ulcers and many cases of stomach inflammation) and “adjustment disorder,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force drew on his own accounts of his activities, essentially covering the same ground that was later covered his tribunal: that he had traveled to Afghanistan, via Pakistan, to “purchase electronic devices for his brother’s electrical store in Zahedan, Iran,” ending up in Spin Boldak, where he traveled to “inspect some heavy machinery,” and that, as he tried to return, he was stopped by Taliban soldiers, who “asked for his identification card.” He said he “did not possess an identification card and claimed that he was from Nimroz, Afghanistan, because of an incident that occurred with ten Iranian diplomats who were accused of espionage and were summarily executed.”

The Taliban, he said, then conscripted him into service, “because they believed him to be an Afghan citizen.” As training, he reported that he “observed one Kalishnakov [sic] assault rifle and approximately six RPGs.” He was then taken, via a Taliban base in Kandahar, to Talogan, in Takhar province, where, he said, “the majority of the conscripts were taken to the frontlines to fight against Massoud’s forces” (the forces of Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated on September 9, 2001), although Anwarkurd “convinced the Taliban leaders at the guesthouse that he was unfit for the frontlines.” He added that he “spent approximately two months at the guesthouse before the Taliban fled to Kunduz to regroup when Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the Northern Alliance,” when he “and the other inhabitants of the guesthouse traveled to a military base in Kunduz,” and, soon after, surrendered to General Dostum, a prominent Northern Alliance commander. As a result, he was probably part of “the convoy of death,” when many prisoners (probably numbering in the thousands) died en route to Dostum’s prison at Sheberghan while being transported in containers, although this was not mentioned by the Task Force.

He was sent to Guantánamo on June 12, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban safe houses in Kabul and Takhar, Afghanistan.”

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 [676] 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. Geoffrey Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government.”

Hammad Gadallah (ISN 712, Sudan) Released July 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Hammad Gadallah is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In “WikiLeaks and the 14 Missing Guantánamo Files” (describing the 14 files missing from the documents released by WikiLeaks in April), Hammad Gadallah (whose full name is Hammad Ali Amno Gadallah and who was was 32 years old at the time of his capture) 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.

In Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how he 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 May 27, 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.

Ibrahim Fauzee (ISN 730, Maldives) Released March 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Ibrahim Fauzee is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In a footnote to Chapter 13 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Ibrahim Fauzee, who was 23 years old at the time of his capture, was one of a number of prisoners seized in Pakistan, mostly in April and May 2002, and largely because they were working for Gulf-based charities that had come under suspicion for alleged links with terrorist funding, like Hammad Gadallah, above. Fauzee was a student of Islam, according to an account published by Cageprisoners, which explained more than the ludicrously thin set of allegations for Fauzee’s tribunal, in which it was mainly alleged that his telephone number was discovered in another suspect’s pocket, and was associated with “a Sudanese teacher who assisted Arabs traveling to training camps in Afghanistan.” According to the Cageprisoners account, Fauzee was living in a house in which one of the other occupants was reportedly the father of an Al-Qaida suspect. A witness reported that on May 19, 2002, US agents came to the house in Karachi, and arrested Fauzee and the other man, whose whereabouts are unknown.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April, the file relating to Ibrahim Fauzee was a “Reassessment of Recommendation to Retain in DoD Control,” dated November 11, 2003, in which he was identified as Ibrahim Fouwzy, born in November 1978, and it was stated that he had been diagnosed with asthma (and had been “given an albuterol inhaler”) and had also been “treated for strep throat,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

In telling his story, the Task Force partly reiterated the Cageprisoners account, but failed to reach the conclusion of Fauzee’s tribunal, which recognized that he was not an “enemy combatant.” The Task Force noted that Fauzee had stated that he had first traveled to Pakistan to studying 1995 (in Karachi), and that, in March 2000 he had “traveled to Maldives to wed his fiancee, and then returned with her to Karachi.” However, it is not clear from this account if it is meant to indicate that he had been living in Pakistan from 1995 to 2000.

Prior to his capture, however, the Task Force stated that he “lived in several apartments, and last resided in a home owned by Mohammed Afzal,” where, he said, he lived “for approximately 11 days before being arrested by the Pakistani police,” who “told him that he was arrested because of his knowledge and association with his landlord (Afzal).” He was then “taken to a police station and questioned,” and was “later taken to a military facility, and then returned to jail.” Soon after, he was transferred to US custody, even though he “stated he never learned why Afzal was arrested but opined that it may have had something to do with his work.”

It is not known what happened to Mohammed Afzal, as he was never transferred to Guantánamo, but Fauzee was sent to Guantánamo on August 5, 2002. No reason was given for his transfer, but it was clear that his connection with Mohammed Afzal was the only significant thing about him, and it is therefore worth asking what happened to Afzal, and whether he was ever held in US custody. In providing reasons for Fauzee’s detention, the Task Force stated that he was “arrested by Pakistani authorities under suspicion of being an Al-Qaida member after a raid on his residence, that just missed a group of Al-Qaida members who had gathered at the home for a meeting.”

Without further information about Mohammed Afzai it is impossible to know whether there was any truth in this, or, indeed, if there was any truth in the additional claims that he was “a known Al-Qaida facilitator,” and was also “the person who sponsored the detainee at the madrassa [where he was studying, presumably] and whom [sic] was allowing the detainee to live in an apartment attached to his home.”

Ramping up his purported significance, the Task Force added that Fauzee had “traveled extensively in spite of his limited income and ha[d] failed to explain adequately the source(s) of the funds he used for travel.” The Task Force also claimed that the madrassa was “fundamentalist” and that it was “administered” by Mohammed Afzai, but this serves only to make me think that Afzai’s role may have been overplayed, and that Fauzee might have been nothing more than a student paying board and lodging in the apartment next to Afzai’s house, which he rented out.

Nevertheless, the Task Force noted that he was “suspected of being an Al-Qaida recruit and courier, however the complete extent of his association within the organization is not completely known because of his refusals to be forthright.” As a result, he was assessed as posing “a medium threat to the US, its interests, and its allies,” and it was noted that he “require[d] further exploitation … before being submitted for further transfer consideration.” Maj. Gen. Miller therefore recommended that he be “retained under DoD control,” although the Criminal Investigative Task Force disagreed, as it was noted that, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF deferred to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [Fauzee] pose[d] a medium threat.” However, it took another 16 months for a military tribunal to agree with CITF that he was not a threat, and for Fauzee to finally be freed.

In the classified US diplomatic cables secured by WikILeaks (and in the full version recently made available), Maldivian Permanent Secretary Ahmed Shaheed first asked the US to “share any intelligence it had gained from Fauzee” on November 5, 2002, as Minivan News reported. “Shaheed specifically asked for any information on ties Fauzee may have with other Maldivian nationals,” the cable read. “In this regard, Shaheed also requested that the Maldivian government be permitted to conduct its own intelligence interview of Fauzee.”

On November 23, 2002, Shaheed wrote to US officials requesting Fauzee’s release, but he was not, of course, freed for another 28 months. In August 2003, Maldivian government officials were allowed to visit Fauzee, although they found him to be “an unlikely threat,” and after “further investigation,” requested his release again, on November 5, 2003.

Another request was made on May 11, 2004, and in a cable dated July 20, 2004, as Haveeru Online stated, Maldivian Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Shihab assured the then US Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead that “a travel ban would be imposed on Ibrahim Fauzy” (as he was identified), because “the Maldives understood the need to clear up the detainee’s story.”

It was also stated that “Shihab told Lunstead, who ‘had concerns about some aspects of the detainee’s history,’ that the Maldives government would place Fauzy under close surveillance and would put him on a watch list to ensure that he could not leave the country. Shihab was quoted in the diplomatic memo … as saying that the measures would be ‘effective in preventing him [Fauzy] from traveling’ unless ‘he is very good at rowing.’”

By the end of 2004, the US government finally “agreed to return Fauzee to the Maldives under certain conditions,” as Minivan News explained. A cable dated December 13, 2004 “showed the Maldivian Foreign Ministry was interested in cooperating with these conditions, which included humane treatment upon release.”

Qalandar Shah (ISN 812, Afghanistan) Released April 2005

Of the 13 prisoners profiled in this article, Qalandar Shah is one of eight included in the 38 prisoners officially declared to be “no longer enemy combatants” after their Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, between April and December 2002, at least 50 Afghans were sent to Guantánamo from Bagram, and how, in his book The Interrogators, Chris Mackey (the pseudonym of a former senior interrogator in Afghanistan) reported that the screening for Afghan prisoners was made more flexible in June 2002, when, instead of sending every single prisoner in their custody to Guantánamo (as stipulated by those directing operations from Camp Doha in Kuwait), the prison’s commanders finally worked out how to release “worthless prisoners back to their farms and families.” The process involved creating a new category of prisoner — “persons under US control” — who could be held for 14 days without being assigned a number that entered the system overseen by the overall commanders in Kuwait and the Pentagon, because once a prisoner was officially assigned a number, it was almost impossible for the interrogators to let them go.

One of the 50, whose story only demonstrates that, even with these changes, many Afghans were still pointlessly sent to Guantánamo, was Qalander Shah, who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, when he was seized in a house raid in Bermel, in Paktika province, along with his uncle and a cousin. Accused of having a weapons cache and a false Pakistani ID card, he explained that the weapons were for protection and that he had the false ID because “the Taliban were running the government and we were in conflict with them.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 30, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Khan Shah Qalandar, born in 1973, the Task Force provided a more detailed explanation of his story, in which the key elements remained the same. Shah, described as a veterinarian for the Dutch Committee for Afghanistan from 1993 to 1996, and a self-employed teacher from 1996 to 2000, teaching Pashtu, English, math and painting, stated that he also supported his family “through construction, tailoring, and farming his land.”

Speaking about the circumstances of his capture, he “stated that he was asleep when Americans raided the compound where he and his family lived.” He was seized with his uncle, Pacha Gul, and his cousin, Abdul Adin. Providing further information, he “stated that he was awoken by gunfire and he later learned that as the Americans approached they were shot at by unknown persons and those people fled the compound.” He added that “he had nothing to fear from the Americans so when he was told to surrender, he did so.” It was also noted that he admitted that the area he lived in was “known to have been an egress route for Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters fleeing into Pakistan,” but obviously had nothing to do with either the Taliban or Al-Qaida, and, although weapons were found in the compound, he said he knew nothing about them. He was sent to Guantánamo on October 28, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his suspected involvement with subversive elements.”

In conclusion, the Joint Task Force assessed him “as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee is of low intelligence value to the United States. Based on the above, detainee poses a low threat to the US, however because of his subversive activities and affiliations in Afghanistan, he is assessed to pose a medium threat to the Afghan government.” As a result, Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III, who signed the memo, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.” 20 months later, he was finally freed.

Richard Belmar (ISN 817, UK) Released January 2005

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained, drawing on information from Guantánamo, and in an article published after his release (“Beatings, sex abuse and torture: how MI5 left me to rot in US jail,” by David Rose, in the Observer), how Richard Belmar, who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, was born and brought up in Marylebone, in central London. After training as a mechanic, he worked for the Post Office, and converted to Islam in 1999. In July 2001, after spending some time in Pakistan, he traveled to Afghanistan to study at a religious school in Kandahar.

Trapped in the city after the US-led invasion began, he made several unsuccessful attempts to leave the country — on one occasion wearing a burka, but still failing to escape because the driver of his car thought that it was too dangerous — before managing to cross the border in December 2001 by walking across the mountains. “I didn’t want to be part of any war,” he said. “I wanted to get out. I was seeing people who’d been bombed, pieces of them everywhere.” In Karachi, he stayed in a hotel for a while, but was running out of money and had lost his passport, and was afraid of contacting the British consulate because he knew that “anyone who had been in Afghanistan was at risk of arrest.” He then met an Arab who “promised to sort me out,” and arranged for him to stay in “a large house,” where he was captured.

He was then taken to the ISI headquarters in Karachi (the HQ of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, Pakistan’s largest intelligence service), along with the other prisoners, where he was interviewed by American intelligence operatives, whose superiors, finding his story credible, recommended his repatriation to the UK and asked MI5 to send some agents to see if they wanted to recruit him. Turned down by MI5, for reasons that were never explained, he was sent to Bagram instead.

In Chapter 14, I explained how Belmar said that on the plane to Bagram he received a huge blow to the back of his head from a rifle butt, which gave him headaches “for a long, long time,” and how, in Bagram, where he spent more than six months and was interrogated repeatedly, he was sexually taunted by a woman interrogator, who fondled his genitals. “I told her she was ugly, cheap and I spat in her face,” he said. “There were two guys in the room and I was shackled. They got me on the floor and started kicking me up, in the back, in the stomach, they gave me a real beating.”

In another interrogation, a pistol was forced into his mouth: “It tasted cold, bitter. I thought, ‘Yeah, this is getting serious, there’s a good chance they will pull the trigger.’” Eventually, he said, he gave the interrogators the confession they wanted, even though it was all lies. He told them he had listened to Osama bin Laden making a speech, but pointed out after his release, “How could I have done that? I didn’t know a word of Arabic,” and added that the interrogators “tried to make me confess to being at a training camp in 1998 — when I never left Britain, and wasn’t even a Muslim.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Belmar was a “Recommendation to Retain Under DoD Control,” dated November 15, 2003, in which his full name was given as Richard Dean Belmar, and it was noted that he was born in October 1979. The Joint Task Force claimed that Belmar and a friend had been arrested at Heathrow in June 2001 for “assaulting two individuals,” and then decided to go to Afghanistan rather than appear in court. A contact, Abu Mohammed, then apparently raised money for them to travel, and to attend the Al-Farouq training camp, where Belmar allegedly received basic training.

What happened to Belmar’s friend was not related, but after the 9/11 attacks, Belmar reportedly “traveled with Taliban forces throughout Afghanistan” and then, in November 2001, “fled Afghanistan after bribing a guard,” and traveling to Karachi, where he was seized three months later. He was sent to Guantánamo on October 28, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of the Al-Farouq training camp, Al-Qaida safehouses in Kandahar, AF, Kabul, AF and Karachi, PK, of Al-Qaida recruiter Abu Mohammed, Richard Reid, John Walker Lindh and other Al-Qaida members.”

In seeking to justify Belmar’s detention, the Task Force claimed that he had sworn bayat (a pledge of loyalty) to Osama bin Laden, which seems highly unlikely, and that, for some reason, he had “unexploited information” about Ghassan al-Sharbi (ISN 682), a Saudi and a self-confessed al-Qaida member who was seized in Faisalabad, Pakistan, two months after Belmar was seized in Karachi. It was also claimed that he had “knowledge of Jaish-e-Mohammed [a Pakistani militant group] and how they aided Arabs in Afghanistan,” and, in a particularly weak claim, it was alleged that an alias attributed to him, Abdul Rahim (an exceedingly common name), had been “referenced by several detainees possibly indicating that [Belmar] played a more important role in Al-Qaida while traveling around Afghanistan.”

Belmar was “assessed as being a member of Al-Qaida,” and it was also stated that he was “of intelligence value to the United States,” and posed “a high risk to the US, its interests, or its allies.” In addition, it was noted that he had been identified as a candidate for a trial by Military Commission, and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “retained under DoD control.” However, 14 months later, and without being put forward for trial, he was freed, flown back to the UK, and released without charge.

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

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, 700,000-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

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Freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington continues his 70-part, million-word series telling, for the first time, the stories of 776 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Adding information released by WikiLeaks in April 2011 to the existing documentation about the prisoners, much of which was already covered in Andy’s book The Guantánamo Files and in the archive of articles on his website, the project will be completed in time for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

This is Part 17 of the 70-part series.

In late April, WikiLeaks pushed Guantánamo back onto the international media’s agenda by publishing thousands of pages of classified military documents — the Detainee Assessment Briefs — relating to almost all of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002, which drew on the testimony of witnesses — in most cases, the prisoners’ fellow prisoners — whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.

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

I began, in May and June, with a five-part series, “WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo,” telling the stories of 84 prisoners, released between 2002 and 2004, whose stories had never been told before. These men and boys were amongst the first 201 prisoners released, and unlike the other prisoners, for whom information was released to the public from 2006 onwards, as a result of court cases involving Freedom of Information requests, no information had been officially released about the first 201 prisoners.

“WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo” was followed by a ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004,” published from June to August, in which I revisited the stories of 114 other prisoners released in this period, adding information from the Detainee Assessment briefs to what was already known about these men and boys from press reports and other sources.

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

For the next phase of this 70-part project (with 16 parts now complete), I have turned my attention to the period from September 2004 to the end of 2005, when 62 prisoners were released (see Part One, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five). This was the period in which, after the prisoners won a spectacular victory in the Supreme Court in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, when the Supreme Court granted them habeas corpus rights (in other words, the right to ask an impartial judge why they were being held), lawyers were allowed to meet the prisoners for the first time, and the secrecy that was required for Guantánamo to function as an interrogation center beyond the law was finally broken.

However, although the Bush administration allowed habeas petitions to proceed, Congress attempted to strip the prisoners of their habeas rights in the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005, and the administration also responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling with its own inferior version of habeas, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maroof Salehove (ISN 208, Tajikistan) Released August 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

Via Jalalabad and Kabul, he arrived in Kunduz, where “he was told that the only way out of Afghanistan was to go through Kandahar.” He “got on a truck headed towards Kandahar,” but “was stopped in-route [sic] by General Dostum’s Northern Alliance forces” and “was shot in the stomach and leg during capture.” Taken first to Dostum’s prison at Sherberghan, and then to the US prison at Kandahar, he was sent to Guantánamo on January 20, 2002, allegedly “because of his knowledge of Hamza and possible knowledge of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) or other terrorist organizations,” although, as I explained in my article, “How to Read WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files” (originally published on WikiLeaks’ website when the Guantánamo files were first published, as part of my work liaising between WikiLeaks and its media partners):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As I also explained, Ben Mustafa and Brahim Yadel and another Frenchman, Imad Kanouni (ISN 164, also see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Three of Ten)“), left Afghanistan for Pakistan with many dozens of other men who were later transferred to Guantánamo, because, although they were welcomed in one particular village by the locals, these villagers then betrayed them by sending them to a mosque where they were arrested by the army. As Ben Mustafa explaine