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

This is Part 32 of the 70-part series. 399 stories have now been told. See the entire archive here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

With 260 prisoners profiled in the first 20 parts of this project, the next ten-part series, “WikiLeaks and the Guantanamo Prisoners Released in 2006,” covered the stories of the 111 prisoners released in 2006 (and the three who died at the prison in June 2006), almost all of whom were freed because of political maneuvering rather than anything to do with justice, as is the case with this latest ten-part series, dealing with the 124 prisoners released in 2007, including two more who died without ever having been charged or tried.

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

And then, of course, as I have outlined above, and as is revealed extensively in the files, they were trapped in a prison where officials, in their ill-conceived desire for “actionable intelligence,” ended up attempting to justifying their detention either by coercing or bribing the prisoners themselves, or their fellow prisoners, to come up with allegations that could be passed off as plausible, whether or not there was any substance to them at all.

The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2007 (Part Two of Ten)

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

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

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

In the documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to al-Sulami was a “Recommendation for Continued Detention Under DoD Control (CD),” dated August 11, 2006, in which it was noted that he was born in February 1979, and was “in good health.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In conclusion, the Task Force claimed that al-Sulami “continue[d] to hide his true activities while in Afghanistan, such as in which cities and guesthouses he stayed,” adding, “Further exploitation is necessary to assess [his] true threat and intelligence potential.” As the Task Force explained, “Due to the lack of available information about detainee,” JTF-GTMO determined that he was “at least medium intelligence value,” and that he posed “a medium risk, as he may pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” It was also noted that he was “assessed as a high threat from a detention perspective,” because his “overall behaviour ha[d] been non-compliant and sometimes hostile to the guard force and staff.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In seeking to justify its claims, the Task Force drew on some distinctly dubious witnesses. One was Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016, still held), the supposed “high-value detainee” for whom the US torture program was specifically developed, who said that he recalled al-Sharikh and his brother paying for specialized training, and another was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (ISN 212, but never held at Guantánamo), a particularly important “high-value detainee,” who was the emir of the Khaldan training camp until it was closed by the Taliban in 2000, after he refused to allow it to be taken over by Osama bin Laden. Al-Libi’s torture in Egypt in 2002 led to a false confession that Al-Qaida operatives had been meeting with Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and biological weapons, which was then used to justify the invasion of Iraq, even though al-Libi retracted it. Sent back to Libya after several years in secret CIA prisons, al-Libi died in Gaddafi’s Abu Salim prison in May 2009, reportedly by committing suicide, although observers believed that he had been killed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rukniddin Sharopov (ISN 76, Tajikistan) Released February 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mehrabanb Fazrollah (ISN 77, Tajikistan) Released February 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Muqit Vohidov (ISN 90, Tajikistan) Released February 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mabahith also “noted detainee was on the Saudi movement’s ‘watch and arrest’ list due to information they received reporting detainee’s death in Mazar-e- Sharif and the possibility of someone else using detainee’s passport,” which, of course, was nothing to do with him, but what was most significant was that, “After the Saudi delegation visit, detainee was assessed by Mabahith” not as being “high priority,” but “as one of the 77 Saudi nationals of low intelligence or law enforcement value to the US Government, but of whom [sic] the Saudi Government would attempt to prosecute if transferred to their custody from JTF-GTMO.”

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

Also see Part One of this series.

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

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

This is Part 17 of the 70-part series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maroof Salehove (ISN 208, Tajikistan) Released August 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He also described the forms of torture used at Guantánamo:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mesut Sen (ISN 296, Belgium) Released April 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salih Uyar (ISN 298, Turkey) Released April 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Part 14 of the 70-part series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hassan Hamid (ISN 711, Jordan) Released November 2003

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rashid Ahmad (ISN 714, Sudan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hussain Mustafa (ISN 715, Jordan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Muhibullo Umarov (ISN 729, Tajikistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mazharuddin (ISN 731, Tajikistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abdughaffor Shirinov (ISN 732, Tajikistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Noor Aslam (ISN 822, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parkhudin (ISN 896, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abdul Rahim (ISN 897, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

Zakkim Shah (ISN 898, Afghanistan) Released March 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 13 of the 70-part series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abdul-Karim Ergashev (ISN 641, Tajikistan) Released July 2004

In Chapter 19 of The Guantánamo Files, I briefly mentioned Abdul-Karim Ergashev (identified as Abdulrahmon Rajabov), based on an interview he conducted with RFE/RL in January 2005, in which I noted that he said that, in Guantánamo, he developed hepatitis C after being denied “consistent medical care.”

In that interview, he stated that “he went to Afghanistan to search for his brother who had disappeared there,” but was then seized by Northern Alliance soldiers and handed over to the US military. He also described in detail what had happened to him during the two and a half years that he had spent in US custody, until his release from Guantánamo in 2004. He explained that US military interrogators had used psychological pressure to force him to falsely confess to fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan: “They told me you have ties to the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I said I don’t know al-Qaeda; the Taliban I know were in control of most of Afghanistan. I didn’t think the Afghans would hand me over to the Americans and that the Americans would take me to Guantánamo. I [still] don’t know why. I didn’t understand what the Americans wanted from me.”

Describing what happened to him during his time in Guantánamo, Ergashev said that he was often kept in solitary confinement, and added that whenever a detainee clashed with the authorities the other prisoners would be punished for it. He also stated that he suffered from a liver ailment during his detention, and that it was the lack of medical care that led to him being diagnosed with hepatitis C. “I was sick and I asked to see a doctor,” he explained. “The soldier told me tomorrow. The next day I told another soldier that I’m feeling worse. He also said, ‘tomorrow.’ After three days I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I told the soldier, ‘three days has passed, why are you lying to me?’ but he told me, ‘no more talk.’ So I threw some water on his face. After that, several persons came, chained and stripped me but they didn’t beat me. They left me only in my underwear in a [cold] cell with iron walls.”

In August 2007, Ergashev announced that he was suing President Bush for damages, and told the website Ferghana.ru more about his experiences, explaining that, at the time of his capture, he was staying with Uzbek refugees, who had fled their homeland to escape the brutal regime of President Islam Karimov, often taking their entire families with them. In the RFE/RL interview in 2005, he had said that “supporters of Juma Namangani, the former military leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, often helped him in Afghanistan,” and in 2007 he explained:

I was a driver in their camp. Everyone scattered when the Americans invaded Afghanistan and bombardments began. I wanted to go home too but couldn’t because I did not have any papers or even money. Closer to the end of winter [2001], I drifted to the town of Tahor and the rais or chairman of a nearby village offered me a job. He said I would become his personal driver. I said “Why not?” It was a chance to earn my fare back. The man said the auto was waiting in one of the kishlaks (settlements) in Mazar-e-Sharif and we went there to collect it. The man brought me to some household and asked me to wait while he went and fetched the keys. The Afghani police broke into the building as soon as he left. They had me handcuffed and blindfolded in no time at all and turned me over to the waiting Americans. The Americans had been waiting nearby, you know. They ordered me to don a special blue coverall marking me as a POW. It occurred to me then that they had deliberately left me in the house in order to sell me to the Americans as a terrorist or Talib … I was taken to the city of Bagram where I was imprisoned with very many others for March-May 2002. It was Kandahar after that and finally Guantánamo, in September that year.

Describing the situation in Afghanistan at the time of Ergashev’s arrest, in the months following the US-led invasion in October 2001, the reporter for Ferghana declared, “The Americans paid $5,000 for a Talib soldier and twice that for [an] officer. The Afghani police found it quite to their liking. When they discovered that there was nobody else to be sold to the US Army, they turned on pedestrians. As a matter of fact, some men the Americans ended up with were mental cases.”

In addition, although RFE/RL stated that Ergashev was “receiving medical care” in Tajikistan in January 2005, Ferghana’s reporter described him as still suffering from “grave health problems,” and determined to sue President Bush because the US authorities had shown themselves to be “absolutely indifferent” to his plight and “disinclined to offer him any recompense or aid.”

Another aspect of his “grave health problems” was reported by a fellow prisoner, Airat Vakhitov, in an interview with Cageprisoners in 2005, as I reported in Part Five of this series. Vakhitov said that, although Ergashev “was quite healthy when arrested, when he was in Cuba he was, as many of us were, infected with Hepatitis B. He started complaining and even declared a hunger strike because they didn’t provide any medical assistance for him in spite of him asking for it constantly. He was given pills which I think were much stronger than opium or heroin, because some of the guys tried them as well and the effect was much stronger than the real ones. One day, he overdosed and they stopped giving it to him, and then they took blood from him, and his condition of Hepatitis B didn’t stop developing because the problem is not only contained in the gall bladder. When he got back (from Guantánamo) some of the doctors and professors examined him and commented saying there was no justification for them to do that.”

In the documents released by WikiLeaks, Ergashev’s file (in which he was described as Abdul Karim Irgashive, born in 1965), was dated March 16, 2004, and was a “Transfer Recommendation.” In the Task Force’s account, a much more colorful picture emerged, although it is unknown how much of it was true. Dealing with Ergashev’s life long before his capture, the Task Force claimed that he “was a conscript in the Soviet army in the mid-1980′s and spent 4 years in prison for stabbing a fellow soldier,” and that, “after his release from prison in 1990, [he] became a career criminal and attempted to join the Tajik resistance movement but was rejected.”

He then reportedly joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in 1999, and allegedly “volunteered to fight in Afghanistan for the Taliban because he believed the Taliban would one day come to the aid of the Mujahideen fighting to overthrow the secular governments in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.” It was also claimed that, after completing “advanced training as a sniper and an explosives expert, [he] was airlifted into northern Afghanistan in 2001, along with 200 other IMU and Uighur fighters to support the Taliban against the US lead Northern Alliance [sic].”

The circumstances of his capture were not replayed, but it was noted that he was sent to  Guantánamo on June 8, 2002 (not September as he stated), “because of his affiliation with the Taliban as a foreign fighter and his membership in the IMU.” However, as I explained in my article, How to Read WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files (originally published on WikiLeaks’ website when the Guantánamo files were first published, as part of my work liaising between WikiLeaks and its media partners):

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

The Task Force also noted in particular that he had “a personal affiliation with several IMU leaders,” which was something that he had essentially admitted, although his claim that he was a driver was rather different than the US claims about him being “a sniper and an explosives expert,” and it was also noted that he had “participated in fighting against the US and its allies,” which was also not verified elsewhere. In addition, it was noted that the Tajik government had interviewed him and had “confirmed [his] membership in the IMU and his extensive criminal history,” and had also “informally requested that [he] be returned to their custody for further prosecution,” but if all this was true it was inexplicable that, on his return, Ergashev was not imprisoned, and was not prosecuted unlike other Tajik prisoners.

As a result, the entire case put together by the Task Force must be regarded with suspicion. Certainly, when it came to backing up its claims, the Task Force was less confident, noting that Ergashev had been determined to be “of low intelligence value to the US,” although “he may provide the Tajik government with additional intelligence concerning the IMU’s insurgency within Tajikistan.” It was also noted that he had been “generally cooperative” and had not been “violent or overtly aggressive while  in detention,” However, as a result of the litany of claims outlined above, it was also noted that he was, in the Task Force’s opinion, “highly vulnerable to re-recruitment back into the IMU if he were released outright.” As a result, and because he was assessed as posing “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “transferred to the control of another country for continued detention,” although it was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF), which also contributed assessments, had not, as of March 16, 2004, made an evaluation of Ergashev. Just four months later, he was a free man.

Mohammed Tahir (ISN 643, Afghanistan) Released May 2003

In Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how 26-year old Mohammed Tahir and 21-year old Rostum Shah (see Part Seven), who were both released in May 2003, were Taliban conscripts from Helmand who had been sent to fight in Bamiyan province, where they were captured by Hazara soldiers of Hezb-e-Wahdat, one of Afghanistan’s two main Shia Muslim factions, who were implacably opposed to the Taliban. Imprisoned for four months, they were then handed over to the Americans. On his release, as explained in “Afghans Bitter Over Guantánamo Detention,” an Associated Press article published on May 9, 2003, Tahir said that he suffered mentally and had “difficulty remembering things,” and underlined the failures of the screening process. “I’m just angry that the Americans waited until we were in Guantánamo to interrogate us,” he said. “Had they questioned us here in Afghanistan it would have saved us a lot of trouble. They could have realized a lot sooner that I was innocent.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated March 8, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that he was born in 1975, and it was noted that he had “worked for years as a common warehouse laborer in Tehran, Iran,” but returned to Afghanistan in October 2001, after the US-led invasion, because “he feared for his elderly father’s safety.” However, while he was at home, he was forcibly conscripted by the Taliban, taken to Bamiyan province and “dropped off with two other conscripts at an observation outpost,” where he served as a guard for about 15 days. The Task Force noted that, although he was given an AK-47. he received no military training.

After the fall of the Taliban, he “tried to walk back home,” but was captured by Hazara militia and held for about five months. He was transferred to US control in April 2002, and was sent to Guantánamo on June 9, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Taliban leaders and their disposition in the mountains of the Bamiyan Province of 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 [643] is assessed as being neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on the above, detainee does not pose a future threat to the US or its interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer or release to the control of another government.”

Mirza Muhammed (ISN 644, Afghanistan) Released March 2003

As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (11) – The Last of the Afghans (Part One) and Six ‘Ghost Prisoners,’” according to press reports in March 2003, when the first large group of Afghans was released (18 in total), Mirza Muhammed, who was 28 years old at the time of his capture, said that he was seized by the Taliban and forced to fight with them, and added that he was captured by the Northern Alliance after just five days, and was then sold to the Americans. Described in a report in the Washington Post as Merza Khan, he explained that “Americans in Kandahar tied him up and alternately forced him to lie face down on the ground, then squat with his hands on his head for hours. He also said he saw American soldiers throw the Koran on the ground and sit on it while in Kandahar.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 5, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” he was described as Mirzam Mohammed, born in 1964, and it was noted that he was a farmer who was “forcefully conscripted to fight with the Taliban Army against the Hezb-e-Wahdat in Bamiyan Province,” where he “worked primarily as a cook.” He stated that “he did not see any combat while serving the Taliban,” and on November 5, 2001 was “captured at gunpoint by two people in his village, and turned over to the American forces patrolling the village.” He told his interrogators that he “assumed that these people turned him in because, for some unknown reason, they held a grudge against him.” He was sent to Guantánamo on or about June 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his general knowledge regarding the Taliban order of battle and command personalities in Bamiyan Province.”

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 [644] is assessed as neither affiliated with al-Qaida nor as 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. Based on the above, detainee does not pose a future threat to the US or its interests.” The second page of the assessment was missing, but it was clear from the subject line, “Transfer Recommendation,” that the Task Force recommended his transfer or release.

Haji Faiz Mohammed (ISN 657, Afghanistan) Released October 2002

In Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Haji Faiz Mohammed, who was 70 years old but thought that he was 105 years old, was one of several prisoners seized in raids by US Special Forces in Uruzgan province. Mohammed, who was seized in a clinic, said on his release, “I don’t know why the Americans arrested me. I told them I was innocent. I’m just an old man.”

In a CBS News report at the time of his release — with two other Afghans, Jan Mohammed (ISN 19, see Part One) and Mohammed Sadiq (ISN 349, see Part Five) — it was noted that the men, “looking frail and tired but in good spirits, said they had had no contact with their families since being taken away by the Americans from various places in Afghanistan. They said they were chained up during frequent interrogations by Americans, but that they were not mistreated and were allowed to practice their religion while in detention.” Haji Faiz Mohammed (described as Mohammed Hagi Fiz) said, “They interrogated us for hours at a time. They wanted to know, ‘Where are you from? Are you a member of the Taliban? Did you support the Taliban? Were your relatives Taliban? Did the Taliban give you weapons?”‘

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated September 27, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was noted that he was born in 1932 and had been “diagnosed with Senile Dementia, which is expected to worsen with time.” In assessing his story, the Task Force noted that, in April 2002, he “visited a friend and wanted to see a doctor to get more medicine,” but was seized by US forces while staying the night in a mosque in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province. He was sent to Guantánamo on June 13, 2002, although the Task Force admitted that “[t[here is no reason on the record for [him] being transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention facility.” This is the first time that I have come across an assessment in which no reason for transferring a prisoner was presented at all, even though, as I have repeatedly made clear, all the reasons for transfer were bogus, and grafted on afterwards.

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 [657] is assessed as not affiliated with Al-Qaida and as not being a Taliban leader.” In addition, it was noted that he “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 US interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who was the commander of  Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.”

Bismillah (ISN 658, Afghanistan) Released March 2003

In Chapter 10 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how 49-year old Bismillah, like Haji Faiz Mohammed (ISN 657, see above) was also seized in a raid by Special Forces in Uruzgan province. After his release, Bismillah said that he was seized because he is hard of hearing. “At 2 am Americans came to our house and asked me to show them where the Taliban are,” he said. “Since I am deaf, I couldn’t understand what they said so they arrested me. It took them more than a year to realize I am innocent.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated September 27, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Bismillah Muhammed, born “around 1952,” a variation on this story was reported, which provided slightly different details, but did nothing to reassure anyone that US forces had applied any intelligence to the rounding up of prisoners. Bismillah told his interrogators that he “was sleeping on the roof of his house” in Uruzgan province “when US forces arrested him in April 2002 during a raid to apprehend Mullah Baradar,” a senior Taliban leader who was reportedly killed in August 2007 and then reportedly captured in February 2010.

Bismillah “stated that he did not know Mullah Barader, although he had heard that the Mullah’s father lived somewhere in the Deh Rawood district.” The only other information about him that the Task Force had gathered was that he “purportedly served as a soldier for two years in approximately 1993 to 1994 (no further details available).” He was sent to Guantánamo on June 12, 2002, although, as with Haji Faiz Mohammed (ISN 657, see above), the Task Force admitted that “[t[here is no reason on record as to why [he] was transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention facility.”

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 [658] is assessed as not affiliated with Al-Qaida and as not being a Taliban leader.” In addition, it was noted that he “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 US interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Dunlavey recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.”

Reda Fadel El Weleli (ISN 663, Egypt) Released July 2003

In the Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, El-Weleli’s was one of 14 missing files, as I noted in my article, “WikiLeaks and the 14 Missing Guantánamo Files.” In that article, I explained how he was identified by the US authorities as Fael Roda Al-Waleeli, born in 1966, and how he was the first Egyptian transferred from Guantánamo to Egypt. He arrived in Cairo on July 1, 2003, and subsequently disappeared, although, as I reported in an article in April this year, entitled, Torture and Terrorism: In the Middle East It’s 2011, In America It’s Still 2001:

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

Said Abassin (ISN 671, Afghanistan) Released March 2003

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how 19-year old Said Abassin was one of two taxi drivers, along with Wazir Mohammed (ISN 677, see below), who were seized by Afghan soldiers in April 2002. Abassin, an admirer of Western culture, who told the BBC after his release that he had been beaten up by the Taliban for playing music in his taxi, was traveling from Khost to Kabul when a loud explosion rocked the US garrison in Gardez. Stopped at a checkpoint and taken to the local police station with his passenger, 33-year old car dealer Alif Khan (ISN 673, see below), he and Khan were accused of being members of al-Qaeda, as was Mohammed, a friend of Abassin, who was captured after asking what had happened to his friend. According to the journalist Ashwin Raman, Taj Mohammad Wardak, the governor of Khost at the time, “was informed of the arrests.” Raman added:

Without bothering to check the facts, Wardak called the US Special Forces who took the two taxi drivers away … When the father of Abassin and the brother of Wazir tried to plead with the governor, they were beaten. Later, some town elders managed to convince Wardak that the young men were innocent. Wardak promised to do all in his power to have the taxi drivers released. Nothing happened. Abassin’s father wrote to the US Ambassador in Kabul, but received no reply. A reminder was sent, but to no avail.

Held in Bagram for 40 days, Abassin described a regime of “sleep deprivation, 24-hour lighting and guards banging on cells and shouting to keep detainees awake.” He said that he was not hit, but was forced to stand, sit and kneel for prolonged periods, and explained that “being forced to kneel for four hours a day felt worse than being beaten.”

He also gave an example of the random injustices that were prevalent in Guantánamo. “While I was there, I had problems with my knees,” he said. “I was told by the military doctor to do exercises, and when I started doing them a guard came and locked me up in a container for five days. I hadn’t done it by my own choice, I was told to do it by the doctor.”

“My life is ruined,” Abassin said after his release. “Why? For which crime? I’d heard that in America or Europe when they arrest someone they have proof. I saw none of that. I was just driving. Arrested and taken to prison. My hands were tied behind my back. They put a sack over my head and took me away in a helicopter.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated October 29, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was identified as Said Abassi Rochan, born in 1982, the randomness of his capture was acknowledged by the Task Force. It was noted that he was a taxi driver in the Khost area, and that, “[w]hile traveling through Gardez on his way to Khost, local Afghanistan authorities arrested [him] and the vehicle occupants at a checkpoint based on the suspicion that one of the passengers [Alif Khan, see below] was a relative of a Zadran tribal leader named Pacha Khan.” What was not mentioned was that Pacha Khan had initially been regarded as an ally of the US, and had been responsible for sending other men to Guantánamo for money, and on the basis of false information.

The Task Force also revealed how a 20-minute period sealed Abassin’s fate for the next eleven months, although the role played by Taj Mohammad Wardak was not mentioned. The Task Force noted, “All of the taxi occupants were taken to the local police station where the detainee spent about 20 minutes before being turned over to US forces and later transported to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, arriving on 13 June 2002.” The spurious reason given for his transfer was “because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khost and Kabul based as a result of [sic] his frequent travels through the area as a taxi driver” — a thoroughly weak post-detention piece of reasoning, and something that, if required, could have been obtained from Abassin simply by asking, rather than by brutalizing him and transporting him halfway around the world.

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 [671] is assessed as not affiliated with Al-Qaida nor as being a Taliban leader.” In addition, it was noted that he “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 US interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Dunlavey recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.”

Alif Khan (ISN 673, Afghanistan) Released March 2003

In Chapter 14 of The Guantánamo Files, I explained how Alif Khan, who was a passenger in a taxi driven by Said Abassin (ISN 671, see above), was held in Bagram and Kandahar, and described similar treatment to that mentioned by Abassin. He said that the Americans made him kneel for an hour with his hands above his head. “One of them was standing in front of me, the other was pointing the Kalashnikov,” he explained. “If we moved our face to the side they would make us stay for a further two hours. If we moved just slightly it would increase to three hours. We would become unconscious.”

A businessman, Khan told the BBC in November 2003 that, while he was in Guantánamo, “his business rivals grabbed his assets,” including a number of shops, from him, and that, since his release he had “fought to get his property back.” He explained that both he and Said Abassin (described as Sayed Abassin) “were handed in to the Americans in return for bounty payments of several thousand dollars each,” and he said to the BBC, “I told them that in Afghanistan there are many personal disputes. They handed me to you because of some personal feud. I am not Taliban, not a terrorist, not Al-Qaeda. People handed me over because someone wanted to gain influence — dollars or because of a personal dispute.”

This was Khan’s description of his journey to Guantánamo:

They put cuffs and tape on my hands, taped my eyes and taped my ears. They gagged me. They put chains on my legs and chains around my belly. They injected me. I was unconscious. I don’t know how they transported me. When I arrived in Cuba and they took me off the plane they gave another injection and I came back to consciousness. I did not know how long the plane was flying for. It might have been one day or two days. They put me onto a bed on wheels. I could sense what was going on. They tied me up. They took me off the plane into a vehicle. We go to a big prison and there were cages there. They built it like a zoo.

And this was his description of the conditions in Guantánamo:

Each container housed 48 cages. Everyone was in a cage individually. Every cage had a tap, a toilet and water for washing. There was room to sit but not enough to pray. We were praying with difficulty. My joints were damaged. The light was very bright there as well. They were switched on all the time. Because of that our eyes were damaged and from constantly having to look through the netting. There were other blocks and we were not allowed to speak to the people on the other blocks. If we talked to them, they would draw the curtains and they would take our bedding and blankets and they wouldn’t give them back for three days. We would just have our towels to sit on.

What was also notable about his case was that he was mistakenly thought to be a cousin of the renegade warlord Pacha Khan (aka Pacha Khan Zadran), who was trusted by the US, only to betray them, and whose baleful influence extended to other prisoners. As Ashwin Raman reported in March 2004, “There is ample evidence that rogue warlords like Bacha Khan Zadran [aka Pacha Khan Zadran] have palmed people off to US forces as terrorists in return for dollars.”

In 2008, Khan was able to explain more of his story when he was interviewed by Tom Lasseter for a major McClatchy Newspapers series on 66 released Guantánamo prisoners. He told Lasseter that, after his return from Guantánamo, the Taliban in Khost province “sent word that he should join them. Avenge your time in prison, they said, and take up arms against the infidels.” He added that “they asked him to move to the Pakistani province of Waziristan and join the Taliban struggle,” and, when he refused, spread rumors that he had only been released from Guantánamo because he was a spy. As a result, he was living in Kabul, “selling cars and property, and quietly slipping back to Khost once a year to see his family.” He explained, however, that he hadn’t been able to rebuild much of his life, because “he had to spend about $5,000 to buy his business and property back from the warlords who’d seized it when he was detained.”

At Guantánamo, Khan recalled, “he received occasional letters from his family through the Red Cross: ‘Hello and greetings from your brother Dawood. We the whole family and relatives are ok. We pray for your release.’ The US military blacked out large parts, however, citing security concerns. ‘I thought that if they don’t even allow entire letters to come from my family that it meant they would kill us,’ Khan said. ‘I didn’t think I would ever return to Afghanistan.’”

He also “pulled out a laminated card that was signed by the noncommissioned officer in charge of detainee operations at Bagram, where he landed when he returned from Guantánamo,” which was fascinating because it confirmed that some paperwork existed declaring definitively that prisoners were not a threat. The card, which had his name and detainee number on it, said, “This individual has been determined to pose no threat to the United States military or its interests in Afghanistan.”

Khan also “said he had no idea what to think about being at Guantánamo,” stating, sadly, “I was living in a cage in the middle of the ocean.” He added, “I saw Arabs try to hang themselves, but the guards came in time and took them to the hospital. Maybe it was because they were there for a long time, because they had no hope.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated October 29, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was noted that he was born in 1967 and had been diagnosed in Guantánamo with latent tuberculosis, in common with many of the prisoners, and also with hepatitis C, although it was also noted that he “currently does not require treatment,” and that he was “otherwise in good health.”

In a twist on the story of his capture, it was revealed that he “was a self-employed owner of a car dealership” in Khost province, and that his capture had something to do with two people “whom he apparently had done business with in the past,” named Fazel and Sharif, at least one of whom — Sharif — appears to have been a corrupt policeman. As the Task Force described it, they “stopped [him] on the road from Gardez to Khost. Sharif extorted 9,000 rupees from [him] after holding him for three days at the Gardez Police Department. After paying Sharif for his release, Fazel then demanded a vehicle from [him]. [He] refused and was subsequently turned over to American forces.”

Speaking to Tom Lasseter, Khan provided further details, explaining that the men who had seized him — presumably Fazel and Sharif — “had arrested him a few days earlier, on the way to Kabul, but released him when he paid a bribe with a stack of Pakistani rupees and a Rado watch. This time, however, the men dragged him to their headquarters, beat him on his feet with sticks, then handed him over to the Americans.”

Lasseter also explained that the security chief in Gardez at the time of his capture, Abdullah Mujahid, was also held at Guantánamo “after being charged with organizing attacks on American troops,” and that his men “had a reputation for corruption — extortion was a frequent pastime — and for drumming up charges against their political and tribal enemies.” Lasseter added that Afghan security and political officials interviewed in Kabul, Khost and Gardez “said they’d never heard of Khan, which suggests that if he had ties to Islamic militants, they weren’t very strong.” Lasseter also pointed out that Khan’s “relatively fast exit from Guantánamo suggests that whatever the allegations against him were, they either weren’t very serious or were found to be false.”

He was sent to Guantánamo on June 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his possible knowledge of an Afghan Machas Refugee Camp located near Miram, Pakistan,” a statement that doesn’t even seem to make sense, and that, noticeably, fails to mention the Pacha Khan connection that was supposed to have justified his detention in the first place.

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 [673] is assessed as not affiliated with Al-Qaida nor as being a Taliban leader.” In addition, it was noted that he “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 US interests.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Dunlavey recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.”

Timur Ishmuradov (ISN 674, Russia) Released March 2004

Like five other prisoners freed from a Taliban jail in Kandahar and then, inexplicably, sent to Guantánamo (see, for example, the story of Jamal Al Harith, ISN 490, in Part Five), Timur Ishmuradov, a 26-year old from Tyumen Oblast (part of the Russian Federation, in the Urals), said that he was imprisoned by the Taliban in summer 2001, and was then freed but sent to Guantánamo, along with another prisoner, Arkan al-Karim, an Iraqi.

On his release, Ishmuradov was particularly incensed at the treatment he received at the hands of the Americans. In an article entitled, “Russians sue US government for torturing them at Guantánamo camp,” which was published by the Associated Press on February 4, 2005, he said, “I have traces of their tortures on my body [and] scars on my back after being dragged on the ground. They would beat me during interrogations and also while taking me from one place to another.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 5, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was described as Timur Ravilich Ishmurat, born in 1975, it was noted that he had been diagnosed with hepatitis A and C, latent tuberculosis (in common with many of the prisoners) and “antisocial personality traits,” although it was also noted that he was “otherwise in good health.”

The Task Force also stated that he was “a former oil worker,” who had joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in 1999 in Tajikistan, “where he received basic military training,” and then traveled to Afghanistan, “[w]hen the Tajik government moved the IMU to Kunduz, Afghanistan, under the patronage of the Taliban in January 2001.” He then reportedly moved with the IMU to Mazar-e-Sharif, where they “took over an old Russian facility that was provided to them by the Taliban,” but retreated to Kunduz when Mazar fell to the Northern Alliance, and then surrendered.

According to this account, he was never imprisoned by the Taliban at all, but, fearing that he would be handed back to the Russians because of ties between the Russian government and the Northern Alliance, he fled, only to be “captured while entering the first Afghan village he encountered,” and then transferred back to the custody of the Northern Alliance. Rather confusingly, it was stated that he was then “sent to join an Afghani-Uzbek group” and “was later taken to the village of Iskamish, where he stayed until soldiers of the new Afghan government arrived and arrested him in April 2002.” He was then “taken to Mazar-e-Sharif and interrogated for one week,” and was then transferred to Bagram and sent to Guantánamo on June 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because of “his knowledge of Hizbunadzad Tajik Islamic insurgency group, of its leader, Saeed Abdullah Nuri, of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and its military/political leadership, and of a training facility located near Mazar-e-Sharif.”

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 [674] is assessed as not affiliated with al-Qaida or as 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.”

It was also noted that, “During a visit to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 14 to 19 November 2002, Russian Intelligence officers interrogated [ISN 674] and stated that their government would accept custody of [him] if released by the US government.” Crucially, it was also noted that, “Since the Russian government has agreed to incarcerate [him] upon his transfer, he poses no future threat to the US or its allies. In addition, the Russian government has agreed to share all intelligence derived from him while under their control with the United States.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “considered for transfer to the control of the Russian government.”

After their return to Russia, these punitive demands were not exactly followed, although the men suffered at their own government’s hands. All seven ex-prisoners “were initially held in a detention center in the southern town of Pyatigorsk that is run by the FSB, the domestic successor of the KGB,” as the Washington Post explained in an article in September 2006. The Post further explained that all seven were released in June 2004, “after prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to hold them,” but also noted that their release “did not end official interest in the men.”

This was confirmed in “The Stamp of Guantánamo,” a report by Human Rights Watch in March 2007 in which it was noted:

Faced with the return of seven former detainees from Guantánamo, Russian law enforcement might legitimately have been expected to keep an eye on whether the men were engaged in any suspicious activity after they got home. Such surveillance could have been conducted while also respecting the ex-detainees’ human rights. It was not.

The detainees and their family members uniformly complained of being frequently called, followed, and threatened by the FSB, UBOP [Russia's brutal organized crime squad], and other police officials after their return.Some family members reported that their homes were searched without warrants, in violation of Russian and international law. Some reported, in fact, that their homes were so frequently searched that they were unable to provide exact dates of those searches.

Timur Ishmuratov told Human Rights Watch that he “also experienced beatings at the hands of the FSB and the UBOP,” and explained that, just before their release from Pyatigorsk, “a high-ranking FSB official met with all of them and told them that ‘the Russian government has no complaints against you,’” and that, “if you live according to the law, then you won’t have any harassment. He cited the Russian leadership. I believed him.”

In contrast, Ishmuratov was harassed after an explosion, early in the morning of January 8, 2005, on “a small pipeline delivering home heating fuel to a residential section of Bugulma, a city in southern Tatarstan, several hundred kilometers east of Moscow.” He and his wife “lived in a small town not far away.,” but although there were “no casualties in the explosion,” Ishmuratov was “called in for increasingly aggressive questioning and harassment” over several months, and was then “taken into custody on April 1, 2005, from the Bugulma mosque where he worked as a guard.”

In a statement smuggled out of the Almetevsk detention facility, he explained how the FSB forced a false confession out of him, forcing him to strip, and then punching him and kicking him violently. He added that they also “threatened to call in my mother and my pregnant wife for questioning,” and abused the Koran, and that eventually he agreed to make a false confession. “I agreed to give them the testimony,” he said, “being unable to withstand the physical and psychological pressure, and also out of concern for my wife and unborn child. They warned me that I had to stick to the testimony in all my interrogations, otherwise they’d beat me up again.”

Ishmuratov’s mother also told Human Rights Watch that “security service officers brought Ishmuratov in handcuffs to the maternity hospital, where his wife had just delivered a baby, to put pressure on his family not to hire a lawyer to pursue complaints of abuse,” and his brother explained how he too had been beaten by police, while handcuffed to a radiator, “to coerce him to admit that he had witnessed preparations for the crime.”

Ishmuratov later recanted his confession in both his 2005 trial and 2006 retrial, but was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison, in large part because of his coerced confession. For another angle on the alleged plot, see the story of Ravil Gumarov, ISN 203, in Part Three, who received a 13-year sentence for his alleged involvement in the pipeline explosion.

In conclusion, in April 2005, Ishmuratov “asked for a criminal case to be opened against the men who had beaten him in detention,” in which he stated, bluntly and powerfully, “I ask you to help me escape from torture and obtain justice. I’m a former prisoner of the American camp at Guantánamo, where I endured the bullying of the American military, and now I’m treated even worse by the special forces and law enforcement authorities of Russia.”

Wazir Mohammed (ISN 677, Afghanistan) Released November 2003

Before the release by WikiLeaks of the Detainee Assessment Briefs, all that was known of Wazir Mohammed was that he was a taxi driver, seized after his friend Said Abassin, another taxi driver (ISN 671, see above), was arrested by Afghan forces, along with his passenger Alif Khan (ISN 673, also see above).

Clearly he — like Abassin and Khan — should never have been seized, let alone transferred to Guantánamo, and this was confirmed in his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 30, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” in which he was described as Wazir Zalim Ghul, born in 1977, and it was noted that he “stated that he was arrested on 4 April 2002 by Gardez security forces in the city of Gardez, Afghanistan,” while traveling from Kabul to Khost “with four passengers in his taxicab,” and while he was “carrying his cab license, identification papers, taxi permit, and other related documents for the vehicle.” The Task Force added that “[n]o weapons or equipment were found with him at the time of his arrest,” and explained the circumstances of his capture as follows:

While stopped at [a] checkpoint, [he] was asked by the security forces whether he knew another taxi driver who had also stopped at the checkpoint. The other taxi driver [Said Abassin] had a man in his cab [Alif Khan] whom was thought to be working for a rival warlord in Paktia, AF. While detainee does know the other cab driver, he did not know any of the passengers [and] believes that he was taken into custody because of a misunderstanding.

This was something of an understatement, as there was clearly no reason whatsoever that he should have been held for more than a cursory amount of time in Gardez, before being freed, and his ignorance of anything to do with militancy or insurgency was apparent from the Task Force’s comment that, although he “admits he knows who the local leaders are, he had never met them nor does he work for them.” In a further insult, the spurious reason given for his transfer to Guantánamo on June 14, 2002 was “because of his suspected knowledge of local warlords and their activities.”

In reviewing his case, the Joint Task Force assessed him as “being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader,” who was “of no intelligence value to the United States,” and who posed “a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” As a result, Brig. Gen. James E. Payne III of the US Army, who signed the memo, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government for continued detention.”

Also see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, 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, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Two suspicious omissions: Abdullah Tabarak and Abdurahman Khadr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The US “enemy combatant”: Yasser Hamdi

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

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

The late arrivals — in 2007 and 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The eight others, released between 2003 and 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on WikiLeaks.

Please support my work!

Freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington begins a 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 1 of the 70-part series. It was updated on September 21, 2011.

In WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, one of the great publicity coups was shining a light on the stories of the first 201 prisoners to be freed from the prison, between May 2002, when a severely schizophrenic Afghan prisoner, Abdul Razak, was returned to his home country, and September 2004, when 35 prisoners were repatriated to Pakistan, and 11 were repatriated to Afghanistan.

A handful of these 46 prisoners were cleared for release as a result of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which began on August 13, 2004 and concluded on March 29, 2005. These, as Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of US intelligence who worked on the tribunals has explained, were essentially part of a one-sided process designed to create the illusion that the prisoners’ cases were being objectively examined to determine whether, on capture, they had been correctly designated as “enemy combatants,” who could continue to be held indefinitely.

558 prisoners passed through the CSRT process, and records released by the Pentagon in 2006, as the result of a successful lawsuit filed by media groups, provided details of all these men’s cases — the government’s supposed evidence against them, and transcripts of the CSRTs (and their annual follow-ups, the Administrative Review Boards), or, at least, transcripts of the tribunals and review boards in which the prisoners had deigned to take part, after many boycotted them, correctly perceiving that they were essentially a sham.

On the other hand, no records have ever been publicly released by the US government which provide any information whatsoever about the 201 released, or approved for release before the CSRTs began, except for a prisoner list released in May 2006 (PDF), which contains the names, nationalities, and, where known, dates of birth and places of birth for 759 prisoners (all but the 20 who arrived at Guantánamo between September 2006 and March 2008).

In the years since the documents relating to the CSRTs and ARBs were released, I attempted to track down the stories of these 201 men, and managed, largely through successful research that led to relevant media reports, interviews and reports compiled by NGOs, to discover information about 114 of these prisoners, but nothing at all was known about 87 others (except for their names, and, in some cases, their date of birth and place of birth). With the release of the WikiLeaks files, all but three of these 87 stories have emerged for the very first time, and in this article (and in four others to follow), I will run through these stories, beginning with the first 17 below. Also see Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five.

Please note that the overwhelming majority of these 84 prisoners were Afghans or Pakistanis, and that many were assessed by the US military as “being neither affiliated with Al-Qaida nor a Taliban leader,” of having “no intelligence value to the United States,” and of posing “a low threat to the US, its interests or its allies.” That last reference — to them posing “a low threat” — ought to alert readers to the problems with the classification system at Guantánamo, as many of the cases involve patently innocent people seized by mistake, who, nevertheless, were referred to as “a low threat” rather than as no threat at all.

On their return, the majority of the Afghans were released outright, whereas the Pakistanis were mostly imprisoned for many months before they too were granted their freedom (see here for an article from Pakistani newspaper the Nation in June 2005 describing the release of 17 prisoners repatriated from Guantánamo in September 2004, some of whom are listed below).

WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo (Part One of Five)

Zafar Iqbal (ISN 014, Pakistan) Released September 2004

In the classified US military documents released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, the file relating to Igbal was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” dated May 28, 2004, in which it was noted that he was born in March 1983, and had been recommended for “release or transfer to the control of another government” on September 27, 2002, on the basis of an assessment that he “was not affiliated with Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader and does not pose a future threat to the US or US interests.”

However, under “New Information,” the Joint Task Force noted that although he was assessed as being “of low intelligence value,” he posed “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and “continues to harbor animosity towards US forces,” partly because he was allegedly associated with the militant organization Harkat ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) in Pakistan, having apparently contacted HUJI officials “prior to leaving Pakistan for Afghanistan and again upon his arrival in Afghanistan,” which, to the Task Force, “strongly indicat[ed] that his travel into Afghanistan was coordinated through the HUJI organization.”

Despite this additional information, it is also clear that a major fact contributing to the upgrade of his risk assessment was the fact that an Iranian prisoner in Guantánamo, Abdul Majid Muhammed (ISN 555, released in October 2006) had identified him “as handing out weapons for the Taliban” and stated that he had “talk[ed] of jihad against the US upon release,” although there is, of course, no indication of why his accuser should have been trusted. It was also noted that, at Guantánamo, he had allegedly “sharpened his spoon into a weapon, potentially for use against a guard.”

The US authorities seemed to have slightly better grounds for regarding Iqbal as a combatant when it came to the details of his capture, as he and his cousin (also assessed as a HUJI member) were reportedly “captured by the Northern Alliance while trying to board a bus out of Kunduz during the period of time when the Taliban had lost hold of their front lines there and Taliban forces were fleeing the area” (in late November 2001). According to the US authorities, “The detainee was shot in the leg and his cousin was killed when they attempted to escape from Dostum’s forces. The Northern Alliance then brought the detainee to Mazar-e-Sharif and placed him in prison there before he was handed over to US Forces.” The prison referred to was probably not in Mazar, but was the nearby prison at Sheberghan, run by the Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum. This also indicates that Iqbal was a survivor of the notorious “convoy of death,” when thousands of prisoners died (through suffocation, or by being shot) in containers en route to the prison at Sheberghan.

In conclusion, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, recommended that Iqbal be “transferred to the contr