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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 30 of the 70-part series. 374 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. Part Four told eleven more stories, of prisoners seized, for a variety of reasons, crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan after the US-led invasion in October 2001, and Part Five featured more of those stories, including four accounts of the Uighurs, Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province, who persuaded the US they were held by mistake, but had to wait until 2006 to be freed, when they were resettled in Albania, and not in the US, which accepted that it could not return them to China, but refused to allow them to live in America.

Part Six involved more stories of Saudis and Afghans, including the particularly unfortunate story of a Saudi-born Uighur, who was tortured by Al-Qaida for allegedly plotting to assassinate Osama bin Laden, liberated from a Taliban prison, and then sent to Guantánamo. Part Seven featured more Saudis, a Yemeni, two Kazakhs, an Iranian and some Afghans, including some prisoners with serious mental health issues (and one juvenile prisoner), and the sad — and unresolved — story of Mani al-Utaybi, another of the three prisoners who died in June 2006, and Part Eight featured more mental health issues, another juvenile, three men sent to live in Albania because it was not safe for them to be returned to their home countries, and the last of the three prisoners who died in June 2006. Part Nine featured the stories of eleven more Afghans, and this final part telling the stories of the prisoners released in 2006 tells the stories of another 14 Afghans (and one Pakistani) and includes some genuinely shocking examples of pro-US Afghans rounded up because of false information told to US forces by their rivals, and which, sadly, the US authorities were too arrogant or indifferent to investigate.

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

Abdul Bagi (ISN 963, Afghanistan) Released February 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Bagi, who was 30 years old at the time of capture, was one of ten men seized after an attack on US forces in Lejay, in Helmand province, on February 10, 2003, all of whom, it seems, were wearing olive drab jackets when they were seized. According to the US authorities, US Special Forces were “viciously attacked” by a 40-man pro-Taliban guerrilla unit led by Abdul Wahid, a local warlord, although the men who were sent to Guantánamo (out of at least 70 who were originally rounded up) seem to have been nothing more than poor farmers.

Bagi said in Guantánamo that he and his 39-year old uncle, Kushky Yar (ISN 971, see below), were captured in the street near their homes while heading to the bazaar to buy parts for a tractor. Bagi denied that he was involved with the Taliban, saying, “My father and mother are dead and they left me small children. I am serving them. I have not served the Taliban or anybody else … I have been home every night taking care of my brother and sister.” He was remarkably restrained when it came to the allegation that he was “apprehended wearing an olive drab green jacket consistent with the eyewitness accounts of the individual attacks,” saying, “The green jackets are in the shops, hundreds of them, everybody can buy them and wear them.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Abdul Bagi was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated May 13, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1972 and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force conceded upfront that, after two years and three months in detention, there was no indication that he had been involved in anti-US activities, explaining that, “Initially it was believed [he] was one of several individuals involved in ACM [anti-coalition militia] operations directed to deter US/Coalition Special Forces (USSF) conducting an operation called “Combined Special Operations Forces (CSOF) Eagle” during February 2003 in Helmand Province,” one of whose primary objectives was to apprehend Abdul Wahid, “who was believed [to be] located at his compound.” As the Task Force explained, however, “It cannot be confirmed that detainee was actually part of this operation.”

After noting that Abdul Bagi was a farmer, who “farmed his portion of the family land,” the Task Force noted that he “cannot read,” and “only knows how to write his own name,” and also noted, “He has not been on hajj. He does not know how to drive. Neither he nor anyone in his family has ever traveled outside of Afghanistan. He has heard of jihad, but does not know what it means. He believes soldiers and the government conduct jihad.”

Turning to the day of his capture, the Task Force noted that, by his own account, on the day of his capture “he was awakened by US vehicle noise near his village, as well as sporadic gunfire in the mountains nearby his village.” Later that morning, he and his uncle “were walking to the bazaar to obtain oil and a filter for a tractor, when five US forces vehicles approached them,” and they “stepped off the road and into a shallow depression,” because, “[d]uring previous encounters with US Forces, a translator had told them to stay clear when US vehicles came by,” so they stepped off the road “to let the vehicles pass.” However, when US forces noticed that they “were wearing green jackets similar to those worn by the men who had attackedUS Forces and appeared to be hiding in a shallow ditch,” the vehicles “pulled up to where they were sitting and US Forces captured them,” and took them to the US prison at Bagram airbase.

Abdul Bagi was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, allegedly to “provide information on the following: Specific Taliban personnel, Possible resistance to Coalition Forces [and] Anti-US sentiment in the Bahgran [Baghran] District of Afghanistan.”

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

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

In assessing his story, the Task Force reiterated that it “cannot be confirmed detainee was involved in insurgent operations against Coalition Forces.” It was noted that his uncle “claimed unknown personnel approached him, and gave him an RPG and told him he was to take part in an ambush against the Americans.” However, “When he learned the Americans were on the way, he threw the RPG in a well and hid in the hole.” An analyst noted, correctly,  that it was “unlikely” that Kushky Yar “would not know the people who provided the RPG to him” and Abdul Bagi, but the bigger question was whether this had actually happened, and, although Abdul Bagi and Kushky Yar were both wearing olive drab green jackets, Bagi’s “denial of being part of an ambush against US Forces or ever having an RPG seem[ed] to be plausible.”

In notes indicating that false confessions were obtained from both men on capture, it was noted that Abdul Bagi “denied the report that he admitted to US Forces upon capture that he was involved in the attacks,” and also “denied the report that claimed he hid a weapon at the well.” It was also noted that “[n]o one searched the well where the RPG had allegedly been thrown; therefore, no RPG was recovered.”

In conclusion, Abdul Bagi was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a low risk, as he is unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” What this actually means, of course, is that he was not regarded as a risk at all, but over-classification was evidently built into the system at Guantánamo, and this can also be seen from the manner in which, despite conceding that there was no evidence whatsoever to indicate that he was anything other than a farmer seized by mistake, he was still “assessed as a supporter of the Taliban,” and was “suspected to be a probable low-level member of an Anti-Coalition Militia (ACM) group headed by former Taliban Commander, Abdul Rais Wahid.” In addition, in an analysis of his behavior at Guantánamo, it was noted that he had “a past history of passive behaviour,” and had “only three acts recorded in his discipline history.”

As a result, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, updated a previous recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated March 29, 2004), recommended the transfer of Abdul Bagi to continued detention in Afghanistan “[b]ased upon information obtained since [his] previous assessment,” even though this information was not spelled out explicitly, and even though, of course, there was actually no justification for demanding his ongoing detention. He was released nine months later.

Rahmatullah (ISN 964, Afghanistan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Rahmatullah, who was 20 years old at the time of capture, was one of ten men seized after an attack on US forces in Lejay, in Helmand province, on February 10, 2003, all of whom, it seems, were wearing olive drab jackets when they were seized. According to the US authorities, US Special Forces were “viciously attacked” by a 40-man pro-Taliban guerrilla unit led by Abdul Wahid, a local warlord, although the men who were sent to Guantánamo (out of at least 70 who were originally rounded up) seem to have been nothing more than poor farmers.

Rahmatullah was one of four men — the others being 34-year old Abdul Wahab (ISN 961, released in August 2008), 29-year old Hafizullah Shah (ISN 965, see below), and 22-year old Naserullah (ISN 967, released in November 2007) — who were captured in a minivan at a checkpoint and accused of wearing the infamous green jackets and suffering from hearing loss associated with the attack.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Rahmatullah was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated May 27, 2005, in which he was also identified as Ramatullah and Mullah Ramatullah Ustaz. It was also noted that he was born in 1981 and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he was married, and was a laborer and tractor driver.” It was also noted that he was illiterate, and had “no formal education, no military training and never traveled outside of Afghanistan.” He stated that, prior to his capture, he had been working in a field for fifteen days, but “was told by his employer, Manan, to go home and celebrate the Eid holiday.” The next day, he “caught a taxi with seven other individuals,” but, as he was passing through Lejay, “he heard explosions and saw airplanes and helicopters.”

He was then captured at a checkpoint, in what appeared to be a random arrest, although the USSF (the US/Coalition Special Forces) claimed to have observed him “climbing down a nearby mountain” following the ambush on the US convoy. He was then sent to Bagram, and was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban activities in the Baghran District.”

The Task Force assessed him as “an associate of Abdul Wahid,” who had “participated in attacks against US forces,” although all there was to indicate that this was the case, beyond his jacket, his alleged hearing loss and the claim that he was seen on a mountain, was a claim that, when he “was questioned about the ambush, his participation in the Taliban, and being a militant commander, he became nervous and showed visible signs of deception,” and was also “deceptive about his knowledge of the individuals who were in the taxi with him at his time of capture.”

In conclusion, he was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and, despite the lack of evidence, of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that his “behavior ha[d] been generally compliant with very little disturbance to other detainees or guards,” and Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in Afghanistan (dated March 29, 2004), repeated the recommendation, although he was not released for another 19 months.

Hafizullah Shah (ISN 965, Afghanistan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Hafizullah Shah, who was 29 years old at the time of capture, was one of ten men seized after an attack on US forces in Lejay, in Helmand province, on February 10, 2003, all of whom, it seems, were wearing olive drab jackets when they were seized. According to the US authorities, US Special Forces were “viciously attacked” by a 40-man pro-Taliban guerrilla unit led by Abdul Wahid, a local warlord, although the men who were sent to Guantánamo (out of at least 70 who were originally rounded up) seem to have been nothing more than poor farmers.

Shah was one of four men — the others being 34-year old Abdul Wahab (ISN 961, released in August 2008), 20-year old Rahmatullah (ISN 964, see above), and 22-year old Naserullah (ISN 967, released in November 2007) — who were captured in a minivan at a checkpoint and accused of wearing the infamous green jackets and suffering from hearing loss associated with the attack.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Hafizullah Shah was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated May 20, 2005, in which he was also identified as Hafizullah and Rafizullah. It was also noted that he was born in 1974 and was “in good health” although he was “taking Aciphex for abdominal pain.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he was an orphan, raised by his future father-in-law, who “grew wheat on his land” (and “grew opium on his land prior to the switch to wheat”), and “helped his father-in-law farm wheat, barley and corn.” He apparently said that, on the day of his capture, he “walked for about three and a half hours and then got into a taxi” with six other people, who he claimed not to know, although an analyst noted that “three of the individuals captured with [him] claim[ed] to know him or to have met him before.”

Describing the circumstances of his capture, the Task Force claimed that, after the ambush, “US Special Forces (USSF) personnel set up a checkpoint after they observed the attackers hide their firearms,” and that, when the taxi was stopped, he “was captured and detained on suspicion he was one of the men who had just engaged USSF.” He was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban personalities and activities within Helmand Province.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that, as well as wearing a green jacket” and “suffering from hearing loss,” USSF “observed the men who conducted the attack at the top of mountain,” who “stopped, appeared to cache weapons, and then maneuvered down the mountain,” where some of them “entered a taxi,” while “others mounted motorcycles and proceeded to the checkpoint.” The US forces apparently “believed the detainees assumed they would not be arrested if they had no weapons on them.”

This was certainly a more detailed explanation than was provided in Hafizullah’s case, and it was also supposed to be reinforced by generalizations about the Baghran valley, which, it was claimed, had “provided a continuous safe-haven to hostile Taliban forces,” and was “dominated by a small number of Mullahs,” who were “allowed to maintain control of the valley and its drug profits as long as they support[ed] the Taliban, HIG [Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, the militia of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar], and foreign Al-Qaida.”

It was also claimed, in a passage that implied that the US could have rounded up everyone in the valley, “Many of the people of the valley are either family members or employees. Those that aren’t must tacitly support the Mullah leaders or they will be killed. All adult males are forced to be members of the underground. A few are full-time guerrillas, with frequent operations outside the valley. However, in time of attack, all males pick up arms in defense of the valley against “invaders” (US or coalition forces).”

In further analysis of Hafizullah’s case, it was assessed that he had “failed to be truthful throughout his detainment, both at JTF GTMO and in Afghanistan,” and it was also noted that, in September 2004, interrogators remarked that he “was deceptive, demanding, and acted very sure of himself.” In conclusion, he was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that his “behavior ha[d] been non-compliant and slightly aggressive,” and Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in Afghanistan (dated March 29, 2004), repeated the recommendation, although he was not released for another 19 months.

Baridad (ISN 966, Afghanistan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Baridad, who was 50 years old at the time of his capture, was one of ten men seized after an attack on US forces in Lejay, in Helmand province, on February 10, 2003, all of whom, it seems, were wearing olive drab jackets when they were seized. According to the US authorities, US Special Forces were “viciously attacked” by a 40-man pro-Taliban guerrilla unit led by Abdul Wahid, a local warlord, although the men who were sent to Guantánamo (out of at least 70 who were originally rounded up) seem to have been nothing more than poor farmers.

Baridad told his tribunal, “I live in a place that if you see it, even an animal would not live there … If you come back home and see my life, I bet you will cry. You will come back and ask why [they] pick up this poor innocent guy.” He explained that on the day of his arrest, “I was sick … I couldn’t even go to the mosque and it was about eight feet away … I was so cold I was just sitting in the sunshine and that is when the Americans captured me.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Baridad was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated June 3, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1953. It was also noted that he was only “in moderate health,” which may well have indicated that he was quite ill, as he was being “treated for Depressive Disorder, Somatoform Disorder and Personality Disorder,” for which he was “being treated with Zoloft and Ambien,” and also had Gastroesophageal Reflux with a Hiatal Hernia,” for which he was taking Prilosec.

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he had lived in the Baghran valley for his whole life, and that he was “a farmer who grows wheat and does odd jobs,” who had “no military experience” and did “not know how to use weapons.” In a version of the story he told his tribunal, he said that he “was sunning himself with two of the village elders when USSF [US Special Forces] arrived and surrounded the village,” and that they waved [him] over to speak with him and the other two men he was with, and then proceeded to arrest him.”

According to “capturing unit reporting,” cited by an analyst, after the ambush “USSF conducted a search of the area and a group of personnel were observed boarding a vehicle and motorcycles in the vicinity of the attacks,” and, after establishing a checkpoint just outside the village, stopped the suspected vehicle, and questioned the passengers, who were all “wearing green OD jackets,” and were allegedly “suffering from hearing loss that was assessed to be caused by the firefight with USSF.” According to this account, Baridad was captured with the four men mentioned above — 34-year old Abdul Wahab (ISN 961, released in August 2008), 20-year old Rahmatullah (ISN 964, see above), 29-year old Hafizullah Shah (see above), 22-year old Naserullah (ISN 967, released in November 2007), and also Bismullah (ISN 960, released in September 2004).

It was also stated that, after initial questioning, the prisoners “were detained for further questioning at an advanced operations base in the vicinity of Lejay, AF, from 11 to 18 February 2003,” when he was sent to Bagram. He was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Biographical information regarding Taliban member, Abdul Wahid, Specific information regarding Taliban warning systems used when American/Coalition Forces are approaching villages in Afghanistan [and] Information regarding individuals in the Lejay area who disappear when US or Coalition Forces visit.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he had “tried to deceive interrogators,” and that he had “information concerning a possible spy network that warn[ed] Afghan villages of American/Coalition Forces entering or leaving an area,” although thee was nothing to prove that Barided was involved in the ambush.

Of particular interest, as well, were claims that he had photo-identified two other prisoners, even though there was no reason whatsoever for him to have known either man. One was Sami al-Haj (ISN 345, released May 2008), a cameraman for Al-Jazeera described as “a courier/facilitator using his employment in the Union Beverage Company (UBC) and Al-Jazeera to facilitate funds, travel and/or personnel for Al-Qaida’s global terrorist network,” who “was primarily involved in facilitating funds for fighters in Chechnya by funneling funds through [the] Al-Haramayn [charity] in Baku, Azerbaljan.” Not only was this description wildly implausible, but also there was no indication of why Baridad would ever have come across al-Haj. Similarly, there are doubts about his alleged photo-identification of Asd al-Hammer Mohammed (ISN 668, released in March 2004, and also identified as Abdul al-Hameed Andarr), who was described as “the cousin of Saifullah Rahman Mansour, a Taliban Commander who resided in Kabul,” because, again, there was no reason given as to why Baridad would ever have met him.

In conclusion, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” because he was “assessed as a probable member of the Taliban,” and it was also claimed that, if he was released, “Abdul Wahid or other insurgent groups [would] most likely recruit him again for terrorist activity.” It was also noted that his “behavior [had] generally been non-compliant with guard orders,” because he had “insulted guards, failed to obey commands, and talked to other detainees across cellblocks.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in Afghanistan (dated March 29, 2004), repeated the recommendation, although he was not released for another 18 months.

Kushky Yar (ISN 971, Afghanistan) Released February 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Kushky Yar, who was 39 years old at the time of capture, was one of ten men seized after an attack on US forces in Lejay, in Helmand province, on February 10, 2003, all of whom, it seems, were wearing olive drab jackets when they were seized. According to the US authorities, US Special Forces were “viciously attacked” by a 40-man pro-Taliban guerrilla unit led by Abdul Wahid, a local warlord, although the men who were sent to Guantánamo (out of at least 70 who were originally rounded up) seem to have been nothing more than poor farmers.

As was explained in Guantánamo, he was seized with his nephew, Abdul Bagi (ISN 963, see above), who explained that they were captured in the street near their homes while heading to the bazaar to buy parts for a tractor.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Kushky Yar was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated July 5, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1963. It was also noted that he was “in good health,” although he had “attempted to hang himself and received follow-up treatment from Behavioral Health Care Services.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force conceded upfront that, after two years and three months in detention, there was no indication that he had been involved in anti-US activities, explaining that, “Initially it was believed [he] was one of several individuals involved in ACM [anti-coalition militia] operations directed to deter US/Coalition Special Forces (USSF) conducting an operation called ‘Combined Special Operations Forces (CSOF) Eagle’ during February 2003 in Helmand Province,” one of whose primary objectives was to apprehend Abdul Wahid, “who was believed [to be] located at his compound.” As the Task Force explained, however, “It cannot be confirmed that detainee was actually part of this operation.”

The Task Force noted that he “was a self-employed tractor driver and motorcycle mechanic,” who had “no formal education, and cannot read or write.” It was also noted, “There is no outside reporting associating [him] with Al-Qaida or the Taliban.” On February 10, 2003, he “was awakened by US vehicle noise near his village,” and “also heard sporadic gunfire in the mountains nearby his village,” as Abdul Bagi also reported, and that, later that morning, he and Abdul Bagi (here identified as Abdul Bari) “were walking to the bazaar to obtain oil and a filter for a tractor when five US forces vehicles approached them,” and they “stepped off the road and into a shallow depression,” in order to “let the vehicles pass,” because, “during previous encounters with US Forces, a translator had told them to stay clear of passing US vehicles.” Seized and taken to Bagram, he was sent to Guantánamo on May 8, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Specific Taliban personnel, Possible resistance to Coalition Forces [and] Anti-US sentiment in the Bahgran District of Afghanistan.”

As was also noted in Abdul Bagi’s file, Kushky Yar “claimed unknown personnel approached him, and gave him an RPG and told him he was to take part in an ambush against the Americans.” However, “When he learned the Americans were on the way, he threw the RPG in a well and hid in the hole.” An analyst noted, correctly, that it was “unlikely” that Kushky Yar “would not know the people who provided the RPG to him,” but the bigger question was whether this had actually happened, or if it was a lie produced under duress, and this latter interpretation was suggested through additional notes that he “denied the report that claimed he hid a weapon at the well and also claimed he had no weapons at the time of his arrest,” that he “denied the report that he admitted to US Forces upon capture that he was involved in the attacks,” that both he and Abdul Bagi “have maintained the same story since capture,” and, in addition, that “[n]o one searched the well where the RPG had allegedly been thrown; therefore, no RPG was recovered” — if, indeed, an RPG had ever been thrown into the well in the first place.

In conclusion, he was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a low risk, as he is unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” although he was still “assessed as a supporter of the Taliban,” and was “suspected to be a probable low-level member of an Anti-Coalition Militia (ACM) group headed by former Taliban Commander, Abdul Rais Wahid.” In addition, in an analysis of his conduct at Guantánamo, it was noted that his “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff,” although he had “one reported incident” on August 18, 2003, when he “was reported for trying to commit suicide,” which is a new twist on the insensitivity of the detention machine at Guantánamo. It was also noted that he had “made no other outward appearance of trying to commit self-harm, since the last reported instance and [was] expected to maintain his current behavior trend.”

As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a previous recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in Afghanistan (dated January 19, 2004), recommended his release “[b]ased upon information obtained since [his] previous assessment,” even though this information was not spelled out explicitly. He was released seven months later.

Alif Mohammed (ISN 972, Afghanistan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Alif Mohammed, who was 56 years old at the time of capture, was one of ten men seized after an attack on US forces in Lejay, in Helmand province, on February 10, 2003, all of whom, it seems, were wearing olive drab jackets when they were seized. According to the US authorities, US Special Forces were “viciously attacked” by a 40-man pro-Taliban guerrilla unit led by Abdul Wahid, a local warlord, although the men who were sent to Guantánamo (out of at least 70 who were originally rounded up) seem to have been nothing more than poor farmers.

Alif Mohammed was accused of orchestrating the attack using a satellite phone, but he said that he was just a poor tinsmith, and pointed out that he would never work for Abdul Wahid because he killed his nephew and his nephew’s pregnant wife. In his tribunal, Abdul Bagi (ISN 963, see above) spoke in his defence, saying, “Alif Mohammed is a drug addict and he is a very poor guy … The Taliban beat [him] too much because he is a drug addict and was close to killing him. How could he be their commander?”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Alif Mohammed was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated June 3, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1946. It was also noted that he was “in good health,” although he had been “diagnosed with adjustment disorder with depression,” for which he was prescribed Zoloft.

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he “worked as a farmer, gunsmith, and ironworker,” who had fought against the Russians as a mujahideen commander in the 1980s, but was unable to ascertain exactly how he was captured. In one version of events, an analyst noted that Mohammed’s “capture data” stated that US Special Forces (USSF) “found him with weapons and magazines in a culvert system trying to hide and escape,” and “assessed him as a security or military commander of Abdul Wahid’s compound in Lejay and believed he was responsible for orchestrating an ambush on USSF.” However, as the analyst also noted, “This information was subsequently countered by a screening report that stated [he] was captured while washing himself in a river and did not possess weapons at [the] time of capture.” He was then sent to Bagram, and on to Guantánamo, although no date was given in the file, and his “file does not indicate why he was sent to JTF GTMO.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed that he was “associated with members of Al-Qaida’s terrorist network” operating in Helmand province, and, as an example, stated that, “In debriefings, [he had] discussed communication between Abdul Wahid and Sher Mohammed, the governor [of] Helmand province,” which “indicates knowledge not typically associated with a low level individual or a loose association.” However, it is not known if there is any truth in this. Certainly, one other allegation — that he had “briefly described an association” between Abdul Wahid and Abdul Razzaq Hekmati (ISN 942, who died of cancer in Guantánamo in December 2007) — was nonsense. Hekmati was “assessed as a mid-to-high level member of the Taliban who is associated with high-level members of the Taliban and Al-Qaida’s terrorist network,” whereas he had actually been responsible for liberating three significant anti-Taliban figures from a Taliban jail, as I explained in a front-page New York Times story with Carlotta Gall in February 2008, and had then had to live in exile in Iran.

In conclusion, Alif Mohammed was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” because, despite a lack of actual evidence, he was “assessed as a possible Anti-Coalition Militia (ACM) member,” who was also “affiliated with Al-Qaida’s terrorist network due to his extensive history with mujahideen (Islamic holy warrior) networks” and other associations. It was also noted that his “behavior ha[d] been for the most part compliant and non-aggressive,” who had “a few cases of refusing to comply with the rules of the guard force and the cellblock,” which, on May 26, 2003, at 11.30 pm, involved him trying “to commit self-harm by tying a sheet around his neck.”

As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in Afghanistan (dated March 29, 2004), repeated the recommendation, although he was not released for another 18 months.

Abdul Halim Sadiqi (ISN 1007, Pakistan) Released October 2006

In Chapter 15 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Halim Sadiqi (also known as Abdul Halim Sidiqi), who was 33 years old at the time of his capture, was one of many prisoners subjected to ludicrous allegations whose provenance was not disclosed, but which were clearly implausible. Sadiqi, who was married with a baby daughter, ran a small store in Pakistan. Caught up in the fall of Kunduz, after traveling to Afghanistan to look for his brother, he spent a year in Sheberghan and another three years attempting to convince the US authorities that he was not a military commander who ran a “network of madrassas,” through which he was able to recruit 2,000 fighters for al-Qaida, and that he had led this vast fighting force — which included “300 Arab al-Qaida operatives” — in combat against the Northern Alliance until he was captured in Kunduz.

In his review board hearing in November 2005, he said, “The person who made these allegations, either he was drunk or he doesn’t even have a brain,” and finally someone believed him. A Board Member told him, “I don’t believe that you were a mastermind, or a great general, or this person who could command 2,000 recruits to come with you on a moment’s notice. I believe you.”

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Sadiqi (described as Abdul Haleem) repeated his story, telling a McClatchy reporter in Karachi that, when he “wanted to find his brother in Afghanistan in September 2001, he knew where to go first [and] visited the local chapter of [the Pakistani militant group] Jaish-e- Mohammed in his Pakistani town of Sadiqabad,” who gave him “a pass of sorts to travel to Afghanistan and meet with Jaish-e-Mohammed officials there.”

He explained that his brother, Abdullah, “was preparing to fight the Americans and their allies after running away from his madrassas,” and also said that he had found his brother “close to the Tajikistan border,” but were trapped in the city of Kunduz, the Taliban’s last stronghold in northern Afghanistan, as it fell to the Northern Alliance.

Quite where the US claim that he commanded 2,000 Pakistani and Arab fighters came from was not explained. McClatchy noted that, in his tribunal and review board at Guantánamo, it was alleged that he “drew many of those fighters from a network of 10 madrassas that he oversaw in Pakistan,” and that he “allegedly did so after he met with an al-Qaida logistics officer at the wedding of one of Osama bin Laden’s children in Kandahar in 2001.”

It was also noted that, in denying these allegations, he insisted “he was an innocent shopkeeper sent by his family to retrieve an errant brother,” and that “the charges were the result of bad information that Afghan troops had passed along.” He also “pointed out that he went though the trouble of getting a visa at the Afghan embassy and entering the country at a legal checkpoint,” which, as he noted, was “hardly the course of action of a militant commander.”

The Pakistani government refused to comment on his case, but McClatchy noted that Bashir Ahmad (ISN 1005, released in September 2004), who was seized with him, admitted that he had gone to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, and, although Ahmad “wouldn’t say” what Haleem was doing at the time of his capture, “the fact that the two were arrested together” suggested to McClatchy that Haleem “may have traveled to Afghanistan with permission from Jaish-e Mohammed not to find his brother but to join him in fighting US troops.”

That, however, was a far cry form being a commander in charge of 2,000 soldiers, and, in reflecting on this, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy noted that Haleem, like a majority of the prisoners, “wasn’t captured by US soldiers,” but “was rounded up by Afghan troops loyal to warlords who made a small fortune selling their prisoners to the American military.” It was also noted, “The higher the profile of the prisoner, the more money the warlords could demand. An al-Qaida-affiliated commander, for instance, fetched a much higher price than an ordinary foot soldier.”

Furthermore, Haleem was held at Sheberghan, the prison run by Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum, for 17 months after his capture, and when he was finally transferred to Bagram, interrogators “didn’t have access to witnesses who could describe what was happening” when he was seized, and “also weren’t in touch with local leaders from places such as Sadiqabad, Pakistan, who could have shed light on whether Haleem was a local jihadist leader or a grocer.” Instead, the case against him consisted of “questionable information passed on by warlords, testimony gathered in often-hostile interrogation sessions and information supplied by other detainees who wanted to curry favor with their captors.”

Speaking to McClatchy’s reporter in Karachi in June 2007, Haleem explained that, after his capture, he first had to survive the journey from Kunduz to Sheberghan, when the prisoners, who surrendered in their thousands, were transported to Sheberghan in container trucks, and hundreds — or even thousands — of prisoners died of suffocation, or by being shot through the sides of the containers by Northern Alliance soldiers, in what has become known as “the convoy of death.”

Haleem told McClatchy’s reporter that he’d been transported “in a metal shipping container with about 200 other men, many of whom died from suffocation or bullets that Afghan troops fired through the side of the box,” and explained, “When they opened the door we were in the middle of Sheberghan jail. We were all sitting on the dead bodies which were lying on the floor; they were lifeless. An arm was sticking up in the air here, a leg was sticking up in the air there.”

He also said that, in Sheberghan, the Afghan guards “occasionally came into his cell to punch him in the back of the head and kick him in the chest,” and at Bagram US soldiers “once threw him to the ground and kicked him in the head ‘like they were playing soccer.’” He also said that, although he “was never hit at Guantánamo,” the abuse there “was worse than a guard’s boot.” There, he said, interrogators “sent him repeatedly to isolation cells,” because “they thought he was lying to them.” The guards “stripped him naked and tossed him into the small rooms for a week, two weeks or, once, 25 days, and he came out filled with confusion and rage.”

He also said that “he thought often about his brother, Abdullah,” who had “died in the container that took them to Sheberghan, just another one of the bodies on the floor,” and added that “he began to have trouble sleeping and would go for weeks on end without sleeping through the night.” He also explained that he “often became violent, and many times got into fights with other detainees,” and, in conclusion, added that, eight months after his release, he still “woke up angry on most days,” and “hadn’t forgiven the Americans” for what they had done to him.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Sadiqi was a “Recommendation for Transfer to the Control of Another Country with Conditions (TWC), Subject to the Conclusion of an Acceptable Transfer Agreement,” dated September 28, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1968, and was “in good health,” although it was also noted that he “was seen by psychiatry for follow up after a suicide attempt,” and was also “treated for scrotal bleeding, genital pain, difficulty urinating, allergies, rashes and minor body aches.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted upfront that, although he “was previously assessed to be a high-level Taliban Commander and member of Al- Qaida,” further review of his file, “in conjunction with a thorough search of national-level counter-terrorism databases,” indicated that the was “not a Taliban Commander or a member of Al-Qaida,” and was “now assessed to be a probable Islamic extremist who traveled to Afghanistan for jihadist purposes.”

The Task Force also noted that he worked on a farm and as a store manager, and largely told the story Sadiqi later told to McClatchy — that he traveled to Afghanistan to find his brother Abdullah, locating him in Kunduz, and that the brothers then “found passage on a truck” leaving Kunduz, but, “[w]hile passing through a Northern Alliance checkpoint, the truck was stopped and searched by General Dostum’s Forces,” and Sadiqi and his brother “were taken into custody,” and “transported in a shipping container to Sheberghan Prison.” It was also noted bluntly, “Detainee’s brother did not survive.”

It was not recorded when he was sent to Bagram, but he was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Taliban Techniques, Tactics and Procedures (TTPS) for fighting enemy dispositions and routes that may still be in use, Taliban personalities [and] Activities in Pakistan centering on recruitment and anti-American sentiment.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force claimed, without providing anything resembling evidence, that he had “shown that he [was] a militant jihadist and [was] using deception to avoid providing incriminating evidence.” He was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he is unlikely to 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] been mostly compliant with limited hostility to the guard force and staff.”

As a result, Maj, Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated November 24, 2003), recommended him for transfer “with conditions,” although he was not released for another 13 months.

Haji Nasrat Khan (ISN 1009, Afghanistan) Released August 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Haji Nazrat Khan, who was 78 years old at the time of his capture, was seized after his son, Izatullah Nazrat Yar (ISN 977), a tribal leader who was working for the Karzai government, supervising the collection of weapons, and guarding them in a compound, was detained. His son was not freed until November 2007.

When Haji Nazrat Khan heard about the capture of his son, he made his way to the US compound to ask why and was promptly arrested himself. This was shameful behavior on the part of US forces, as Khan was a former commander for Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, who was President of Afghanistan for two months in 1992, and had been largely housebound since 1993, when his health deteriorated.

In Guantánamo, he was was scornful of allegations that he fought with the Taliban. “I was having problems with my legs,” he said. “I could not get out of my home. How could I fight for the Taliban the way that I am?” He was also particularly eloquent about Afghan history, and gave his tribunal a heartfelt summary of his people’s woes, in which he explained that, after the Soviet Union fell:

[W]e were expecting, waiting for Americans to help us to create and build up a new government. Unfortunately, they did not do it. Then the Taliban took over and they committed atrocities, killing, and any brutality they could. Talib means educated student or to learn things, but they were not that kind of people. Then, during the Taliban time, the opportunity opened for people to come from all over the world. The terrorist and any other kind of person came to Afghanistan and destroyed our honour and our dignity.

Bin Laden, we hate him more than you guys and you people do not realize who is an enemy and who is a friend. When you came to Afghanistan everybody was waiting for America to help us build up our country. We were looking for you guys and we were very happy that you would come to our country. The people that hated you were very few, but you just grabbed guys like me. Look at me. Our very happiness, you turned it to bitterness. I am still not mad at you guys, but in the future try to know the difference between your enemy and your friend.

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Khan (identified as Nusrat Khan) reiterated his story, after a powerful introduction by Tom Lasseter. “Nusrat Khan is disabled,” he wrote. “About 20 years ago, one side of his body went numb; then a year or two later, the other half did, too. In Afghanistan, the doctors said only that he was ill; in the United States, they probably would have said that he’d had at least two strokes. He’s barely able to move without a cane and one of his sons holding him on either side. He’s more than 75 years old. He might be 76; he might be 80. He’s not sure.”

Despite this, as Lasseter also noted, pointedly, “The American military held Khan, a member of the first US-backed Afghan congress after the fall of the Taliban, for more than three years at Guantánamo on charges that the elderly, illiterate and near-physically incapacitated man was an insurgent leader.” Confirming his story, it was noted that he was seized after he had “gone to live at his son’s house and be with his grandchildren,” after his son was seized on the basis of similarly empty allegations — the capturing forces found 700 weapons in the compound where he lived, but neglected to work out that he and 50 others were being paid by the Karzai government to guard them.

Nusrat Khan, the father, didn’t know anything about any of this, of course, but he was nevertheless opportunistically accused of being a member of Hezb-e-Gulbuddin (HIG), the anti-US militia headed by the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as was his son. “How could I be an enemy combatant if I was not able to stand up?” he asked his tribunal at Guantánamo, but his words fell on deaf ears.

Khan’s son had worked for Hekmatyar from 1992 to 1996, but “quit after the Taliban routed Hekmatyar’s forces and took over the country in 1996,” and his father denied fighting for Hekmatyar. In fact, as McClatchy noted, “he denied being anything other than an old man who’d once fought to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan but who for the past decade hadn’t done much of anything.”

McClatchy’s reporter also spoke to Mohammed Akram Mirhazar, the assistant director of the National Peace and Reconciliation office, which “checks the backgrounds of former Guantánamo detainees,” who said that Khan “was arrested because of a decades-old rivalry.” He said that certain Northern Alliance officials “had fed US troops false information about Khan.” They “had a long-standing grudge against Khan,” he added, because he had “led a rival faction during the war against Soviet occupation. They did this just to take revenge; it had to do with old feuds from the time of jihad” against the Soviet Union. Mirhazar also confirmed, “Nusrat had no links with the Taliban; he has been sitting at home for more than 10 years.”

After interviewing Khan at Guantánamo, Abdul Jabar Sabit, Afghanistan’s Attorney General, concluded that he “may once have had ties to Hekmatyar, but that in recent years, ‘He was sick and he was unable to do anything to anyone.’”

Khan met McClatchy’s reporter in the waiting room of a gas station in Sorobi, “in the mountain passes between Kabul and Jalalabad,” where young men “came in frequently to see whether [he] needed anything.” Noting that he had kind eyes and talked slowly, and often with a profound effort, the reporter listened as he explained that, after his capture, he was held in Bagram for about a month, where, for most of that time, “he was kept in an isolation cell wearing a blindfold and earphones, with his hands tied behind his back.”

“My mind was not doing well,” he explained. “I don’t know how long I was in there. I didn’t know day from night. I don’t know how many days or months I was in Bagram. I didn’t understand anything.” Asked to describe his experiences, he “shook his head,” and said, “It is not necessary to remember that time again,” adding, “When I was in isolation, I couldn’t even see myself.”

“The only breaks from the darkness,” he said, were the interrogations, roughly every three days, with either the CIA or military interrogators. “They asked me very stupid questions like, ‘On what grounds did the Americans arrest you?’” he said. “I told them, ‘You are asking questions like a child — ask me what my real crime was. Tell me what my crime was.’ They never responded to this. I told them, ‘I am not important enough to meet Hekmatyar. This is a stupid question. You need to improve your intelligence-gathering. You want to control the world, but you don’t know why I’m here.’”

This was powerful criticism, as were his statements in Guantánamo, although first he had to get there. Because he was unable to walk, he was “strapped to a stretcher and hoisted into a plane,” as McClatchy described it. “I was taken to the plane to Guantánamo on a stretcher, like I was a corpse,” he said. “I told the doctors at Guantánamo, ‘Look, you cruel men, look at my age. You brought me here and I can barely walk.’”

He explained that the pointless interrogations continued at Guantánamo and he told his interrogators that “they had no idea what they were talking about,” while they took notes. “I told them, ‘The only issue here, the only reason I am here, is Islam. I am a Muslim, and that is why I’m here.’” Eventually, the message got through. After a few months of being interrogated every two or three days, “he went a year and a half without being called in for questioning,” and, after just a few months in the prison, was also moved to Camp Four, where compliant prisoners and/or prisoners regarded as insignificant were held, where he was held for three years, and where, at some point, his son was also moved.

Reflecting on this time, he said, “I cannot read, so I passed the time, the days and nights, with God. We were in the house of cruel men; all I was left to do was think, to think about my future.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Khan was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated January 7, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1935. It was also noted that he had “non insulin-dependent diabetes that [was] controlled by oral medications,” that he “suffer[ed] from weakness in both lower extremities attributed to a left sided stroke in 1990,” that he had recently been “diagnosed with a prostate nodule that could be prostate cancer,” and that he had “high blood pressure controlled by medication.” It was also noted that he had “no psychiatric history” except for “a mild panic disorder,” that he had “a history of latent tuberculosis,” in common with many of the prisoners, and that he also had rheumatoid arthritis.

In terms of leaving Guantánamo, it was also noted that he had “the following travel requirements” — he “needs to have the ability to stretch and recline at least every three (3) hours due to chronic low back pain,” he “needs to have his diabetic and high blood pressure medications available every morning,” he “will need to have his non-narcotic pain medication available for the flight,” and “will require wheelchair transport to and from the aircraft.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that, during the Soviet occupation, he moved his family to Pakistan, and, in 1991, became a commander for Sibghatullah Mojaddedi’s Jebh-e-Nejat-e Melli (National Liberation Front), although Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami group “was the most powerful resistance organization fighting the Soviet occupation due to US support,” and Hekmatyar told Mojaddedi that “his people should join the HIG against the Soviets since he had the support of the US.” When Hekmatyar took control, however, “he had all of the party’s leadership killed and forced the remaining members of [Jebh-e-Nejat-e Melli] to join the HIG.”

Khan said that, after he “aligned himself with the HIG, he was told he was not going to be allowed to fight anymore,” and was sent back to his village to be the local HIG militia commander.” Despite the fact that this took place during the time that Hekmatyar was supported by the US, an analyst insisted on describing HIG as a Tier 1 terrorist target for its opposition to the US, which simply doesn’t make any sense at all.

Continuing its ham-fisted analysis, the Task Force proceeded to note that Khan “was a local HIG commander until his health began to deteriorate” in 1991, when he turned over his command to a man named Lal Pasha, who, soon after, fled to Iran following the fall of the Communist regime. At that point, it was claimed that his son “was voted the new HIG village commander,” even though he was only 20 or 21 years old at the time.

From here, the story jumped incongruously to 2003, when Khan’s son was now a “commander under the Karzai government under General Engineer Wasil,” who “was instructed to collect all of the weapons from the villagers and store them until further notice,” and “was arrested by US and Afghan forces on 1 March 2003, in Sorobi, AF after he was reported to be a HIG commander involved in rocket attacks against US forces.” According to this account, Khan himself was seized on March 26, 2003, after US forces, who were “conducting a building search for hidden weapons,” which was “based off of a HUMINT source claiming a large number of weapons were being stored in [his] house.”

As the Task Force also explained, he “did not resist capture and was asked if any weapons were stored in the home, [to] which he replied, ‘there were no weapons stored in the house,’” However, when weapons were found, he allegedly “stated he had been directed to collect weapons from the local people for storage by General Wasil and Wasil had established a military/police post in his home with him in charge,” which is obviously preposterous, as Khan was barely able to move, let alone run a weapon-collecting organization.

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 9, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Current operations and leadership personalities of the HIG.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force decided that he was “not a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network, but [was] an admitted retired HIG commander who turned his command over to his sons,” Hizatullah Nasrat Yar and Abdul Wahid, who was “still at large.” It was claimed that his sons “were involved in the planning and support of attacks on US personnel in the Kunar Province,” that Khan “was also involved with the activities of his sons,” and that, “even after retiring, [he] still had influence among the HIG leadership through his sons and if released, he [would] still have the ability to plan, support or facilitate acts of terrorism against the US and its allies.”

To support these claims (which are ridiculous when Khan’s invalidity is taken into account), the Task Force alleged that Abdul Wahid “was the governor of Laghman Province when the Islamic Transitional Government of Afghanistan came to power, but was replaced due to his known connections with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the HIG,” and provided other claims about his son’s involvement with HIG, as well as claiming that, “In November 2002, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar reportedly stayed at [Khan's] compound,” which means nothing without further verification.

In conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he had “a past history of passive behaviour,” and that he had “no recorded discipline history and no violent behaviour.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood recommended his transfer to continued detention (despite his age and his invalidity), updating a previous recommendation (whose date was not mentioned), although he was not released for another 19 months.

Sada Jan (ISN 1035, Afghanistan) Released October 2006

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (12) – The Last of the Afghans (Part Two),” I explained how Sada Jan (whose date of birth was not recorded) was seized from his house in Afghanistan’s tiny, mountainous north-eastern province of Kunar in May 2003. Throughout his imprisonment, he maintained that he was a carpenter, who had been working, for the eight months until his capture, as the district officer for the Karzai government. He explained that he had ended up in Guantánamo because rivals had told a false story about him to US forces, and had sold him for money.

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Sada Jan (identified as Syed Ajan) repeated his story, and McClatchy’s reporter was able to confirm that he had been telling the truth, speaking to Mohammed Roze, the director of the Kunar branch of Afghanistan’s National Peace and Reconciliation Office, who explained that he had investigated Ajan’s case and had concluded that he “was framed by rivals in a nearby village.” He said that “the two men who passed false allegations about Ajan to the Americans were militants opposed to Karzai’s government,” and declared categorically, “Syed Ajan was not involved with any anti-government activities. The Americans arrested him mistakenly.”

Sadly, however, it is clear that the US military’s gullibility ruined Syed Ajan’s life. After his release from Guantánamo, he revealed that his wife and his eldest son had died in his absence. He also said that he “hadn’t found much work” since his return, and added that the Afghan government owed him several months’ back pay.

Moreover, this was not the only manner in which the US authorities had damaged him. He complained about his treatment in Bagram, where, he said, “the guards often kept him from sleeping at night, knocking on the door at odd hours and shouting for him to stand up,” adding that “he was pushed around during cell searches; and the guards liked to slam him into the walls on the way to interrogations.” He also complained that, at Guantánamo, he was subjected to long interrogations, and “was made to sit in a chair for hours before and after the questioning, sometimes with the heat turned up, sometimes with the air conditioning blasting.” However, he said that the worst abuse occurred just after he was seized, during the two days that he was held in a US base in Kunar.

“When they took me inside the base, they began hitting and kicking me,” he explained. “I lost consciousness. When I came to, I couldn’t stand up; I had a very hard time breathing. For a month, I had very sharp pains in my side.” This, however, was only the start of the abuse. “The soldiers came back to my cell,” he continued, “There were six of them. They said, ‘Stand up,’ and then they began kicking me like a football. They threw me back and forth and beat me against the wall. They put the muzzle of a rifle against my head. It just clicked; they’d taken the bullets out.”

He added, “I’m still sick since that time … I can’t control my urination, and sometimes I put toilet paper down there so I won’t wet my pants.” During a review at Guantánamo, he was even blunter in his assessment of the damage the US soldiers had caused him. “Americans hit me and beat me up so badly,” he said, “I believe I’m sexually dysfunctional.”

Throughout Ajan’s imprisonment, the US authorities showed no interest in verifying his story. During his seven months at Bagram, he said, he repeatedly told his interrogators, “I am a member of Karzai’s government, which apparently is a crime,” and did the same in Guantánamo. Although he was accused of working for the Taliban, firing rockets at US forces, and having bomb-making materials in his house, he persistently denied the charges. He explained that the Taliban “came and robbed my house, arrested my brother in Jalalabad, and took six rifles from me. Then they put us in jail for one and a half months, and didn’t release my brother.” As Tom Lasseter described it, he also stated that the US authorities “were presenting a mishmash of bad information from jailhouse snitches trying to earn favor at Guantánamo, informants in Afghanistan who wanted to settle political scores, bad translations during his interrogation sessions and misunderstandings.”

Ajan’s tribunal even ignored testimony provided by two witnesses in Guantánamo, who knew him from Kunar, both of whom swore that he had no connection with the Taliban. One was Taj Mohammed (ISN 902, also released in October 2006), who was a goat herder, and the other was Sabar Lal (ISN 801, released in September 2007), a military commander who had also been working for the Karzai government, although he was shot dead as a reported insurgent in September 2011.

Ajan spent his last 18 months in Guantánamo in Camp Four, where generally insignificant prisoners were allowed to live communally, but it was not until just before his release that he received anything approaching an apology, when an interrogator told him that US forces in Kunar “had stopped working with the people who’d informed on him.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Jan was an “Update Recommendation for Transfer to the Control of Another Country with Conditions (TWC), Subject to the Conclusion of an Acceptable Transfer Agreement,” dated September 20, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1969, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he “claimed to be a carpenter by trade,” and that he “served in the jihad against the Soviets,” and then “served with the Northern Alliance during the Rabbani presidency” (Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was President from 1992 until the triumph of the Taliban in 1996). It was also noted that he “claimed not to be Taliban, but admit[ted] to being a former member of the Jama’at Ul-Dawa Al-Qurani (JDQ, also identified as Jamaat ul-Dawa al-Quran), which was described as “an Islamic extremist group with ties to Pakistani’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) and the Saudi Red Crescent Society(SRCS),” as though this was supposed to mean something, when it was a garbled collection of unrelated pieces of information, and, in addition, JDQ was not on any US watchlists, and there appeared to be nothing to suggest that Jan’s activities in connection with the group extended beyond the years of resistance to the Soviet occupation.

In terms of more relevant, up-to-date information, it was noted that Jan “served as district manager for the Pashad district, Kunar province, AF and bodyguard for Jan Daan Khan” (or Haji Jan Dad Khan), described as “the former governor of the Kunar Province after the fall of the Taliban,” although there does not appear to have been a governor of that name. In describing the circumstances of his capture, it was noted that, on May 2, 2003, “after an unidentified person identified [him] as bragging that he fired missiles at the base at MSS Asadabad, AF,” Operation Detachment Alpha 316 (ODA 316), described as “a team comprised of special forces soldiers whose goal was to capture high value targets,” captured him at his house along with his neighbor Ishmal Gul, about whom nothing more was heard. It was also noted that no weapons were found,” which was significant, although, more contentiously, “numerous documents were recovered,” allegedly “indicating [his] ties to the Taliban.”

It was also noted that he and Ishmal Gul “were transported to MSS Asadabad,” although no mention was made of the abuse Jan suffered there. It was also mentioned that he was then transferred to Bagram airbase, and he was sent to Guantánamo on November 21, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Mission, organization, operations, personnel, equipment, weapons, and dispositions of military forces in the Pashad district office, Mission, organisation, operations, and whereabouts of Taliban commanders and other Taliban personalities in Kunar and other areas in AF, Quantity, condition, description, and disposition of weapons and weapon caches located in Kunar and other areas in AF, Mission, organization, operations, personalities, dispositions, equipment and weapons of terrorists in Kunar and other areas in AF [and] Smuggling of Taliban, Al-Qaida, Arabs, other personnel and munitions through border crossings in Asadabad and Pashad district.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force was unable to add anything substantial to the mixed bag of allegations described above. In conclusion, he was assessed as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” He was also “assessed as a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and 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 November 26, 2004), recommended his release with conditions, “[b]ased upon information obtained since [his] previous assessment,” although this information was not specified, and he remained “assessed as a probable Taliban commander,” even though the “information obtained since [his] previous assessment” must, logically, have served to disprove that assertion, and therefore to also render him as someone who should no longer have even been regarded as “a medium risk.” But this, of course, was all part of the deep and multi-layered injustices of the detention system at Guantánamo.

Haji Mohammed Akhtiar (ISN 1036, Afghanistan) Released December 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Haji Mohammed Akhtiar, who was 50 years old at the time of his capture, was one of six men seized in Gardez in July 2003 who were working for the Karzai government. As he explained in Guantánamo, he had been a mujahideen commander against the Russians in 1980s, but, after living as a refugee in Pakistan during the Taliban’s rule, he only returned to Gardez in 2002, when he was captured by long-standing enemies loyal to the anti-US warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, who only released him when he promised that he would not serve the Karzai government for the next nine months.

When he finally took up a government post at the end of this period, recruiting personnel for the Afghan army, he was seized by US forces and taken to Bagram. Like two of the others seized at this time — Abdullah Mujahid Haj (ISN 1100, the former security chief of Gardez, who was released in December 2007) and Dr. Said Mohammed Ali Shah (ISN 1001, see below, who was a prominent local dignitary chosen to be the People’s Representative of Gardez under the Karzai government) — he blamed long-standing Communist rivals, who were jockeying for positions of power in post-Taliban Afghanistan, for telling lies about him to the Americans, although he also blamed one of Haqqani’s commanders, who had become close to US forces.

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Akhtiar repeated his story, but Tom Lasseter started his article by noting, “Death seemed to be waiting for Mohammed Akhtiar at every turn in Guantánamo. He didn’t worry about the American interrogators or guards; he got along well enough with them. It was the other prisoners who terrified him. Afghans loyal to the Taliban were ready to kill him. Arabs loyal to al-Qaida hated him, too.”

Akhtiar explained that he was the “head of a large tribe — comprising thousands of families — in southeast Afghanistan who didn’t support the Taliban when they seized power in 1996,” and, as a result, Akhtiar “fled to Pakistan under threat of execution.” He told McClatchy’s reporter, “I did not join the Taliban when they came to power, so they burned my house down.”

In US custody, first in Afghanistan and then in Guantánamo, he was accused of “participating in a rocket attack on American forces in Gardez, helping to plan an attack on a local governor and of being a militant commander in his district,” but he constantly refuted the allegations, on one occasion telling his review board at Guantánamo, “I wish that the United States would realize who the bad guys are and who the good guys are.”

A senior Afghan intelligence officer “with thorough knowledge of Akhtiar’s case,” who “spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns for his safety,” told McClatchy that Akhtiar “should never have been arrested, much less sent to Guantánamo,” explaining, “He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government.” He was seized by US forces, the source added, “because an Afghan who had a personal vendetta against Akhtiar had given them bad information.”

Interviewed in April 2007 in a compound of tribal offices in Gardez, Akhtiar’s eyes were “gaunt and troubled,” according to McClatchy’s reporter, who noted that “he frequently stared into space and had to be coaxed back to continue his sentence.” He explained that the area they were in “had seen frequent Taliban attacks in recent months, and he said he was nervous to be there. What if the Taliban captured him? he asked. He’d be killed immediately, he said, answering his own question.”

Reiterating what he said at Guantánamo, he explained that, when the Taliban were removed from power, he returned to his home in Paktia province, but in the summer of 2002 “a militant commander detained him in retribution for working with the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai,” and he “was almost executed before a council of tribal leaders intervened.” Released after “promising that he wouldn’t allow members of his tribe to join Karzai’s government for nine months,” he was free for just one month before US forces came calling.

This was just one of many chronic failures of intelligence the part of US forces, and it was compounded because no effort was made to ascertain whether the wrong men had been seized. Akhtiar told McClatchy that he “had a deep hatred” for the Taliban, “because they had beaten his brother to the brink of death and left him paralyzed,” and added that “Taliban leaders in Paktia province knew that Karzai’s Defense and Interior ministries had offered him jobs in exchange for hundreds of new police and army recruits from his tribe,” and also realized that a “local tribal leader working for Karzai’s regime, with a host of new troops loyal to the government, would have posed a substantial threat to the Taliban in the area.”

In order to stop him, Akhtiar said, the Taliban “orchestrated a barrage of false allegations, funneled through informants who worked with the American military,” leading to his wrongful imprisonment. When US soldiers came to seize him at his home in May 2003, he said he “let them in and went peacefully,” because “he knew he had nothing to fear,” as he was “just a month away from being hired by the Karzai government.”

After his capture, he said, he was sent first to Bagram, where “he endured harsh treatment.” He explained, “They did not let me sleep for 20 straight days. They played very loud music, and if they saw me sleeping, they woke me up … During that time, I managed to sleep for maybe one or two hours a day.” He added, “When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, ‘What is my crime?’ the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs … they would chain my hands to the ceiling, and put another chain around my chest and a third on my ankles. They would leave me like this for two or three hours and then take me down because I was so weak.”

He said he was sent to Guantánamo on July 17, 2003, and, although it was normal for prisoners to be put in solitary confinement for their first month, he said he was held in solitary for his first two months. “After those two months, I began to have mental problems,” he explained. “I had panic attacks, I had hallucinations — I thought there were dogs trying to bite me or people who wanted to fight me. I began yelling and screaming, but there was nothing there. They took me out of isolation and gave me sedatives; I slept for a very long time.”

He added that he “was moved to several camps during his first year at Guantánamo, then was transferred to Camp Four, an area reserved for men who were thought to pose little security threat” — or to have little intelligence value. Even there, however, he was not safe, as it “was home to a large group of Taliban and al-Qaida members and sympathizers,” who had heard that he didn’t back the Taliban. “They told me, ‘You are an infidel because you worked with Karzai’s government,’” he said, also noting that they “routinely spat at him and called him names.”

He was in Camp Four for about a year, and, near the end of his time, was attacked. “One late afternoon, I was sitting at a water tap, taking my ablution,” he said. “My eyes were closed and they walked up behind me and hit me with a piece of a bucket. The blood was pouring down my eyes.” Other former prisoners confirmed the story, explaining that his enemies had “removed a metal mop squeezer from a bucket and slammed him in the head with it.”

One witness was Mohammed Aman (ISN 1074, see below), who said, “Akhtiar went to the central bathroom, and all of a sudden I heard cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They took him away to the hospital; there was blood all over his head.” He added that those who, like he and Akhtiar and other Afghans, refused to abide by fatwas “handed down by a group of al-Qaida and Taliban members made them frequent targets of abuse.” Aman said, “We tried to make the best of it. We played cards and chess together. The Arabs called our room the room of infidels and traitors.”

On his release from the hospital, Akhtiar was “moved to two different cellblocks in the next four months,” but each “had large al-Qaida and Taliban factions,” and, he said, “The Arabs decided they were going to kill me. I told my interrogator that my life was at risk. I spent an entire month in my cell, refusing to go out for exercise. I called the doctors and told them my mental state was getting worse, that my life was in danger, and that instead of helping me, the interrogator had moved me to live with even more Arabs … I told the doctors I would rather kill myself than risk what the Arabs would do to me.” Finally, he “was moved to an area with other Afghans who didn’t support the Taliban, and there he was able, he said, to sleep a little more easily.”

On his release, the Afghan government “gave him about $30 worth of Afghan currency, enough for a private taxi ride home.” Akhtiar said, “The local reporters were there. They asked me, ‘Who are you? Can you tell us your story?’ I told them, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ I didn’t know where to go.” Members of his tribe, he said, came to Kabul to pick him up, but he “moved back to Pakistan almost immediately.” He was warned that the Taliban and al-Qaida were “looking for him.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Akhtiar was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated September 10, 2005, in which all of the above was resolutely denied by the US authorities. In the file, he was also identified as Akhtiar Mohammad, and it was noted that he was born in 1953, and was “in good health,” although he “refused treatment for latent TB.” It was also noted that he was “followed by Behavioral Health Services for adjustment disorder,” that he had chronic constipation and insomnia, for which he was on medication, and that he was also prescribed “artificial tears for chronic dry eyes.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force reiterated Akhtiar’s own story, which involved him fighting the Soviet Union until 1981, living for ten years in Pakistan,  rejoining the Afghan army for a few years in 1991, returning to Pakistan again when the Taliban came to power, and then returning to Afghanistan in 1995 to join the Northern Alliance.

It was also noted that Akhtiar said that, in the fall of 2002, he visited General Aliqullah Lodin, described as “the Corps Commander for the Afghan provinces of Paktia, Khost, Logar, Paktika and Ghazni [actually Attiqullah Lodin, who became the governor of Logar province], who told him “he would give him a command, provided he could recruit 300 men who would be serving under him.” He “claimed Mullah Jailani [aka Jalani], an anti-coalition [word missing] and a member of the Taliban, arrested him,” and he “remained in jail for two months until he paid a fine of two million Pakistani rupees, and agreed not to join the Karzai government for nine months.”

Seized with Nazar Gul Chaman (ISN 1037, released in February 2007), on May 4, 2003, in what was described as “a raid on a suspected Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) compound. They were sent to Bagram, and Akhtiar was sent to Guantánamo on July 17, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: Pacha Khan Zadran, Haji Zadran and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, The internal structure of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG and Seyyef [actually the Afghan warlord Abd al-Rasul Sayyaf]) [and] HIG and Seyyef [Sayyaf] ties to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID).”

In assessing his story, the Task Force maintained that he was “a high level Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) commander who was in the process of coordinating offensive operations against US/Coalition forces when he was captured,” claiming that, when Akhtiar and Nazar Gul Chaman were seized at his compound it was “because of reports of two high level HIG members conducting explosives training at the compound.” It was also noted that Chaman was “assessed as probably a high-ranking explosives expert in the HIG,” who was “reported to have served as the top HIG commander for all of Paktia province, Afghanistan,” and was “considered to be the 7th or 8th most senior HIG commander,” whereas Akhtiar was regarded as “the HIG commander in charge of the Sayyed Karam District in the Paktia province, AF, and a long time HIG commander.”

There is more, in direct contrast to Akhtiar’s own story, and what he and well-placed Afghan source told McClatchy, and, in conclusion, the Task Force assessed him as being “of high intelligence value,” and of posing “a high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “assessed as a low threat from a detention perspective,” whose “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff.”

His case strikes me as one of the most glaring examples of the obsessively closed world in which the US gathered and assessed information, as the gulf between the various stories was so huge that it seems to make no sense that the US authorities made no effort to contact anyone in a position of authority in Afghanistan who might have been able to shed light on this story — as well as many other disputed Afghan stories. Nevertheless, in this claustrophobic, and generally abusive vacuum, Maj. Gen. Hood updated a previous recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated August 27, 2004), with a similar recommendation that he be subjected to continued detention under DoD control. He was released 15 months later, although it is not clear why.

Sharbat Khan (ISN 1051, Afghanistan) Released February 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Sharbat Khan, like Taj Mohammed (ISN 902, released in October 2006), was a goat herder. 31 years old at the time of his capture, he said in Guantánamo that he was a nomad from the Kuchi tribe, and was captured after an IED attack on US forces, for no reason other than the fact that there was no one else around.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Khan was an “Update Recommendation [for] Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country (TR),” dated June 3, 2005, in which it was noted that he was born in 1973, and was “in good health.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted upfront that it was assessed that he was “not a member of Al-Qaida or the Taliban,” and that the supposed reason for his detention — that Afghan military forces arrested him because they suspected him of “assisting his brother in an attack against Coalition Forces using an Improvised Explosive Device (IED)” — was insufficient. The Task Force admitted that it was “assessed that [he] probably did not play a part in the IED attack,” although it was added that he “may be aware of his younger brother’s role in the ACM activity,” as though this was any excuse for years of detention.

Married with three sons and a daughter, Khan was a member of a sub-group of the nomadic Kuchi tribe, and the Task Force noted that he “and his family herd[ed] goats for a living and [paid] to use the property of others for grazing.” It was also noted that he “did not receive any military or extremist training,” and that, at the time of his capture, he “was harvesting grain for seven days and was away from his home that entire time,” but then he “returned from harvesting grain and went to visit his neighbor for some tea before going home.”

“Shortly after this,” however, “he was captured” — specifically, on May 27, 2003, when “Afghan Military Forces (AMF) apprehended [him] and his brother, Qadir, 500 meters from the site of an IED explosion.” Khan “was suspected of aiding his brother, who “was running from the American and Afghani forces on the backside of the hill where the IED detonated.” He was sent to Guantánamo on November 21, 2003, to “provide information on the following: Specific information concerning Anti-Coalition Militant activities to destabilize coalition and Afghanistan government reconstruction efforts in Khost Province, AF, Improvised explosives devices [and]Ingress/Egress from Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he had “consistently denied he aided his brother or had any involvement in the attack.” In addition, contradicting the claim that he “may be aware of his younger brother’s role” in the attack, it was noted that, “To date, there [was] no information associating [him] with this attack,” and it was also noted that he had “not altered his story or provided any further information associated with the IED attack in 25 interviews conducted in Bagram, AF, and JTF-GTMO.” Damningly, to my mind, he “was recommended for release by three interrogation teams while at Bagram,” but was not, of course, freed at that time.

In the most telling observation about him in Guantánamo, it was noted that, during an interview on June 13, 2004, an interpreter noted that he “uses tribal dialect and appears to be very uneducated,” and it was also noted that he spoke about “how he shepherded, [e]xplaining that he had 300 goats, five sheep, eight camels and two baby camels and how he migrated to other various areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan for grazing purposes,” and “also explained how he and his brothers shared and lived in tents as they moved.” An analyst noted, perceptively, that his “knowledge of herding animals, which he readily talks about, and his inability to discuss simple military and political concepts, tend to support [his] contention that he indeed is just a simple shepherd.”

It is not known what happened to Qadir Khan, as he was not sent to Guantánamo, but the Task Force assessed Sharbat Khan as being “of low intelligence value,” and of posing “a low risk, as he is unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that, in Guantánamo, his “behavior ha[d] been generally cooperative,” and, as a result, Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a previous assessment that he be retained in DoD control (dated March 29, 2004), recommended him for release, “[b]ased upon information obtained since [his] previous assessment,” which was not specified. However, he was not actually released for another 18 months.

Said Mohammed (ISN 1056, Afghanistan) Released August 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how the capture of Said Mohammed, who was 25 years old at the time, appeared to be another of the many stories of Afghan betrayal and US incompetence. A shopkeeper from a village near the Pakistani border, his only crime seems to have been that his youngest brother once gave a small piece of dry bread to a passing Arab. He was seized with his father, brother and two other villagers, and he said in Guantánamo, “I was arrested at my home. I was irrigating my land and the guards [US Special Forces] were in my home. As soon as I got into the house, I saw the guards and I went to them and I said hello. They pushed me to the ground, covered my head with a bag and took me to Bagram.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Mohammed was an “Update Recommendation to Retain in DoD Control,” dated June 3, 2005, in which he was also identified as Bazit Khan, and it was noted that he was born in 1977, and was “in good health,” although he had been “diagnosed with Psychotic Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder,” and was “currently on Haldol and Cogentin.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he had moved to Pakistan during the time of the Soviet occupation, and again at the time of the US-led invasion. He also said that he “would go to the Sadar Bazaar in Lahore every winter and sell knives, screwdrivers, scissors, calculators, and radios.” It was also noted that, in Afghanistan, he “owned and operated a shoe store with his brother, Allah Mohammed.”

Turning to the circumstances of his capture, it was noted that, while irrigating his land, he ran into a man named Abdul Rahman, “who was speaking with three Arabs.” Without providing any further information about this meeting, it was then noted that he was seized by US forces on July 3, 2003 in his father’s compound,” because he “was suspected of assisting anti-coalition forces operating in Zormat district as well as actively aiding and abetting the Taliban and Al-Qaida.” He was sent to Guantánamo on November 21, 2003, to “provide information on the following: Cultural geography of Afghanistan, Terrorism related facilities, Biographies of the Taliban, Biographies of Al-Qaida personnel [and] Biographies on terrorists in Afghanistan.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force described him as “a possible member of Al- Qaida’s terrorist support network, a possible member of ACM (Anti-Coalition Militia) forces operating in Paktia province,” and as “having familial ties with members who  maintain strong ties with Taliban and Al-Qaida sympathizers and operatives in Shah-i-Kot.” One was obviously Abdul Rahman, mentioned above, who was identified as ISN 1054, a number that was only used in Bagram and not in Guantánamo, and another was his father, who was not named, but was identified as ISN 1055, another number not used in Guantánamo.

Under unknown circumstances, in Bagram, Abdul Rahman said that Mohammed’s brother, Allah Mohammed, was “an Al-Qaida sympathizer and leader of anti-coalition activities in the districts of Shah-i-Kot and Zormat,” who was also “tied to past and present Taliban leadership.” Abdul Rahman also said that Said Mohammed and his father were “both active sympathizers to terrorist causes, both Al-Qaida and Taliban,” adding, in a statement that probably ensured that Said Mohammed alone was sent to Guantánamo, that he was “more deeply involved than his father … in these activities.”

This perhaps sounds like a reliable assessment, but it is not known whether it is true at all, as it relies almost entirely on statements made by Abdul Rahman, while he was being held at Bagram, where abuse was widespread, and not on any statements made by Said Mohammed himself. Nevertheless, the Task Force assessed him as being of “high intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that his “behavior ha[d] been non-compliant and slightly aggressive,” because he had “harassed the guard staff on a number of occasions,” had “failed to comply with the rules of the cellblock and the guard force,” and had “threatened to commit self-harm on a number of occasions.” Because of this, Brig. Gen. Hood, updating a recommendation that he be retained in DoD control (dated March 29, 2004), repeated that recommendation, although this assessment was obviously revised by someone in a position of authority before his release 14 months later.

Mohammed Aman (ISN 1074, Afghanistan) Released October 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how six men were seized in Gardez in July 2003 who were working for the Karzai government, and in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (12) – The Last of the Afghans (Part Two),” I told the story of one of these men, Mohammed Aman, who was 46 years old at the time of his capture. Aman was a drugstore owner, who had worked as a clerk — a local bureaucrat — for whichever government was in power (including the Taliban, who he despised), and was also a Captain in the Afghan Defense Ministry and the deputy officer for personnel in Gardez at the time of his capture.

However, he fell foul of the same rivals who were responsible for sending a number of other Pro-Karzai officials from Gardez to Guantánamo. Three of these men testified at his tribunal in 2004, and backed up his story, but as with many other prisoners, no serious attempt was made to verify his story by contacting the Afghan government, and the testimony of the three men was ignored. They were Dr. Said Mohammed Ali Shah, (ISN 1001, see below, a prominent local dignitary chosen to be the People’s Representative of Gardez under the Karzai government, also identified as Ali Shah Mousavi), Abdullah Mujahid Haj (ISN 1100, the former security chief of Gardez, who was released in December 2007), and Mohammed Mussa (ISN 1165, an electrician, who was released in July 2008).

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Aman explained that he had been seized during a house raid in spring 2003. At first, he said, “I thought they were searching the whole village and it was just my turn,” but then “They pointed their guns at my head and said, ‘Put your hands behind your back.’ Then they tied my hands. They did the same to my father, who was 83, and my son, who was 15. One of the Afghan soldiers said, ‘Do you know where they’re taking you?’ I said I didn’t. He said, ‘Guantánamo. Do you know what this place is?’ I said I had heard about it, and asked what it was for. He said that it was for enemies of the government, for enemies of humanity. I thought he was making a joke.”

The McClatchy reporter was able to verify, from “a senior Afghan intelligence officer with detailed knowledge of the case,” that Aman had been seized “on charges fabricated by men who worked with him in the Defense Ministry department of personnel in Gardez,” but no one cared at the time of his capture — or for years afterwards. After the raid, he was taken, along with his father and his son, to a US base outside Gardez, where all three “were handcuffed to the wire frame of sand barriers that lined the perimeter of the base.” Aman explained that he was held like that for five or six days, and was only fed on one occasion throughout the whole time, and added, “I had on a hood, so I couldn’t see if it was American or Afghan soldiers doing it, but when I was outside, people kicked me in the back all the time.”

He also said that he was interrogated frequently, based on the false information provided by those who had betrayed him. “One day they made me sit on my knees from night to daybreak, with a stick under my knee,” he recalled. “There was a soldier on each side of me, screaming. There were dogs tied to the wall, and the dogs were barking and snapping their jaws. Another soldier was behind me; he yelled now and then. And in front of me, an interrogator yelled questions out at me.” His pleas that he worked for the Afghan army were ignored.

After the ordeal in Gardez, the three were flown to Bagram. Aman’s father and son were released after about six weeks, but Aman stayed for six months, suffering from painful hemorrhoids and losing a substantial amount of weight, and he spent the last two months in solitary confinement, even though his interrogator had given up asking questions about the Taliban, and instead began asking about “security in Gardez and the loyalties of a long list of Afghan Defense Ministry officers.”

Transferred to Guantánamo in late 2003, he was sent immediately to the hospital, as he could “barely stand” after his experiences at Bagram. Within six months, he was placed in Camp Four (reserved for insignificant prisoners, and/or those perceived to be cooperative), but he said that he spent much of his time in the hospital. “During my entire time at Guantánamo I was interrogated maybe 10 times,” he explained. “But I went to the hospital at least 100 times. I went so many times that the other detainees laughed at me and said, ‘They have brought you here for medical treatment.’”

As with other prisoners, it was only before his release that his interrogators admitted, “You have been brought here with false information; you were sold to us.” They added, “We are trying to be much more careful now.” Understandably, he was not impressed. Asked what he thought about his experiences, he shrugged and said, “It was all lies. It was just a sham.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Mohammed Aman was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated October 22, 2004, in which he was also identified as Kandagha, Khan Agha, Mohammed Aman Ramazan, Toran Aman, Modir Sahib, Pejan Modir and Mullah Mohammed Amin.” It was also noted that he was born in 1957, and was “in good health,” although he “had surgery for chronic hemorrhoids.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he was an ethnic Tajik, who was at university when the Soviet occupation began. After fighting against the Soviet army, he traveled to Pakistan as a refugee in 1988, returning in 1992 “when the Mujahideen took over the country.” By his own account, he then “severed all ties with political groups and worked at his family pharmacy in Gardez” until the Taliban came to power (in 1996), when he “went into hiding for eight months.” In 1998, however, he took up a job with the Taliban as “the Deputy Chief of Personnel for Core #3 in Gardez,” and “also worked in the Personnel Management Office in an administrative capacity,responsible for keeping time cards and salary.” He worked for the Taliban until their collapse in November 2001, when he “received word from the Shura (governing Islamic council) that he was to return to his former life and profession.”

He was seized at his home on June 2, 2003 by US forces, who took him “on suspicion he was a member of HIG [Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, the anti-US militia headed by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar],” and was sent to Guantánamo on November 21, 2003, on the spurious basis that he “was assessed as being able to provide information on the following: HIG and the Taliban, Afghan military and tribal militia forces, Personalities, Historical perspectives of Afghanistan, Pharmacy supply structures [and] Financial support received from Saudi Arabian hotels in Riyadh, SA.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that he was “assessed as being a member of the HIG and involved in ACM activities,” and “claimed that he ha[d] been implicated in attending numerous operational planning meetings. and had “attended at least three meetings where Anti-Coalition participants discussed attacks against both US-led coalition forces and the government of Afghanistan.”

However, nothing resembling proof was provided. Instead, he was identified as the “Mullah Mohammed Amin” who attended a Taliban leadership council meeting on April 30, 2003, and it was also claimed that, on May 10, 2003, Asadullah, described as “a known HIG commander,” picked him up and they “drove around to provide secrecy to their discussions in the vehicle,” and, ”[a]s of late May 2003, HIG members were having secret meetings to discuss the placement of five magnetic anti-vehicle mines for use against coalition targets,” at which one of the attendees was supposed to be Mohammed Aman, apparently using the alias Toran Aman.

The other names mentioned in his file did not surface elsewhere in this analysis of the purported reasons for his continued detention, but they presumably also relate to other nebulous allegations that were supposed to establish his anti-coalition credentials. However, as with many of the other Afghan prisoners, it is astonishing that the US authorities failed to approach anyone in Afghanistan who might have been able to shed light on Aman’s story, like the “senior Afghan intelligence officer” who spoke to McClatchy’s reporter.

Despite the lack of anything resembling evidence in Aman’s case, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to Coalition forces operating in Afghanistan.” It was also noted that, in Guantánamo, his “overall behavior ha[d] been generally compliant and non- aggressive.” As a result, Brig. Gen. Hood recommended his transfer to continued detention in Afghanistan, although he was not released for another two years.

Kakai Khan (ISN 1075, Afghanistan) Released October 2006

Despite the litany of US errors outlined in Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained that my choice of the saddest Afghan story in the chapter was that of Kakai Khan, 31 years old at the time of his capture, for reasons that are unconnected with his alleged activities, and are solely to do with the attitude of one of his investigators at Guantánamo. For what it’s worth, Khan was accused of being responsible for a rocket attack on the Gardez firebase, although he said that he was betrayed by personal enemies.

His case stands out, however, because of comments made in “Defining Success at Guantánamo: By What Measure?,” an article in the July-August 2005 issue of Military Review by Jeffrey H. Norwitz, an investigator with the Defense Department’s Criminal Investigative Task Force, one of the many organizations responsible for interrogating prisoners at Guantánamo for possible prosecution. Norwitz did not make a pronouncement one way or another on Khan’s supposed guilt, regarding himself as part of an ongoing process — with no fixed conclusion — that bears no resemblance to established legal norms. After his final session in Guantánamo, he wrote, “I knew Kakai would never see the inside of a courtroom. Guilt ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ is still a daunting challenge, whether in a federal courthouse or before a military commission at Guantánamo. Kakai’s case could never meet that threshold.”

Even more astonishingly, Norwitz expressed his belief that being deprived of his liberty for years in a legal black hole was compensated for because, by being cooperative, Khan was well-fed, was being taught to read and write, and had received dental treatment, and suggested, moreover, that, in his case at least, Guantánamo was actually a benign beacon of democratic values. “Kakai will ultimately return home a healthier, more educated Afghan citizen,” Norwitz wrote. “He will be prepared to participate in political change, engage in rebuilding his country, or return to herding livestock. The choice will be his, but it will be a choice based on options he would not have had if not for his time in Guantánamo.”

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Khan explained how, in Guantánamo, he sometimes “thought he’d gone completely mad.” He said that, “by reciting Quranic verses over and over, he’d try to bring order back into his life, to make the world around him make sense again.”

Before his capture, he said, his life as a livestock trader had been “ordinary” –  there had been “a little violence in the community now and then, small-time dealings with the Taliban and years marked by the passing of the seasons and Islamic fasts.” Then, suddenly, he was seized by US soldiers and taken to a base near Gardez, where interrogators “asked him about a lot of names” he didn’t know. This, he said, “made the interrogators angry. They said he was involved with the bombings of two video shops in a market, that he was a die-hard Taliban fighter who’d attacked US troops.” His denials only made the interrogators more angry. He was forced to sleep “in a line of blindfolded men on the ground outside,” and for three days was given no food. “When we moved, they kicked us,” he said. “When we talked with others around us, they shouted, ‘Shut up,’ and kicked us.”

He was then moved to Bagram, where there were more interrogations. Again, he was told that “he’d helped bomb a pair of video stores as part of a Taliban campaign to reassert themselves in the Gardez area,” and again he denied the allegations. “They took me to interrogation many times,” he said. “I don’t remember how many times. They beat me a lot during interrogations. They had dogs with their jaws tied shut, and they let them jump at me. They would kick me; they would punch me.” The more he proclaimed his innocence, however, “the worse the treatment got,” he said, and explained, “One of the punishments during interrogation [at Bagram] was that they would take me to a room next door, and two soldiers would lift me in the air and shackle my hands to the ceiling; my feet could not touch the ground. I don’t know how long I was up there; I would lose consciousness.”

Khan’s innocence was not something that only he spoke about. McClatchy’s reporter approached “a senior Afghan intelligence official with detailed knowledge” of his case, who said that, “[w]hile Khan knew some Taliban members, and from time to time passed tidbits of information to them, he wasn’t involved in their operations, as was initially thought.” He added, in a startling statement, that once more raises questions about why the US authorities failed to consult with Afghan officials, “There were two explosions in a market, and we had information that … the people who carried out the bombings stayed at his house. But that proved not to be true.”

However, because traditional concepts of innocence and guilt seemed to be irrelevant to the US authorities, whose modus operandi seemed to involved establishing guilt by whatever means, Khan was sent to Guantánamo instead of being released. First he was “taken to a bathroom, and his head and beard were shaved,” and then he and 17 other men “were piled into a truck with their feet and hands shackled and sacks on their heads.” He said that the flight to Guantánamo was “long,” and, evidently, deeply unpleasant. “Men urinated on themselves,” he said. “The smell of feces hung over them.” He also said that “he screamed as loud as he could for someone to loosen the straps around him,” because he “felt as if he couldn’t breathe, as if he were going to suffocate.” As he put it, “I couldn’t feel anything; I was awake but unconscious; I didn’t know what was happening.”

In Guantánamo, after the customary first month in isolation, where sleep deprivation was also the norm, because, he said, the guards “were always banging on the door at night, yelling for him to wake up,” so that he “barely slept for the first three weeks,” he “was sent for a month to a cellblock for detainees with mental problems,” after a doctor came to examine him.

On his release from the psychiatric ward, he was sent to a regular cellblock, where confrontation was incessant. Because the guards shouted at the prisoners to disrupt their prayers, they responded by calling the guards over, and, “when they came, we threw water on them, we spit on them, we pissed on them.” In response, the prisoners, after a fight, “were dragged off to solitary confinement, where they were stripped to their underwear and left in small rooms where the air conditioning was turned up high, then low, leaving them to shiver, then sweat.”

Khan said “he was sent to isolation about 15 times — for 15 days to four months at a time — during his three years at Guantánamo,” and added, “Some trips were bearable. Others left him a wreck.” He explained that he “could tell how badly he was doing after a stint in isolation by how the men in the cells around him reacted when he returned,” telling McClatchy’s reporter, “I would have conversations with [the man] who was in the cell next to me. And sometimes he would say, you do not understand what you’re saying; it makes no sense.” He added that “[n]othing at Guantánamo ever did.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Khan was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated October 8, 2004, in which he was also identified as Gul Baz Khan, and it was noted that he was born in 1971, and was “in good health.” Those assessing his health also noted that had been “successfully treated for active Tuberculosis,” and also had “a history of acid reflux,” which was “controlled with minimal medications.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force assessed that he “was not a member of Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network,” but claimed that he had “ties to Anti-Coalition Militants in the Gardez region of Afghanistan,” and had been “identified as being an Anti-Coalition Militia member responsible for conducting a rocket attack on a US firebase near Gardez.” Khan, however, said that he was a farmer, whose only military experience was during the Soviet occupation, when he was “between the age of twelve to fifteen years old,” and “was taught the use of explosives.”

in dealing with the circumstances of his capture, the Task Force noted that US and Afghan forces seized him at his home on June 4, 2003, with his brother Sher Bara Khan, based on unspecified “accusations” that he was “involved in a bombing of a video store in Gardez.” Held at Bagram, after his initial detention in Gardez, he was sent to Guantánamo on November 21, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was because he “was assessed to be able to provide information on Mullah Naseem, HIG Commander and Mullah Zoi, Al-Qaida leader in Khamard, AF.”

Beyond the claim that he had been “identified as an Anti-Coalition Militia member responsible for conducting a rocket attack on a US firebase in the vicinity of Gardez,” the Task Force had little to go on to establish Khan as an enemy — for reasons that were, of course, obvious from the “senior Afghan intelligence official” who spoke to McClatchy. All that was provided, to incriminate Khan, was a claim that, when he “was initially interrogated about the bombing of the video store he completely denied any knowledge of the incident,” but “[d]uring follow on interrogations, [he] made a statement that only one bomb was used and he ha[d] knowledge of the construction of the bomb used.” There is, of course, no reason to presume that this “confession” was either reliable, or produced voluntarily.

It was, therefore, rather depressing that, just as Khan’s interrogator had claimed that establishing the truth was probably impossible, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” although it was a least noted that he had been well-behaved in Guantánamo, where he had “a past history of passive behavior,” with “no major incidents.” In conclusion, Brig. Gen. Hood recommended him for transfer to continued detention in Afghanistan, although, like Mohammed Aman, he was not released for another two years.

Ali Shah Mousavi (ISN 1154, Afghanistan) Released October 2006

In Chapter 17 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how six men were seized in Gardez in July 2003 who were working for the Karzai government. One of these men was a doctor, Ali Shah Mousavi (identified as Dr. Said Mohammed Ali Shah), who was 43 years old at the time of his capture, and a Shiite from one of the most prominent families in Gardez. A former mujahideen commander against the Russians, he explained in Guantánamo that he fled to Iran during the Taliban’s rule, where he qualified as a doctor, and, after returning to his hometown in May 2002, he was chosen as the People’s Representative for Gardez, and attended the loya jirga in Kabul the following month. He then returned to Iran to arrange for the return of his family, visited Saudi Arabia for the hajj, and was greeted by crowds of well-wishers when he returned to Gardez in August 2003. Two days later, however, he was seized and taken to Bagram, where he was beaten regularly, kept awake by recordings of sirens that were played night and day, dragged around on a rope and subjected to extremes of heat and cold.

In an interview conducted for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners that was published in 2008, Ali Shah Mousavi explained how, while he was in front of a military tribunal at Guantánamo, he “tried to make sense of it all.” After all, he had been a member of Afghanistan’s interim loya jirga, the first democratic legislative body formed after the Taliban fell, as well as being a Shiite Muslim, “a sect that the Taliban brutally oppressed and al-Qaida often targeted for death as apostates,” as McClatchy explained, for readers who, like the US government, may have found themselves unable to distinguish between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Incomprehensibly, the US officers accused him of having “met with Taliban leaders in an effort to funnel cash to al-Qaida in early 2002,” of being “a key Taliban leader’s main representative in Iran,” and of having “taken about $150,000 from Iran to eastern Afghanistan to fund militants near his hometown of Gardez.”

As McClatchy noted, Mousavi had already done what should have been necessary to establish his innocence, presenting his tribunal with “a narrative that wove in the intricacies of Shiite Islam and the history of the Afghan revolt against Soviet occupation in the 1980s,” in which he “explained that Afghan political and tribal infighting after the 2001 US-led invasion often led to one side or the other peddling false information to the Americans in hopes that US troops would kill or arrest a rival.”

That, it should have been obvious, was what happened to him (and, of course, to many of the other Afghans described in this article and others), but when it failed to sway the members of his tribunal, he tried another approach, described by McClatchy as follows:

In Afghanistan, he said, schoolchildren study logic, and as part of that, teachers sometimes create logic problems that demonstrate the danger of false conclusions. For example, he said, a teacher might say that a tree is tall, that a person named Ahmed is tall, so it follows that Ahmed is a tree. Or, Mousavi said, the teacher might point out that rats live in the walls, that rats have ears, so it follows that the walls have ears. That, he said, was the essence of the United States of America’s case against him: Mousavi lived in Iran, Iran is an enemy of the United States, so it follows that Mousavi is an enemy of the United States. Or, Mousavi fought under a commander against the Soviet Union, that commander’s son is now with the Taliban, so it follows that Mousavi is with the Taliban. “That is how, logically, you are getting wrong this conclusion,” he said.

As McClatchy also noted, however, “The speech did not work.”When he was finally released, after more than three years in US custody, he still did not understand “why he’d been arrested in the first place.”

In another damning indictment of the US authorities’ indifference towards the guilt or innocence of their prisoners, McClatchy discovered that Abdul Jabar Sabit, Afghanistan’s Attorney General, had interviewed Mousavi at Guantánamo, and had told US officials about the mistakes they had made after he had been briefed about the charges against Mousavi. As a case in point, McClatchy’s reporter asked about “the $150,000 from Iran.” Sabit “shook his head,” and said, “That was not the case. He was there because of the Kalashnikovs … His house was searched, and two Kalashnikovs were discovered, and that was enough for the Americans.”

In other words, as McClatchy emphasized, “Mousavi was sent to Guantánamo and imprisoned there for almost three years because US soldiers found a couple of AK-47 rifles in his house. In Afghanistan, a country ruled for centuries by warlords and competing clans, almost every house has an AK-47 or three.”

Another source, a senior Afghan intelligence officer who had “met Mousavi and reviewed his case several times,” also explained, “There was a feud, and he was handed over to the Americans even though he was innocent.” He added, “He is actually very pro-government,” and pointed out that, since his release, he had “gone so far as to persuade local tribal elders that, despite their missteps and despite his own wrongful imprisonment, the US-backed government in Kabul is the best way forward for Afghanistan.”

In his interview with McClatchy’s reporter in Gardez, Mousavi “frequently laughed or waved his hands dismissively in the air when he described his ordeal.” He explained that none of it “made any sense.”

Telling his story, he said that he had fled to Pakistan in 1982, after the Soviet invasion, but “slipped across the border every two months or so to attack Soviet troops,” and “took command of a small unit of mujahideen.” When the Russians withdrew in 1989, Mousavi prepared to return home, but realized that a civil war was brewing, in which his moderate group might be targeted by extremists, he moved to Iran to “finish the medical studies he’d begun some 10 years earlier.”

The rise of the Taliban only confirmed that he had been correct. However, although he qualified as as a doctor, trained in pediatrics, Iran’s government “wouldn’t allow Afghan refugees to practice medicine,” so he had to work “as a taxi driver and day laborer,” until the fall of the Taliban. “When we heard the news that the Taliban had collapsed in Afghanistan, my friends and I celebrated,” he said. “We began to count the moments until we could return to Afghanistan.”

He “waited for the winter to pass,” and then took his family to Kabul and on to Gardez in April 2002. He explained that his house was gone, destroyed by over a decade of fighting, and noticed that there was still “bitter rivalry among Islamic groups, divided by how much they’d supported the Soviets and then the Taliban,” and “rumblings that those who’d been loyal to the Soviets were filling the ranks of the new security services. Men were killed in the middle of the night, and no one knew whether it was because of a tribal squabble, political greed or revenge for past alliances.”

Despite this, he told McClatchy’s reporter that “he was enthralled by it all.” His nation “once again was trying to find a way forward,” and he “thrust himself into tribal matters and quietly lobbied for position,” securing membership of the loya jirga that elected Hamid Karzai as interim President. Even so, jobs were scarce, and so, he said, he “returned to Iran to continue working odd jobs and save money for a clinic in Gardez,” and when he returned for good in August 2003, “he was met with a hero’s welcome,” and explained how “[c]arloads of townspeople met him at the mountain pass outside the city to accompany him home.” His brother, he added, ”had opened a clinic in his absence and he was going to expand it,” but just two days later, as he explained in Guantánamo, US soldiers broke down his door.

“We heard the sound of someone breaking down the front door of my house,” he said. “My cousin said, ‘Here come the Americans.’ I wasn’t afraid; I thought they were coming as part of a patrol and had accidentally broken the door. Then they broke the gate of my guesthouse, and suddenly there were 10 weapons at our heads. They said, ‘Nobody move.’” The soldiers, he explained, asked for him by name. “They said they wanted to take me for questioning,” he said. “I asked, ‘Do you have any documents authorizing my arrest?’ I thought Afghanistan had become a country of law. They told me, very recklessly, very stupidly, that they were not bound by the laws of Afghanistan, that they were American soldiers.”

At this point, Mousavi “asked the other men in the room to leave.” As McClatchy described it, he “couldn’t bear for them to hear, once again, of his shame.” He then explained, “They [American soldiers] said they wanted to search me. I told them I would not allow it. One of the soldiers told the others, ‘Shoot him if he moves.’ Then they searched me and searched my family. My whole family was standing there. They said, ‘We are going to blindfold you and tie your hands.’ I said, ‘Please, not in front of my family.’ They said, ‘If you resist, you will be shot in front of your family.’ So I stood there, and they blindfolded me in front of all of them. This is one of the worst memories of my life.”

Throughout this ordeal, he said, he tried to work out which of his rivals had set him up. As an ethnic Tajik, and a Shiite with political influence, he “had many enemies in a nation that Sunni Muslims dominated,” as McClatchy described it, but he “didn’t have much time to sort it out.” As soon as he was tied up and hooded, he said, “I was sitting in front of my house, blindfolded, when someone kicked me in the back. I fell forward, and so much blood and dirt filled my mouth that I could barely breathe.”

He was then “taken to an American military base outside Gardez, where he was kept for 22 days in a line of men who slept on the dirt between two concrete barriers,” although he was only interrogated “a handful of times,” and “asked about bringing $150,000 from Iran.” He said that “he’d tried to explain that he’d had only $350 in his pocket when he flew back to Afghanistan,” but no one was interested.

From Gardez, he was taken by helicopter to Bagram, where he spent the first month in isolation. “For 15 days they did not let me sleep,” he said. “They played very loud music the whole time. And a soldier at the gate commanded me to stand and then sit and then stand again. When I did not obey him quickly enough, he would tie my hands to the ceiling. Other times, four or five soldiers would come in and beat me, and then tie my hands to my feet and leave me like that on the ground.”

After this first month, he “was put in a small cell, a cage made of concertina wire,” and taken out, once or twice a week, for interrogation by CIA operatives, who, absurdly, “accused him of having ties to al-Qaida.” Mousavi said he tried to explain their errors to them. “I told them that Shiites are quite different than al-Qaida,” he said. The response was not encouraging. “They showed a picture of me from the loya jirga and said your turban looks like al-Qaida and your beard looks like al-Qaida,” he said.

He was also accused of being involved in “Operation Anaconda,” a showdown with al-Qaida in the hills east of Gardez in March 2002, even though that was doubly impossible, not only because of his allegiances, but because he wasn’t in the country at the time. “I told them I wasn’t even in Afghanistan when this fighting took place,” he said. “They kept talking about ‘Anaconda.’ I had no idea what they were talking about.”

Sent to Guantánamo on November 27, 2003, he said he was interrogated on his second day — “the same questions they asked at Bagram” — but “wasn’t questioned again for three months.” In February 2004, an interrogator named Larry “said he’d like to have Mousavi take a battery of lie-detector tests, some with a microphone on his collar, others with wires taped to his arm.” He said that “he passed them all,” but still it made no difference. Next, “two women who said they were with the FBI began questioning him in sessions that stretched across two months.”

Mousavi explained, “At the end of two months of interrogations with them, the women said there was no proof I had links with the Taliban or al-Qaida. They said, ‘During the interrogations we realized you are not affiliated with other parties, that you are independent, but it is also clear that you oppose the presence of foreign troops, so you are a threat.’ I told them that this is an occupation and a lot of people are against it, so you will have to arrest all of them. One of the women replied: ‘For the moment, we have you.’”

In summer 2004, he was moved to Camp Four, reserved for prisoners regarded as inconsequential and/or cooperative, where, he said, he “spent most of his time chatting with other Afghans and playing chess or cards.” For the last 18 months, he wasn’t interrogated at all. Even so, his life was not peaceful. Although he said that he got on well with the US personnel, he “said with a rueful smile” that he had problems with the “Afghan Taliban and Arab al-Qaida members, who the Americans said were his allies.”

“When they learned that I was a Shiite,” he said, “the Arabs would not eat at the same table as me; they would not speak with me.” Haji Nasrat Khan (ISN 1009, see above) said, “There were five Shiites in the camp [mostly Iraqis], and everyone thought they were spies for the US.” After Afghans loyal to the Taliban told the Arab prisoners that “Mousavi had been a member of the loya jirga and he supported Karzai, America’s choice for president in Afghanistan,” they “became even more venomous,” as McClatchy explained. Mousavi said, “When they walked near me, the Arabs spat at me. They called me traitor, infidel.”

Mohammed Akhtiar (ISN 1036, see above), who “lived in the cell next to Mousavi,” confirmed his account, “as did several others who were there at the time.” Akhtiar said, “They said we were all cooperating with the Karzai government, that we were infidels and that they had put us ‘on the list’” to be killed. Another former prisoner, Mohammed Aman (ISN 1074, see above), who was a cellmate of Akhtiar, and therefore another neighbor of Mousavi, also told a similar story. “Dr. Shah had a very bad time there,” he said. “The Arabs were always calling him an infidel.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Mousavi was a “Recommendation for Transfer to the Control of Another Country with Conditions (TWC), Subject to the Conclusion of an Acceptable Transfer Agreement,” dated September 30, 2005, in which he was identified as Said Mohammed Ali Shah, and it was noted that he was born in 1959, and had “a reported history of a MI (myocardial infraction) prior to detainment,” and also had “benign prostatic hypertrophy (enlarged prostate) and acid reflux,” but was otherwise “in good health.” It was also noted that he was “on daily medication for his heart condition and on ‘as needed’ treatment for reflux.”

In telling his story, the Joint Task Force noted that he had allegedly “fought against the Soviets for twelve years,” before his departure for Tehran, “where he worked as a physician and taxi driver,” and that, in 2002, he “traveled back and forth between Afghanistan and Iran to give aid to families of individuals killed during the Afghan-Soviet jihad.” He allegedly stated that “the reason he decided to move back to Afghanistan in 2003 was because of his wife’s wish to work for the new government and return home,”

If this all sounds like a mangled version of his own account, it is as nothing compared to the analysis of his claim that he “never received training or conducted activities for the Al-Qaida Associated Movement,” to which an analyst, citing unspecified “reporting,” claimed that he “was to coordinate a meeting scheduled for 13 August 2003 between himself and fourteen Tribal/ACM leaders for the purpose of disbursing money to finance attacks against US/Coalition forces operating throughout the Paktia province.”

In relating the circumstances of his capture, on August 13, 2003, it was stated that he “claimed he was getting ready to eat when US forces came inside and asked him if he was Doctor Ali Shah,” and, “[w]hen [he] replied, he was arrested.”

It was also noted by an analyst that, two days before his capture, unspecified “reporting” stated that “US Special Forces (USSF) operating in the vicinity of Gardez, AF, received information that an individual named Dr. Said Mohammed Ali Shah (detainee) had entered Afghanistan from Iran on 10 August 2003 carrying approximately $150,000 USD, which was to be distributed to Anti-Coalition Militants (ACM) throughout the Paktia Province of Afghanistan on behalf of the former Taliban Eight[h] Division Commander Saifullah Rahman Mansour.”

It was also noted that Mousavi’s “two brothers and cousin” were seized with him but “were later released.” Mousavi, however, “was transferred to US custody at the Bagram Collection Point (BCP),” and was sent to Guantánamo on November 21, 2003, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide information on the following: ACM [anti-coalition militia] funding scheme, Financial assets in Iran, Locations of ACM clinics and casualty collection points, Local and tribal issues, Potential attacks against US and coalition forces [and] Duties and association with Saifullah Rahman Mansour and the Harakat-i-Inqilabi-i-Islami group and the Hezb-e-Islami group.”

In assessing his story, the Task Force assessed him, without any evidence, as “a probable member of the Al-Qaida global terrorism network due to his close working relationship with high value target (HVT) Saifullah Rahman Mansour, the former Taliban Eighth Division Commander,” which is a claim that makes no sense. It was also claimed, again without any evidence, that he had “ties to terrorist political party members in the Government of Iran (GOI).”

In more detailed analysis, it was claimed that he was “affiliated with Iranian Intelligence, and conducted covert operations between Iran and Afghanistan while acting as a liaison between Iran and Saifullah Rahman Mansour,” and that his activities “included facilitating travel for Al-Qaida and individuals participating in jihad.” It was also claimed that “[s]ensitive reporting indicate[d] [he] was a sub-commander” with Mansour, and that he “claimed that he was an agent of influence for Iran and that Iran gave him $50,000 USD to distribute among Loya Jirga (grand assembly) delegates in order to buy their votes for the July 2002 Parliamentary Elections in Afghanistan.”

The allegations in his file are extensive, but all are self-referential, and immune to the kind of light shone on his case by the “senior Afghan intelligence officer” who recognized that it was all lies. Nevertheless, the Task Force assessed him as being “of medium intelligence value,” and of posing “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “assessed as a low threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been compliant and non-hostile to the guard force and staff,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Hood, updating a previous recommendation that he be transferred to continued detention in Afghanistan (dated October 22, 2004), recommended instead that he be transferred with conditions, although no reason for this change was given. Even so, he was not released for another 13 months.

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

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “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 18 of the 70-part series. 234 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 17 parts now complete), I am turning my attention to the period from September 2004 to the end of 2005, when 62 prisoners were released (see Part One, Part Two, 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 Three of Five)

Abid Raza (ISN 299, Pakistan) Released September 2004

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, Abid Raza was briefly mentioned as being 20 years old at the time of his capture, and I also noted that he was probably seized with two other recruits from villages in Sindh province — 59-year old Mohammed Ilyas (ISN 144, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Three of Ten)“) and 21-year old Mohammed Anwar (ISN 524, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Six of Ten)“).

Abid Raza had spoken briefly at his tribunal in Guantánamo, in which he denied an allegation that he was “associated with Al-Qaida,” but accepted that he was recruited by members of the political party Jamaat-i-Islami and “went to Afghanistan for jihad.” He added, however, that, although he was in the Kunduz area for 15 days prior to his capture by an unidentified Uzbek, he did not actually engage in combat. He also told his tribunal that he believed that those who recruited him “tricked him,” because “[t]hey said he was going to fight Hindus and he went with them.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated October 29, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” he was identified as Abed Raza, born in February 1981, and the Joint Task Force essentially confirmed the story that was aired two years later at his tribunal. It was noted that, “[o]n or about October 2001, [he] was recruited at a mosque in Mirpur Khas [in Sindh province], Pakistan, to go fight alongside Taliban forces against ‘Hindus’ in Afghanistan,” and that, after ten days’ training (which involved “limited AK-47 familiarization,” as he “only fired five rounds with the rifle”), he “was sent to the front lines at Dasht-e-Qala [in Takhar province] where [he] stayed for fifteen days,” and where he was “armed with an AK-47rifle and one magazine.” It was also noted, “On the fifteenth day, the village began receiving incoming artillery fire and [he] was told to retreat to Kunduz,” although he was “apprehended by Uzbek forces” en route.

After being handed over to US forces, he was sent to Guantánamo on January 12, 2002, the day after the prison opened. In most cases, a reason for the transfer was given in the Detainee Assessment Briefs, 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.

However, in Abid Raza’s case, the Task Force could not even come up with a spurious reason to graft on afterwards, stating, bluntly, “There is no compelling reason indicated as to why detainee was transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention facility for interrogation.”

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 [299] is assessed as not affiliated with Al-Qaida and as not being a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention, though he has not been completely forthcoming concerning his association with individuals affiliated with the Taliban. Based on all the above, detainee does not pose a threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.”

It was also noted, “During a visit to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 3 to 10 August 2002, Pakistani Intelligence officers interrogated [Raza] and concluded that he had little or no intelligence value. They stated that their government would accept custody of [him] if released by the US government.”

In light of the above, it is remarkable that it took another two years for Abid Raza to be released.

Khalil Rahman Hafez (ISN 301, Pakistan) Released September 2004

In a footnote to Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Hafez (also identified as Khalilur Rehman) was reportedly 16 years old at the time of his capture, near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, and I also mentioned him in my two articles about the juvenile prisoners at Guantánamo, “The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo” and “WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo.”

Kunduz was the last stronghold of the Taliban, and the place where thousands of soldiers, including numerous Pakistanis like Hafez, surrendered to the Northern Alliance. In Guantánamo, he said that he made a mistake in traveling to Afghanistan to fight, and explained, “When I left home it was an emotional decision. I had no sense at the time.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated January 31, 2004, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” and in which he was identified as Hafez K. Rahman, born in February 1984, no mention was made of his age, but, if his date of birth was correct, then he would have been 17 years old at the time of his capture, and therefore, technically, a juvenile prisoner who should have been rehabilitated rather than punished.

Nevertheless, the Joint Task Force seemed determined to portray him as a threat. After noting that he “advised he was influenced by extremist Mullahs in Pakistan (PK) and decided he would go to Jihad in support of the Taliban,” it was stated that  he “and several friends” traveled to Afghanistan in June 2001, although it was not clear from this account whether that was true, or whether that was the date that he attended a training camp in Pakistan run by the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM), described as “a Tier 1 terrorist organization (which according to sensitive information as of Sep 03 is defined as terrorist groups, especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests).”

“After completing basic training,” the Task Force continued, he “traveled along with a larger group of JEM fighters to the area around Kunduz,” where he “participated in the fighting against US and Northern Alliance forces until the Taliban’s collapse on the battlefield and [he] was forced to retreat.” He was subsequently “captured by the Northern Alliance and turned over to US forces,” and was sent to Guantánamo on February 7, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of the Moaskar training camp in Balakot, PK, and his affiliation with the Taliban as a foreign fighter.”

In its assessment, the Task Force presented a host of reasons why it considered Hafez dangerous, all of which ignored the kind of statements he made at his tribunal, later in 2004, regarding his ignorance and emotional vulnerability when he was recruited. The Task Force noted he had “admitted to volunteering to fight Jihad against the US and its allies, remaining after the events of September 11th to continue to fight, and receiving training from the JEM.” The Task Force also noted that Balakot, where he received training, was “a location known to house a training camp that offers both basic and advanced terrorist training on explosives and artillery,” and also claimed that Hafez was “a probable member of the JEM and as such, if released would likely gravitate back to that Islamic extremist group,” because the JEM “espouses Jihad against the US and is directly supported by Al-Qaida.” It was also claimed that Hafez had “stated while in detention that he would return to Jihad if given an opportunity.”

While the above seems to me to be rather unnecessarily alarmist on the part of the Task Force, leading to an assessment that Hafez was “a probable member of Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group,” who was only “of low intelligence value to the United States,” but posed “a medium risk, as he may possibly post a threat to the US, its interests or its allies,” Maj. Gen. Miller nevetheless recommended his “[t]ransfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef (ISN 306, Afghanistan) Released September 2005

In Chapter 12 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef was the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan, and was seized from his home in Islamabad in a night raid. Married with eight children, the 34-year old, who was reportedly a childhood friend of Mullah Omar but had a reputation as one of the Taliban’s more moderate leaders, issued daily press briefings after the US-led invasion began, condemning American aggression and defending Afghanistan’s “dignity,” until the Pakistani authorities closed down the embassy in November, officially severing all ties with the Taliban regime that they had done so much to support. Fearing for his family’s safety, Zaeef then applied for asylum, but his application was rejected, and from then on it was only a matter of time before the Americans got hold of him. One of a handful of prisoners interrogated on board the USS Bataan, he was then moved to Bagram, and then Kandahar, where he was held for seven months before being transported to Guantánamo.

I also noted, in Chapter 19, how, in the summer of 2005, in response to a prison-wide hunger strike, the authorities (at the urging of Guantánamo’s warden, Col. Mike Bumgarner), briefly allowed the prisoners to convene a “Prisoners’ Council,” and it looked, for a moment, as though Guantánamo might finally conform to the Geneva Conventions. After the British resident Shaker Aamer (ISN 239, still held) persuaded the majority of the hunger strikers to suspend their protests, and a calm descended on the prison, which Col. Bumgarner described as the “period of peace,” Shaker Aamer and Mullah Zaeef sat down with the warden and attempted to deal with some of the prisoners’ other complaints, and for a very short period of time six prisoners in total — Aamer, Zaeef, Sabir Lahmar, an Algerian scholar (ISN 10002, released in France in December 2009), Ghassan al-Sharbi, a self-confessed Al-Qaida member (ISN 682, still held), and two Egyptians, the scholar Ala Salim (ISN 716, released in Albania in December 2006), and the former army officer Adel Fatouh El-Gazzar (ISN 369, released in Slovakia in January 2010, but now imprisoned in Egypt after finally returning home) — met unchained and unsupervised to discuss their demands, until the whole project was suddenly closed down at a meeting in early August. According to Zaeef’s account in 2006, this came about because the prisoners began making notes, but when an officer told them this was prohibited, and moved to confiscate them, several of the prisoners put the notes in their mouths and began chewing them.

The government’s limited allegations against Mullah Zaeef, on a single page submitted for use in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, are here. More significant was the information in his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 5, 2004, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control.” In the file, after noting that he was born in 1967, the Task Force then ran through his history, in his own words, noting that, in 1992 or 1993, following the defeat of the Communists, he returned from Pakistan, and became an Imam at a mosque in Kandahar. In 1996, when the Taliban took control of Kandahar, he became “involved with individuals who had power within the new government.” In 1997 he “accepted a job as bank manager for Herat Central Bank,” in 1998 he “took the position of Deputy Minister of Mining and Industries,” in 1999 he “accepted the position of President of Transportation,” and in 2000 he “took the position of Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan.”

It was also noted that, after he was seized by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (generally referred to as the ISI, but referred to by the Task Force as ISID) at his home in Islamabad, on December 15, 2001, he was sent to Guantánamo on May 1, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because he was “assessed to be able to provide information on: Relations between the Taliban and Al-Qaida/Osama Bin Laden, Specific biographical information on Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Relations between the Taliban and ISID [the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate] [and] Taliban management by the Ministry of Defense of Arab Mujahideen used in fighting against the Northern Alliance.”

In explaining the reasons for Mullah Zaeef’s continued detention, the Task Force expressed particular interest, amongst the “numerous contacts” he had in Pakistan (including high-level ISI officers and “various Taliban officials who were in Pakistan”), in his alleged contact with members of Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN). Founded in June 2000 by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood who resigned from Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission in 1999 in protest of the government’s willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, UTN was banned by the US Department of the Treasury on December 20, 2001, because it was “suspected of supplying information about constructing nuclear weapons to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida.” This explains the US authorities’ interest in UTN, although it does not prove that Mullah Zaeef had any involvement with the organization.

Alarmingly, the Task Force also gave credence to a claim made by Mohamedou Ould Slahi (ISN 760), a Mauritanian mistakenly regarded as a facilitator of the 9/11 hijackers. Despite being subjected to a specific torture program in Guantánamo, Slahi is regarded by the US authorities as having become one of the most important informants in Guantánamo after he “broke” under torture in 2003, although personally I find that difficult to believe, as prisoners “broken” by torture are better known for telling their interrogators whatever they want to hear.

Slahi reportedly stated that Mullah Zaeef claimed “he was the one who granted entrance to Afghanistan to the individuals who assassinated Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance,” on September 9, 2001, just two days before the 9/11 attacks. Slahi apparently “also stated that [Mullah Zaeef], through his closeness to Mullah Omar should know about the nature of Taliban/Al-Qaida relationship,” but this completely overlooks Mullah Zaeef’s moderate reputation, and appears, very clearly, to be the worthless product of torture.

In its assessment, the Task Force described him as “a senior member of the Taliban with connections to Al-Qaida and NGOs that support terrorism,” claiming that although he “has never directly participated in hostile acts,” he “has connections with extremist groups that have either supported or participated in hostile activities against the US and its allies,” and that, as a result, “If released, [he] is still assessed to have the capability to support terrorist operations.” It was also noted 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,” and Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood recommended that he be “retained under DoD control,” 13 months later, however, he was a free man.

In 2008, an interview with Mullah Zaeef was included in a major McClatchy Newspapers report on 66 former Guantánamo prisoners. Speaking to a McClatchy reporter in Kabul, Mullah Zaeef explained that he was “adopted by his uncle after he was orphaned at age 7,” and that “his family fled to Pakistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but he returned to Kandahar as a teenager to fight the Soviets with the mujahideen,” when he was “known for taking textbooks to the trenches.”

After returning to Quetta, Pakistan, to finish his studies in a madrassa, where he “focused on Islamic banking and sharia,” he worked as a bookkeeper for a local trading company, but also explained that, in this period, “former mujahideen fighters enlisted his help to fight corrupt warlords in Kandahar, and he took part in the initial meetings of the Taliban,” becoming “a trusted counselor to senior Taliban leaders” after the Talban took control of Kandahar in 1994.

Wahid Mujdah, a former Taliban diplomat, said Mullah Zaeef was “very, very close” to Mullah Omar, “who had a lot of confidence in him,” and as Mullah Zaeef told a reporter, “I did not join the Taliban, I helped start it.”

After the Taliban took Kabul and then most of the rest of Afganistan in 1996, Zaeef “helped organize the country’s Islamic courts in Kandahar, then moved to Herat to oversee the banking system,” and was then “brought to Kabul for a succession of Cabinet jobs, such as deputy minister of mining and minister of transportation,” as was noted in his Detainee Assessment Brief.

Turning to his experiences in the “War on Terror,” he explained that, after Pakistani intelligence officers “dragged him out of his house in Islamabad,” and took him to Peshawar, one of them said to him, “Your Excellency, you are no longer Your Excellency.” He was then handed over to US soldiers, who “threw a sack over his head and pushed him into a helicopter.” The Americans “flew him to a warship [the USS Bataan], where he was held for about a week in a small cell that reminded him of a dog kennel.” He said, “I was afraid about what would happen to me. I didn’t know if it was a dream or not. I never imagined this would happen to me.”

In the US prison at Kandahar, Mullah Zaeef was made to empty the toilets. As McClatchy described it, “He’d get to a large metal drum, heft a bucket in the air and pour out the excrement and urine, trying not to let it splash him in the face.” Mohammed Omar (ISN 540, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Six of Ten)“), a teenage Pakistani who was held at Kandahar in early 2002, said, “Every time the buckets filled up with urine or feces, the guards told Mullah Zaeef to go empty it. They made him and another big Taliban guy do this.”

“To many of Zaeef’s fellow detainees, he looked old and tired,” McClatchy reported. Asadullah Jan (ISN 47, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part One of Ten)“), a Pakistani who was imprisoned at Kandahar in early 2002, said the guards “zeroed in on Zaeef.” He explained, “One time, Abdul Salam was leading prayers. A guard came over and started talking with him. Abdul Salam said, ‘Come back in 10 minutes; we’re praying.’ The guard called on his radio and said that Abdul Salam wouldn’t talk. A group of soldiers came down, and in the middle of prayers they came behind him, put their boots on his neck and beat him.”

Prior to being sent to Kandahar, Mullah Zaeef was sent to Bagram, where, he said, “The cursing, the punching, the kicking, it was continuous.” However, it was at Kandahar that, as McClatchy put it, he “began to learn how to run a prison from the inside.” When the prisoners secured the right to pray, he used the opportunity to give them advice abut how to conduct themselves in interrogations. Khalid Pashtun, who “served as a liaison between the local Afghan government and US forces at the camp.” told McClatchy, “The prayer leaders (such as Zaeef) would be saying, ‘Be careful in interrogation; keep to your story until the end.’”

After his transfer to Guantánamo, as McClatchy described it, he “became a leader again. He helped orchestrate hunger strikes and exploit the missteps of a US detention system that often captured the wrong men, mistreated them, then incarcerated them indefinitely without legal recourse.”

Former prisoners “spoke of him with reverence that bordered on hero worship,” Munir Naseer, a Pakistani (ISN 85, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part One of Ten)“), said, “People would scream when they saw him: They said, ‘We will send you our prayers.’” One Kuwaiti “bragged that he once lived in a cell next to Zaeef and touched his hand,” and an Afghan “said that men in his cellblock relied on Zaeef’s advice about everything from prayer to protest.” In addition, a Jordanian ex-prisoner “said that Zaeef often brokered deals between the American military and angry detainees,” and one of the Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province) called him the “president of Guantánamo.”

However, when Mullah Zaeef first arrived at Guantánamo, he was “exhausted.” Mohammed Saduq (aka Mahmud Sadik, ISN 512, see “WikiLeaks and the Guantánamo Prisoners Released from 2002 to 2004 (Part Six of Ten)“), an Afghan who had been his commander at one point during the resistance to the Soviet occupation, explained, “He was very weak, physically, when I saw him at Guantánamo. It is very difficult to know the inside of a man, and it’s hard to say how it affected him — going from an ambassador to being in a cage — but he told me in Guantánamo that he was suffering badly.”

Mullah Zaeef explained that the rules at Guantánamo “reminded him of Bagram. The men “weren’t supposed to talk in their cells,” he said, but after a month he decided that they needed to change the rules. “So we began shouting to each other,” he said. “The soldiers came and asked if we were talking to each other. We said, ‘Yes, we are not dogs.’ We began throwing water at them, spitting at them; we said, ‘If you want to kill us, fine.’” The result, however, was that a high-ranking officer “came and spoke to the detainees. The rules were rescinded. It was a victory in a game of inches.”

As time passed, Zaeef “was encouraged by what he saw. Interrogators raised their voices from time to time, but they never hit him. Detainees were able to pass messages from one end of a cellblock to the other, and to call out greetings and reports of their last interrogations, none of which the guards could understand.”

“Slowly,” he said, he “realized that it was the sort of place where a man could wage a campaign.” He joined a small group of influential prisoners “who were issuing orders and gathering reports; because he spoke fluent Arabic, Pashto and Dari, he could serve as a conduit among Arab, Pakistani and Afghan detainees. His English gave him further power, allowing him to represent those groups in conversations with US military officers.”

“We chose the leaders of the blocks,” he said. “If the detainees had any problems, they had to speak with the block leader, who would talk with the block NCO, and if they could not resolve the issue, they would send a message to us, the leaders of the camp.”

As a result, “Cellblock leaders began spreading messages to the men around them: We must not tolerate these conditions; it’s time for a hunger strike.” The McClatchy report added that “[r]umors that guards had mistreated the Quran often accompanied the messages,” but it is clear that they were not always rumors, despite the fact that an Afghan former detainee “said the stories that Zaeef and others spread — such as soldiers stomping on a Quran — were lies.”

The prisoners’ campaigns were successful, of course, as reports of the hunger strikes spread around the world, and they did lead to small improvements in their living conditions. In June 2005, however, the largest hunger strike in the prison’s history began, when at least 100 prisoners (and possibly as many as 200) refused to eat. This was the time of the Prisoners’ Council, mentioned above, when, as Zaeef explained, he “represented Afghans and Pakistanis, and when, as McClatchy described it, “After consulting with detainees in the cellblocks, Zaeef and the other leaders produced a list of demands that included Geneva Convention rights, court trials, less time in isolation cells, [and] better treatment from the guards.”

Describing the end of the discussions, Zaeef explained that they “broke down before negotiations with US authorities could proceed,” because the prisoners “worried that the Americans were eavesdropping to find out who their cellblock leaders were,” which is more coherent explanation than the one he provided in 2006.

On his return from Guantánamo, as he told McClatchy, he was “held under house arrest by the Afghan government, which relaxe[d] and tighten[ed] its control according to his public remarks. Calling on a radio program for the Taliban to regain at least part of their ruling power, for instance, meant that he wasn’t permitted to receive visitors for several weeks.”

Nevertheless, he has been a frequent commentator since his release, and has also written a book about his experiences, My Life with the Taliban, which has been well received in the West. For an excerpt, see “Torture and Abuse on the USS Bataan and in Bagram and Kandahar: An Excerpt from “My Life with the Taliban” by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef.”

Abdul Rahman (ISN 357, Afghanistan) Released April 2005

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

In Chapter 3 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Abdul Rahman, who was 25 years old at the time of his capture, was originally from Zabul province, east of Kandahar, but had moved to Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, where he established a small general store, after rival tribesmen seized his family’s land. He was one of several thousand people (mostly Taliban soldiers) who surrendered to the Northern Alliance in November 2001 after the fall of Kunduz, which was the last Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan. Many of these prisoners — hundreds, or possibly thousands — subsequently died, primarily through suffocation, in containers that were used to transport them to a prison in Sheberghan that was run by the Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum. That terrible event has become known as “the convoy of death.”

In Guantánamo, Abdul Rahman explained that, when the American bombing campaign began, he was reassured that “they were also dropping leaflets and telling on the radio they were coming, saying their fight was not with the public; it was only against the Taliban and al-Qaeda,” but as he set off for home on the day of the Taliban surrender he found that Tajik soldiers of the Northern Alliance had blocked the roads, and were “pinpointing Pashtuns and taking them out of cars, taking their money and beating them up.” When some locals said that he and other merchants should seek US and Red Cross assistance at Yanghareq, they started making their way there, but were stopped by Dostum’s men. “They told us when we see you Pashtun people, we will tie you up and beat you up,” he said. “They did as promised, and a lot of Pashtun people in Afghanistan got beaten up.”

Abducted and taken to Yanghareq, Abdul Rahman watched in shock as several Taliban members bribed their captors to set them free, while he and the other captured shopkeepers were tied up for the night. He became even more fearful when he heard screams during the night. “I think they buried about 50 people alive in the ground,” he said. “They kept on shouting and screaming, and they kept putting dirt on them.” The following day, his nightmare began in earnest. He and his companions were taken to Qala Zeini, where container trucks were waiting to take them to Sheberghan. “About 200-300 people were thrown in these trucks, and they closed the doors,” he said. “We did not see any light, and there was no air in it. Due to lack of air, a lot of people died there; I fainted somehow.” When they finally arrived at Sheberghan, “We were in bad shape, and they left the dead behind.”

Three years later, having been transported from Sheberghan to Kandahar and then to Guantánamo, Abdul Rahman’s nightmare had still not come to an end. In his tribunal, repeating his story as he had so many times before, he was obliged to refute allegations that he had bought a car for the Taliban while wearing a Taliban-style turban, accompanied by his personal security force of four Taliban soldiers, explaining that this was a story that had been conjured up by the men who falsely imprisoned him in the first place. Finally, someone believed his story, and, after 40 months in detention, he was released.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 9, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was clear that the Joint Task Force had failed to reach the conclusion his tribunal at Guantánamo reached a year later, when they found that he was not an “enemy combatant.” Noting that he was born in 1976, the Task Force repeated his statement that he “maintained a general store in Kunduz,” and noted that he said that, “[w]hen the Taliban fell from power, he feared imprisonment and death from the Tajik people under the warlord Fahim” (actually the Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Fahim, who became Vice President of Afghanistan in November 2009). As a result, he said, he “voluntarily surrendered” to Uzbek forces under General Rashid Dostum, another Northern Alliance commander, in “hope of being protected,” but the Northern Alliance transported the detained persons to Mazar-e-Sharif [actually Qala Zeini] and placed them in shipping containers.” The Task Force continued, “They were then sent to Sheberghan prison,” omitting any details about “the convoy of death,” even though it was obvious that Abdul Rahman would have spoken about it to his interrogators.

After approximately 40 days, he was taken to Kandahar by US forces, where he was held for 60 days, and he was therefore probably sent to Guantánamo in early February 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because he “may have knowledge regarding mid- to senior-level Taliban members,” which “may be of value to the Afghan Transitional Authority (ATA), a critical ally in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism.”

The Task Force assessed him “as having mid-level status among the Taliban and having directed a small unit of fighters (35-40 men).” It was also stated that “it must be assessed that [he] is of low intelligence value to the United States at this time,” and that he “poses a medium threat risk to the US, its interests and allies because of his past affiliations with the Taliban regime.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government for continued detention” — and it was also noted that, “During detention and additional interrogation in AF, sources not available now may be available in the future to confirm, deny or change his intelligence value and threat assessment.”

Mohammad Gul (ISN 457, Afghanistan) Released April 2005

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

In Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Mohammad Gul (described as Mohammed Gul), a 39-year old farmer and petrol station owner from a village near Khost, was seized by US forces in January 2002. He told his tribunal in Guantánamo that he had been working in Saudi Arabia as a driver, but had returned home to care for his sick wife. It appeared that he had been seized as randomly as three other men from the same village, including Gul Zaman (ISN 459, see below).

In the Documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Gul was a “Recommendation to Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Country,” dated March 4, 2005, in which he was — ridiculously — identified as Ma Mad Gul, born in 1962, it was also stated that he “had an abdominal hernia repaired and continue[d] to have pain at the hernia site.”

In reporting his story, the Task Force noted that he grew up in Miram Shah, a refugee camp in Pakistan, for ten years, and then moved to Saudi Arabia, where he was a guest worker for seven years.” It was also noted that he was married with four children, and that he had “no military or weapons training,” and was “not a member of the Taliban.” It was also confirmed that he “was captured on 20 January 2002 by US forces in his village near a suspected Taliban facility,” and it was noted that “US forces were fired upon during arrest process from the suspected facility,” and that he “was captured with a modified ICOM/VHF (high frequency transceiver) unit and a Kalishnikov [sic] rifle in room.” It was also noted that he was seized with three other men, one of whom is listed below. He was sent to Guantánamo on July 2, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because he “may be able to provide general information on air strikes in his village during Ramadan.”

It was also noted that “JTF GTMO previously assessed [him for] Transfer or Release to the Control of Another Country (TR) on 21 May 2004,” and that the updated recommendation focused on the fact that it had been determined that the was “not a member of the Taliban or Al-Qaida and/or its global terrorist network,” and that the “[c]urrent review of [his] file and thorough researching of national-level counter-terrorist databases has revealed no new information to alter or reverse the conclusions of the previous assessment,” which had involved the discovery of “contradictory and incorrect information” in his folder.

It was also stated that a thorough review, involving CENTCOM and the folders of the three men seized with him confirmed that he “was indeed captured in his home and not out in the open,” and that he was “unaware of why he was detained.” Further investigation had, moreover, “provided no damaging evidence against [him}," as well as confirming that he had "no knowledge of the suspected Taliban facility."

As a result, it was determined that he posed "a low risk, as he [was] unlikely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and it was also noted that JTF GTMO had determined that he was “of low intelligence value.” Even so, the Task Force continued to note that he “may be able to provide general information of the village and compound where Jalaluddin Haqqani may have taken refuge,” and that “US forces conducted an air strike against this village due to reports that Haqqani was being housed within a compound there.”

In 2008, an interview with Mohammed Gul was included in a major McClatchy Newspapers report on 66 former Guantánamo prisoners. As the McClatchy article explained, “Most of the evidence that the US government produced during Mohammed Gul’s military tribunal at Guantánamo wasn’t about him.” Afghan officials told McClatchy’s reporter that they’d never heard of him, and “[e]ven the head of the Khost office that tracks former Guantánamo detainees said that he had no idea who Gul was. The man who served as the local security commander when Gul was detained also drew a blank.”

As the article explained, “after the tribunal hearing at Guantánamo, the US military found that Gul was no longer an enemy combatant, a finding that was as close to ‘not guilty’ as the tribunal findings got.”

Explaining the circumstances of his detention, Gul said that when US soldiers, who were searching all the houses surrounding Sarajuddin’s, “found Gul’s passport with a stamp from Saudi Arabia, they decided that he must be a militant,” even though, “for the previous seven years he’d been a taxi driver in Saudi Arabia, where he emigrated after he fled to Pakistan when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan during the 1980s, and returned home to Khost every three years or so to visit his family.” It was also noted that, “Because US officials had confiscated his passport, it wasn’t possible to confirm that.”

Explaining what happened to him in US custody, Gul said that, in Kandahar, “he was interrogated once in 15 days.” He said, “They asked me where I was arrested, why I was arrested, and they didn’t ask a lot of other questions.” He was, however, beaten as he arrived at Kandahar. “When they took me off the helicopter, they put me on the ground and punched me on the face, on the nose, and they kicked me,” he said.

After he was sent to Guantánamo, where he was held for over three years, “little happened” to him, he said. He “went for months — more than six at one point — without being interrogated,” and when he was taken for questioning, he said, he often asked why he was being held. “I said please let me know my crime; I am not Taliban, I am not al-Qaida,” he said. “They had no answer. They just said they were writing down what I said.”

After a while, he said, “he began to lose control of his thoughts, which were racing around the idea that he would die in his cell, on an island on the other side of the world.” As he explained, “One day I beat my head against a bar in my cell until I was unconscious.” He was then “transferred to a cellblock for detainees with psychiatric problems, kept there for about two months and given medicine. Then back he went to his cell, to sit and wait for something to happen.”

He added that his neighbors “helped teach him to read the Quran, and he prayed often,” and he also said that he “had no trouble with the guards,” and also said that “the food wasn’t bad.” On his return, the US military gave him a card that read, “This individual has been determined to pose no threat to the United States Armed Forces or its interests in Afghanistan.”

Sadly, Gul said that, since leaving Guantánamo, he didn’t do very much. He didn’t have enough money for another Saudi visa, he said, adding that “a friend there apparently stole the car he’d been using.” He owned part of a gas station, but it paid very little, “even by Afghan standards.” Mostly, he said, he stayed at home and tried to “control the panic attacks that followed him home from the cellblocks.”

At the end of his interview, he asked whether the journalist “knew any American doctors in Kabul,” explaining that his mind “just keeps getting worse. Nothing, he said, has made any sense to him since he was taken to Guantánamo.”

Gul Zaman (ISN 459, Afghanistan) Released April 2005

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

In Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how, along with Mohammed Gul, above, three members of a family of farmers — 59-year old Abib Sarajuddin, his 30-year old son Gul Zaman and his 39-year old brother Khan Zaman — were captured by US soldiers in a village near Khost in January 2002, allegedly because someone had fired on them, although the men said that the soldiers, who arrived at night by helicopter, broke into their houses and arrested them for no reason.

It was not the first time they had heard from the Americans. Two months previously, twelve of Sarajuddin’s family members — and 16 other villagers — died when US forces bombed his family compound, believing, incorrectly, that he was harboring the pro-Taliban warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani. In his tribunal, he insisted that he had never met Haqqani, and Gul Zaman and his brother suggested that a rival provided false information to the Americans. On the night of their arrest, it seems they were betrayed again. Sarajuddin was accused of working as a recruiter for Pacha Khan Zadran, a warlord who had been initially trusted by the Americans, but who had his own agenda, and seems to have been responsible for sending many of his rivals to  Guantánamo. Gul Zaman and his brother explained that what had actually happened was that, when Zadran was working for the Americans, he approached the local commanders for support, and they in turn asked Sarajuddin to recruit other villagers to fight against the Taliban, indicating that there had been a serious failure of intelligence on the part of US forces.

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, the file relating to Zaman was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated June 18, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in 1971 and was “in good health,” despite having “a history of Depressive Disorder and dyspepsia.”

It was also noted that, in a previous memo, dated November 20, 2003, Maj. Gen. Miller had recommended that he be “retained in DoD control,” even though it was also noted that “[t]his recommendation was based on the assessment that [he] was not a member of Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader.”

In telling his story, the Task Force began with a statement that Zaman’s father’s house “was bombed due to it being suspected of harboring Jalaluddin Haqqani, a high-level Taliban leader,” It was also noted that “Haqqani was reportedly involved in a Shura (meeting) in a building in Zani Khel village, Paktia province, AF, on the evening of 16 November 2001 when Coalition bombs struck. Haqqani suffered a severe left shoulder injury from shrapnel and was taken to a hospital in Miram Shah, Pakistan for treatment and to evade Coalition forces.”

Although it seems clear that Haqqani was not in Zaman’s father’s house, as the Task Force noted that “[d]uring the same bombing event, [his] family compound, also located in Zani Khel village, Paktia province, was bombed and destroyed,” it was also stated that there were reasons for believing that this was not true: because Zaman “stated that he was not aware of any other air strikes on other residences other than his in his village on 16 November 2001,” when 35-38 people were present, and 12 people were killed; and because Zaman “did not respond when questioned why his brother, Taj Maluk, told American reporters Jalaluddin Haqqani had come to their house.”

Despite this, the Task Force acknowledged that there was “no outside reporting to corroborate detainee being either a member of Al-Qaida or Taliban.” As a result, he was “assessed as not being a member of Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader,” but was assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” primarily, it seems, because, “According to newspaper articles, [his] father did house Jalaluddin Haqqani,” although Zaman “denies any knowledge of this.” It was also noted that “JTF GTMO believes [he] has not been completely truthful during his interrogations and is hiding information concerning his father’s relationship with the Taliban.”

Crucially, when JTF GTMO recommended that he be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention,” it was noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force evidently did not agree with the Task Force’s assessment, having “assessed [him] as “a low risk” on July 18, 2003. However, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, CITF will defer to JTF GTMO’s assessment that [he] poses a medium risk.” Eventually, however, Zaman’s tribunal evidently agreed with CITF.

On January 15, 2010, when the Pentagon responded to a FOIA request submitted by the ACLU in April 2009, and released the first ever list of prisoners held at Bagram, as of September 22, 2009, Gul Zaman, identified by his Guantánamo number, was included, although no further information has been provided to explain what he was supposed to have done to be recaptured, or whether he is still held.

Mohammed Rafiq (ISN 495, Pakistan) Released September 2004

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Mohammed Rafiq, who was 21 years old at the time of his capture, had been recruited to fight in Afghanistan by representatives of Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), which, as Syed Farooq Hasnat, a professor of Political Science at the University of the Punjab in Lahore, explained, was responsible for sending more than 8,000 young people to fight in Afghanistan. Hasnat reported that the organization admitted that more than 3,000 of their “young boys” were missing, and subsequently sent a delegation to Afghanistan, asking the Northern Alliance to consider that Pakistan had been a “place of refuge for over two decades,” and requesting that they “show the same magnanimity and large-heartedness.” It was unclear whether their entreaties impressed the Alliance leaders, although it’s probable that a large number of TNSM volunteers were sent home to Pakistan from Sheberghan between December 2001, when the prison’s population stood at 3,500, and September 2002, when only 800 prisoners remained. A handful were probably handed over to the Americans, but only Mohammed Rafiq spoke about his experiences.

Rafiq had attended one of the huge TNSM meetings at which thousands of impressionable men were recruited to fight with the Taliban, and said that he surrendered to the Northern Alliance with 500 other people, and was only taken from Sheberghan to Kandahar because he could speak English. What counted against him in Guantánamo, however, were the inconsistencies in his statements. Having first claimed that his desire to fight in Afghanistan was not motivated by anti-American sentiment — explaining that the oppression of the Pashtuns had been ongoing for 20 years, and that “the roots of this conflict have nothing to do with America and there was no mention of America” — he then contradicted himself, as the following exchange demonstrates (although what it reveals most of all is how ignorant and pliable foot soldiers like Rafiq actually were):

Q: Did you realize that when you were going to fight against the Northern Alliance that the United States was fighting on the same side as the Northern Alliance?
A: Yes, I knew that they were assisting the United States.
Q: Do you understand why that was?
A: No I don’t.
Q: You were not told anything by your leadership?
A: I never saw the leaders afterwards. We just had that meeting and we just left. That was it.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 9, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” and in which it was noted that he was born in 1980, the Task Force essentially reiterated his story, explaining that, after he attended what was described as “an ‘anti-West’ demonstration” in Bajawour, Pakistan, “a large group of individuals from the TNSM” asked him if he “wanted to participate in the jihad in support of the Taliban against Americans.” However, after he accepted, and traveled to Mazar-e-Sharif, where “they discovered that the Taliban had surrendered to the Northern Alliance,” and he “and his group then voluntarily surrendered to the NA.” It was also noted that he was sent to Guantánamo on the spurious basis that it was “because of his membership in an anti-American organization and for his support of the Taliban.”

In a detailed explanation of the supposed significance of these claims, it was also noted that the “[t]ransfer team” (the interrogators in Afghanistan, in other words) had “conclude[d] that [he was] a member of a banned militant Islamic organization that supports the armed overthrow of the present Pakistan government, a critical ally in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism,” which “is also a strong supporter of the formerTaliban government in Afghanistan, and produces staunchly anti-American propaganda for distribution to the Pakistani masses.”

However, despite the attempt to ramp up Rafiq’s significance, he was “assessed as not being a member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda,” and the Task Force conceded that, although “during detention and additional interrogation in Pakistan, sources not available now may be available in the future to confirm, deny, or change his intelligence value and threat assessment,” it “must be assessed that [he] is of low intelligence value to the United States at this time.” It was also stated that he posed “a medium threat risk to the US, its interests and allies,” and, as a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Mohamman Daoud (ISN 527, Afghanistan) Released September 2004

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (2) – Tora Bora,” I explained how Mohamman Douad, who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, was nothing but a Taliban conscript, one of many whose capture and transfer to Guantánamo was both pointless and cruel. After being “conscripted into the Taliban in June 2001,” as was explained in the unclassified evidence for his tribunal, he “was trained for 25 days” at a Taliban camp, “where he was taught how to fire the Kalashnikov, was given lessons from the Koran and performed servant duties.” He then “performed guard duties at a Taliban training camp,” “served as a cook for the Taliban,” and was captured by the Northern Alliance — without any evidence that he had ever raised arms against anybody — “while hiding in a Taliban vehicle attempting to cross into Pakistan.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated September 13, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Mohamad Daowd, born in 1979, it was noted that, as well as being diagnosed with latent tuberculosis, in common with many of the prisoners, he had also been diagnosed with “a Borderline Personality disorder and Mood disorder,” and he “ha[d] been given a poor prognosis since he [did] not fully cooperate with treatment.”

In its assessment, the Task Force told the story about his recruitment and training that was later repeated in the unclassified evidence for his tribunal, but noted an entire diversionary tale in which Daoud claimed that, after completing his training, he traveled in search of a job to Miram Shah in Pakistan where he stayed with his aunt, only to be summoned back to Afghanistan for his brother’s wedding. In this account, he was in a bus that encountered a Taliban roadblock while he was trying to return to Pakistan, but he “was determined to get to Pakistan, so he hid in a Taliban vehicle to flee the area,” but was then captured by the Northern Alliance.

Whether that version of events was true — or whether, as it seems to me, the more likely scenario is that, after recruitment, he was indeed obliged to serve as a guard and cook at a Taliban training camp — he was clearly an entirely insignificant figure, whose transfer to Guantánamo on June 11, 2002 was thoroughly pointless, and could not be disguised by the spurious reason grafted onto it: that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban recruitment.”

The Task Force assessed Daoud “as being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader,” adding that he was “of low intelligence value to the United States,” and posed “a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Dawd Gul (ISN 530, Afghanistan) Released September 2004

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (8) – Captured in Afghanistan,” I explained how Dawd Gul was nothing more than an unwilling Taliban conscript, whose presence in Guantánamo was completely meaningless. In his tribunal, Gul said that he came from a small village, where he helped his father raise sheep, and that the Taliban drafted him into service while he was shopping, tying his hands with a sheet and taking him to fight. When they discovered that he did not know how to use a Kalashnikov, he said that they gave him a job as an assistant cook.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated April 26, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was noted that he was born in 1980, and the Joint Task Force largely told the story that he later told his tribunal, stating that he “was conscripted by the Taliban in August 2001,” from his village in Helmand province, taken to Kandahar for “in-processing,” and then to Kabul, where he and other conscripts “stayed the night in a Taliban guesthouse.” Revealing his unwillingness to be a conscript, it was also noted, “The conscripts were locked in one room and the Taliban stayed in a nearby room. Detainee did not try to escape because the Taliban soldiers instructed the conscripts to remain in the room.” They then traveled to Nahrin district, in Baghlan province, where Gul stayed for “nearly three months” in a Taliban facility that was “led by Haji Mullah Baji,” where he “performed menial tasks such as serving food and cleaning,” and, on one occasion, “unsuccessfully attempted to escape.”

As the Northern Alliance advanced, following the US-led invasion, Gul and his group fled towards Kabul, but he and eleven other conscripts were abandoned in the mountains, because the large truck the Taliban was using “was unable to traverse the mountainous area.” The 12 conscripts “walked a short distance before they were able to flag down a minibus that appeared to be traveling to Kabul.” On the outskirts of Kabul, Gul “surrendered to Warlord Hanif in Arghandi and was subsequently turned over to the United States.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on June 10, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban commander Haji Mullah Baji, who commanded troops out of a school in Nahrin.”

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 [530] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on all the above, detainee does not pose a future threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of another government.”

Muhibullah (ISN 546, Afghanistan) Released July 2005

In Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Muhibullah, who was 19 years old at the time of his capture, and was identified as Moheb Ullah Barekzai, was a Taliban conscript. In Guantánamo, he explained how he was taken prisoner by a local post-Taliban commander, he was handed over to Ismael Khan, the governor of Herat, who, he believed, sold him to the Americans. Somewhere in this story of local corruption and American gullibility, he was accused of being the acting governor of Sheberghan for the Taliban.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated November 15, 2003, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” and in which he was identified as Muhib Ullah, born in 1982, the story that emerged was a variation on the above. It was claimed that he was “a self-confessed Taliban volunteer,” who “was part of a tribal militia that supported the Taliban for three and a half years since 1998″ — when, it should be noted, he was 15 or 16 years old, and was therefore not responsible for his actions, which, presumably, were dictated by his family. Nevertheless, the Task Force noted that, “During that time, he served two two-month tours as a security watchman in Kabul,” and “two three-month tours as an assistant to the Taliban civil mediator in Sheberghan.”

It was also noted that, “When the fighting became intense near Sheberghan,” Muhibullah “and three unidentified individuals traveled towards Herat to surrender to Kamal Qomandan, an unidentified, and presumably anti-Taliban commander, who was known to Muhibullah. In interrogations, Muhibullah said that, as a result, he “thought he would be given better treatment,” although that clearly was not the case. From Muhibullah’s account in Guantánamo, it seems likely that it was Qomandan who handed him over to Ismael Khan, although it is unknown where the allegation surfaced that Muhibullah, just 19 at the time of his capture, had been “the acting governor of Sheberghan for the Taliban.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on May 4, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban Security Services and surveillance operations in Kabul, AF, Taliban methods of settling land and water disputes and of Taliban personalities.”

Despite the naked opportunism of this — and the frankly irrelevant reference to “Taliban methods of settling land and water disputes” — Muhibullah’s case demonstrated not only what a waste of resources it was to transport extremely minor figures in the Taliban halfway around the world, when they clearly had no involvement whatsoever with terrorism, but also how, once in Guantánamo, the pressure was on to justify their detention. In Muhibullah’s case, this consisted of an unexplained assessment that he “may have special skills that give him the capability to support terrorism,” and an assessment that he was “vulnerable to recruitment for terrorist or supportive groups.”

It was also claimed that he was “associated” with Sayed Shah Agha, described as being “associated with Taliban Intelligence” an