This is the fourth part of a nine-part series telling the stories of all the prisoners currently held in Guantánamo (174 at the time of writing). See the introduction here, and Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven.

This fourth article tells the stories of 19 prisoners seized in Pakistan after crossing from Afghanistan in December 2001, shortly after the prisoners described in Part One, and during a week-long period when around a quarter of the total number of prisoners held at Guantánamo (779 in total) were seized. Although these 185 or so men were routinely regarded as al-Qaeda members who had fled from the showdown between al-Qaeda and the US (via its Afghan allies) in the Tora Bora mountains, the truth is that almost every significant al-Qaeda member escaped from Tora Bora, that many of these men were nothing more than insignificant foot soldiers, and that many others were missionaries, humanitarian aid workers or economic migrants, caught fleeing the death and destruction in Afghanistan.  Nevertheless, all were presented as al-Qaeda operatives by their Pakistani captors, who then handed them over — or sold them — to their US allies.

Around 140 of these men have been released, and the remaining prisoners are not only described in this article, but also in Part Three, where I told 22 more stories. Disturbingly, seven of these men have won their habeas petitions, but are still held, and at least five have been cleared for release (or “approved for transfer,” to use the language that the Obama administration learned so carefully from its predecessor).

ISN 249 Al Hamiri, Mohammed (Yemen)
Al-Hamiri, who was 19 when he was seized, claimed that he “left Yemen for medical treatment and was tricked by a British resident into going into Afghanistan where he did nothing for six months.” An unidentified source — or sources — claimed that he had trained at al-Farouq (the main camp for Arabs, associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11) and had spoken to bin Laden at a guest house in Kabul, but al-Hamiri denied the allegations, and only conceded that, in Kabul, he had stayed in the home of someone he “felt may have been associated with the Taliban.” His most critical comments were delivered in a statement that was read out in his absence during his tribunal. All the charges, he said, “were made up in order to keep him and other Muslims at the camp,” because he “never had a weapon, never carried one and never even killed a chicken.” According to weight records released by the Pentagon in 2007, he weighed 122 pounds on arrival at Guantánamo, but his weight dropped to just 102 pounds in February 2003, probably during one of the many hunger strikes that have punctuated Guantánamo’s history (PDF).

ISN 251 Bin Salem, Mohammed (Yemen)
In a particularly thin set of allegations, the US authorities claim that bin Salem, who was cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, traveled from Yemen to Afghanistan in July 2001, and received training at al-Farouq. Noticeably, he is not accused of having taken part in combat against the Taliban (let alone US forces), as it is only alleged that he “supported al-Qaeda and Taliban forces by serving as a cook at a rest and relaxation facility for front line troops at Bagram,” and that he was captured by Pakistani forces after retreating directly from Bagram to Pakistan.

ISN 254 Khenaina, Muhammad (Yemen)
In Guantánamo, Khenaina has stated that he went to Afghanistan in August 2001 “to teach the Koran in Arabic,” although he admitted that he “did not actually teach the Koran.” After staying in a guest house in Kabul, he said that he heard of the 9/11 attacks and was “concerned about retaliation by the Americans and wanted to get out.” He explained that the owner of the house arranged for him to travel to Logar and then Khost, where he stayed with an Afghan, and then traveled through the mountains to Pakistan with five other Arabs and an Afghan guide. After joining up with another group of 19 men who were also fleeing Afghanistan, he reached the border, where he was detained by the authorities. Throughout this story, the only claim of militancy against Khenaina was an allegation that the manager of the guest house “arranged transportation for guests to a Taliban training area 35 minutes north of Kabul,” but Khenaina insisted that “he was not in Afghanistan to participate in jihad,” and that he “did not have a weapon while in Afghanistan.” He also condemned the 9/11 attacks, and explained that, if released, “he would return to Yemen and marry a cousin who has been betrothed to him and never leave again.”

ISN 255 Hatim, Saeed (Yemen)
In December 2009, Hatim won his habeas corpus petition, but it did not lead to his release. In fact, the Obama administration has appealed the ruling, even though the judge in Hatim’s case, Judge Ricardo Urbina, clearly established that the government’s allegations — that he trained at al-Farouq, stayed in al-Qaeda and Taliban guesthouses, “operated under the command of al-Qaeda and the Taliban at the battlefront against the Northern Alliance,” and fought at the battle of Tora Bora — “rest[ed] almost entirely upon admissions made by the petitioner himself,” which he made “only because he had previously been tortured while in US custody” in Kandahar. In addition, Judge Urbina discredited the Tora Bora allegation, because it was made by a fellow prisoner who had made false allegations against dozens of other prisoners (first exposed publicly in 2006), and “whose grasp on reality,” as Judge Urbina explained, “appears to have been tenuous at best.” Distressingly, the Obama administration’s appeal has been filed despite knowledge that Hatim has suffered from what Judge Urbina described as “severe psychological problems” in Guantánamo, and has tried to commit suicide on several occasions. Indeed, in May 2002, an interrogator stated, “I do not recommend [Hatim] for further exploitation due in part to mental and emotional problems [and] limited knowledgeability.”

ISN 259 Hintif, Fadil (Yemen)
Prior to traveling to Afghanistan, Hintif, who was cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, told his tribunal at Guantánamo that he had spent many years working as a farmer on his family’s land, and had then moved to Sana’a to look for work. There he met a man at a mosque who asked him about “going to Afghanistan to help poor Afghans,” and he “felt this would be a chance to do something good in memory of his deceased father, so he thought it was a good idea.” He then apparently sold his car to raise funds for his trip, received some money from his brother and set off for Afghanistan. In Kabul, he “began living with an individual who previously taught the Koran in Afghanistan,” and when he asked him how he could help the Afghans, was told that “he could either work with the Afghani Red Crescent or he could help distribute food supplies.” Having decided to work for the Red Crescent, he said that he traveled with the instructor to Logar province, south of Kabul, but stopped his work after the US-led invasion began, when he was escorted to the Pakistani border. There, he said, he surrendered to the Pakistani police, who took him to a prison in Peshawar. He was then transferred to a larger prison in Kohat, and was eventually turned over to the Americans. Throughout his whole story, Hintif maintained that he “did not receive any training in Afghanistan” and “did not fight in Afghanistan because he was not convinced of the causes that were being fought for.” He explained that he “felt that the groups there were fighting for power, and that there was no reason to fight a jihad.” Disturbingly, apart from vague allegations about the guest houses in which he stayed, the only allegations that the US authorities have been able to come up with are that his name was on a document “recovered from a safe house raid associated with al-Qaeda in Karachi, Pakistan” (which is not necessarily reliable, as it may not have been his name, but a kunya or alias that does not necessarily refer to him) and a much-derided claim that his Casio watch was the same model as one used in improvised explosive devices “in bombings linked to al-Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorist groups.”

ISN 263 Sultan, Ashraf (Libya)
Sultan, who is accused of being a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (opposed to the regime of Colonel Gaddafi), training at various camps in Afghanistan, and fighting at Tora Bora, has denied the allegations, stating that he left Libya because of religious persecution, and lived with other Libyan refugees in Jalalabad. He has also stated that he was not a member of the LIFG (or of al-Qaeda), and was not at Tora Bora, and has declared that he traveled to the Pakistani border, where he was seized on December 18, 2001, with an Afghan guide, and not with a group of soldiers. His disdain for the betrayal of justice at Guantánamo was revealed in his appearance at his tribunal in 2004, when he stated, “I know my fate is already predetermined and the judgment has been pronounced already. So this Tribunal is just for show and it is not real. Everybody is reading from papers that are already printed and everything is already predetermined. I know for sure my destiny is already predetermined. The judgment against me is already made up. My presence, me defending myself or not defending myself, will have no importance whatsoever.”

ISN 275 Abbas, Yusef (Abdusabar) (China)
Abbas is one of 22 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province), who had fled persecution in their homeland, and had ended up in Afghanistan, either because they had been thwarted in their attempts to reach Turkey or Europe, or because they nursed futile hopes of rising up against the Chinese government. He is one of 17 of the men who were living in a rundown settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains when the US-led invasion began in October 2001, and who, after the settlement was destroyed in a bombing raid, made their way to the Pakistani border, where they were seized and later sold to US forces. 21 years old at the time of his capture, Abbas was a farmer, who, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files, “learned about the oppression of his people as he was growing up, and was determined to leave to find a better life, but could find little information about other countries, except through broadcasts that were made by a covert US radio station. Having finally obtained a passport, he decided to try to get to America. Taking $600 with him, he went first to Kyrgyzstan, where he was warned that the police planted false evidence on Uighurs and handed them over to the Chinese authorities, but where they took $300 from him instead, and laughed at him when he told them that he wanted to go to America. He then went to Pakistan, where a Uighur businessman, who befriended him at the airport, encouraged him to go to an Uzbek house in Jalalabad, where another Uighur took him to the camp in the Tora Bora mountains.” Five of the Uighurs were released in Albania in May 2006, and the remaining 17 — including Abbas — won their habeas corpus petitions in October 2008. However, although 12 of these men have been resettled in Bermuda, Palau and Switzerland, Yusef Abbas and four others remain in Guantánamo. Having turned down offers of a new home because of fears about the suitability or security of the countries offered, they are back in legal limbo, as the US courts have ruled that they have no right to be accepted in the US, and no other offer to rehouse them has yet been made.

ISN 280 Khalik, Saidullah (Khalid) (China)
One of 22 Uighurs held in Guantanamo (see the entry for Yusef Abbas, ISN 275), little is known of Khalik’s story, as he refused to engage with the tribunal process at Guantánamo. In his absence he was accused of being in Afghanistan during the US bombing campaign, and, in a sign of how information was twisted in a ridiculous manner to come up with anything that officials might find a way of using, of receiving “wounds to his face and arm as well as other flesh wounds” during the bombing. Like the other four remaining Uighurs, he is currently in legal limbo, as he awaits an offer of a new home.

ISN 282 Abdulghupur, Hajiakbar (China)
One of 22 Uighurs held in Guantánamo (see the entry for Yusef Abbas, ISN 275), Abdulghupur told his tribunal at Guantánamo, when asked about the “training camp” in the Afghan mountains, where he and 16 others had lived before the bombing raid that destroyed the settlement, “They called this place a camp but that’s way too much of a name for that place we stayed. They did not have enough bathrooms to use or housing or anything. That is way too big of a name for the place where we stayed.” He added, “the conditions were really bad and stressful and there was lots of hard work, [but] I decided to stay there because our goal was to be against the Chinese government and I wouldn’t give up my goal even in the bad conditions to live.” After the bombing raid that completely destroyed the settlement, so that, as Abdulghupur explained, “it looked like no one ever even stayed in that place,” the men’s journey to Pakistan (and their betrayal by Pakistani villagers) was also described by Abdulghupur. “After that there was no stopping,” he said. “There was constantly bombing all the time. In the mountain we stayed in a cave because we didn’t know where to go … We were waiting for our leaders to come and tell us to go to the city or somewhere else but no one showed up and we decided to go to Pakistan. When we got to Pakistan, the local people came to us with tea, bread and meat, really good stuff. In the middle of the night they came to take us to the mosque. We went to the mosque and then they turned us over to the Pakistani authorities … They put us in cars and took us to jail. After that they turned us over to the US.” Like the other four remaining Uighurs, Abdulghupur is currently in legal limbo, as he awaits an offer of a new home.

ISN 288 Saib, Motai (Algeria)
One of five Algerian prisoners facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, Saib (also identified as Mutaj Sayab), had been living in Jalalabad prior to his capture (like many of the Algerians held at Guantánamo), and had traveled to Afghanistan via France and London. Throughout nearly nine years of detention, he has only been accused of “receiving small arms training” near Jalalabad. In relation to plans for his release from Guantánamo, his lawyers explained, in a court filing in July 2008, that in February 2008 the Department of Defense notified them that he had been “approved to leave Guantánamo,” but stated obliquely that “such a decision does not equate [to] a determination that your client is not an enemy combatant, nor does is it a determination that he does not pose a threat to the United States or its allies. I cannot provide you any information regarding when your client may be leaving Guantánamo as his departure is subject to ongoing discussions.” As his lawyers noted, “Saib has serious concerns that this ambiguous and damaging language will prevent his safe release from Guantánamo” to a third country, and these fears have only heightened after the involuntary repatriation of another Algerian, Abdul Aziz Naji, in July this year.

ISN 290 Belbacha, Ahmed (Algeria-UK)
Another of the five Algerians facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, Belbacha was cleared for release in March 2007, and has repeatedly appealed to the US courts to prevent his return to Algeria — although in September 2009, the notoriously Conservative D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the lower courts were no longer able to grant injunctions preventing their forcible repatriation. A former footballer in Algeria, Belbacha then worked as an accountant for a government-owned oil company, but after receiving death threats from Islamist militants, fled to the UK in 1999, where he sought asylum and secured work in Bournemouth. During the Labour Party conference in 1999, he received a thank-you letter and a tip from Deputy Prime Minster John Prescott, whose room he was responsible for cleaning. In June 2001, he decided to take a holiday in Pakistan with a friend, and then traveled to Afghanistan to see the country, staying for several months in a guest house in Jalalabad, and then fleeing to Pakistan after the US-led invasion, where he was seized by opportunistic villagers and sold to US forces. Despite being cleared for release in 2007, the British government has persistently refused to accept Belbacha, so that his lawyers at Reprieve, and other organizations, including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Cageprisoners, have sought help from the governments of Ireland and Luxembourg as well, although to date all these efforts have been unsuccessful. He has also been offered a home in Amherst, Massachusetts, although a law passed by Congress, banning any Guantánamo prisoners from being brought to the US mainland except to face a trial, has prevented him from taking up this offer. In case any doubt remains about the legitimacy of Belbacha’s fears of repatriation, it should be noted that, in November 2009, he was tried in absentia and sentenced to 20 years in prison, for what his lawyers can only conclude was the crime of speaking out about his fears of being repatriated. As Reprieve explained, “In a disgraceful show trial, the court sentenced Ahmed to 20 years in prison for belonging to an ‘overseas terrorist group.’ Despite repeated requests and extensive investigation, Reprieve’s lawyers have been unable to discover what exactly Ahmed is supposed to have done. No evidence has been produced to support his ‘conviction,’ which appears to be retaliation against Ahmed for speaking out about human rights abuses in Algeria.”

ISN 309 Abd Al Sattar, Muieen (UAE)
One of Guantánamo’s least-known prisoners, al-Satter is ostensibly from the United Arab Emirates, although the UAE claims not to know who he is, and his Unclassified Summary of Evidence also states that he “has a Pakistani passport and originally went to Pakistan on vacation in September 2001.” All that is known of this man — listed by the US authorities as Muieen A Deen Jamal A Deen Abd Al Fusal Abd Al Sattar — is contained in this slim document, released in September 2007, but it makes clear that al-Sattar taught at the Private Holy Koran School in Mecca, that he paid for his own travel, that he was “convinced by a friend to go to Afghanistan and teach the Five Pillars of Islam,” and that he “thought if he traveled to Afghanistan that he would get credit from God and that, since the trip was only going to be for a week, there would be no harm in going.” This seems fairly straightforward, and is certainly more comprehensible than other claims from unattributed sources: that he “was identified as a trainer at the al-Farouq training camp in Afghanistan” (which would have been impossible if he arrived in Pakistan in September 2001, as al-Farouq closed after the 9/11 attacks), and that he was “a fighter in Tora Bora who moved around encouraging people to fight and be religious.” Perhaps what actually happened, as was indicated in other passages in the Unclassified Summary, was that the “friend” who convinced him to travel to Afghanistan — a Syrian whom he had met in Karachi — tricked him into traveling to Tora Bora. According to the allegations, al-Sattar “advised that if he saw al-Moaz again, he would be very upset with him and would want to do him physical harm for getting him into so much trouble.”

ISN 310 Ameziane, Djamel (Algeria)
Ameziane, another of the five Algerians facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, had also been living in Jalalabad. A Berber, he left Algeria in 1992 “in order to escape persecution and make a better life for himself,” and unsuccessfully sought asylum in Austria, where he worked legally for three years, becoming the top chef at an Italian restaurant in Vienna, until a new government clamped down on immigrants, and his work permit was denied without explanation. From there, he moved to Canada, where he obtained a temporary work permit and worked for an office supply company and for various restaurants in Montreal. In 2000, after five years in Canada, his asylum claim was denied, and, as his lawyers explained, “Fearful of being forcibly returned to Algeria, and with few options, [he] went to Afghanistan, where he could live freely without discrimination as a Muslim man, and where he would not fear deportation to Algeria.” Apart from an allegation that he stayed in a guest house in Kabul that was associated with the Taliban, before traveling to Jalalabad, the US authorities failed to come up with a shred of evidence against him, with the exception of an evidently unreliable claim, by an unidentified “source,” who said that he “met the detainee” at al-Farouq. In relation to plans for his release from Guantánamo, Ameziane fears returning to Algeria because of the stigma of Guantánamo and the instability in his hometown of Kabylie, where, as his lawyers have explained, practicing Muslims are “targeted for arrests and detention by the government based solely on their religious practices” and “The stigma of having spent time at Guantánamo would alone be enough to put him at risk of being imprisoned if he is returned.”

ISN 311 Bin Mohammed, Farhi Saeed (Algeria)
Bin Mohammed, who is 50 years old, is one of the five Algerians facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force. In his case, uniquely, he was also cleared for release by a US judge after winning his habeas corpus petition in November 2009.  A former conscript in the Algerian army, bin Mohammed had traveled around Europe for many years, working as a laborer in the UK, France and Italy, before traveling to Afghanistan in 2001, apparently in search of a wife. Although the US authorities alleged that he had undertaken military training in Afghanistan, the judge in his case, Judge Gladys Kessler, ruled that the government’s evidence was unreliable because it came from statements made by Binyam Mohamed, the British resident and torture victim, who had been subjected to torture in Pakistan, Morocco and at the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Kabul from April 2002 to May 2004. In an attempt to prevent his enforced repatriation, and to uphold the United States’ obligation, under the UN Convention Against Torture, not to “expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Judge Kessler issued a temporary order barring bin Mohammed’s transfer to Algeria in June this year, following up on his lawyers’ request for her “to order the government to carry out his release, but to bar his transfer to Algeria, where he fears persecution or even death from either the Algerian government or from armed terrorist groups there.” After protracted wrangling with the notoriously Conservative judges of the D.C. Circuit Court, Judge Kessler’s temporary order was overturned, and the Circuit Court’s decision — which drew on previous rulings preventing the lower courts from interfering in the Executive branch’s right to decide how and where to dispose of prisoners — was upheld in July this year, when the US Supreme Court sided with the Circuit Court, just a few hours before the Supreme Court also approved the repatriation of Abdul Aziz Naji, who was immediately sent home. As SCOTUSblog noted, the ruling was “the first indication that the Supreme Court will not allow federal judges to interfere with government controls on who leaves or stays at Guantánamo Bay.” Despite the ruling, bin Mohammed remains at Guantánamo, still desperately hoping that a third country will offer him a new home, although he could, of course, be sent back to Algeria any time the Obama administration feels like doing so.

ISN 324 Al Sabri, Mashur (Yemen)
According to the US authorities, al-Sabri traveled to Afghanistan in summer 2000, lived in Jalalabad for a year, and traveled on occasion to the Taliban lines at Bagram and Kabul. Quite what else he did is difficult to ascertain — not because there are no allegations, but because their trustworthiness is hard to gauge. According to various unidentified sources, in May 2001 he was working as a facilitator for new arrivals at two guest houses in Kabul, and was “well known and well respected as an administrator in the guest houses.” It was also noted that he “was said to facilitate the transfer of weapons and other supplies to the front lines,” and, most worryingly (or most outrageously, depending on your point of view), was accused of working for Osama bin Laden. According to the unidentified allegations, he was “believed to have sworn bayat to Osama bin Laden,” because he and others around him knew bin Laden’s travel dates and routes, and another “source” identified him as “a member of al-Qaeda,” because he was “following Osama bin Laden’s orders to keep the guest house up and running.”

ISN 326 Ahjam, Ahmed (Syria)
Ahjam is one of four Syrians who had been living in Kabul before the US-led invasion, and who were subsequently seized on the Pakistani border. As one of these men, Maasoum Mouhammed (also known as Bilal Abdah Mohammed), was released in Bulgaria in May this year, despite having been accused of running “a safe house,” which was used for “money and document forging operations” for al-Qaeda, it seems likely that Ahmed Ahjam and the other two men, Ali Husein Shaaban (ISN 327) and Abu Omar al-Hamawe (ISN 329) have also been approved for release. Certainly, there is nothing in the men’s story to indicate that they were connected in any way with al-Qaeda. At Guantánamo, Mouhammed described it as “a normal house, a place to eat, drink and sleep,” and, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files, “The four men certainly matched the profiles of economic migrants, drifting from country to country in search of employment, and drawn to Afghanistan by its Arab-influenced reputation for welcoming Muslims from all around the world. They said that only seven people lived at the house (themselves, the owner, and two other Syrians), and that they all put money in to keep the place running.” According to his account in Guantánamo, Ahjam worked for al-Wafa, a Saudi humanitarian aid charity, which the Bush administration regarded as being tied to al-Qaeda, although no proof of this was ever forthcoming, and, with a few exceptions (including Ahmed Ahjam), the many dozens of prisoners who worked for the charity, including its Saudi director, have all been released.

ISN 327 Shaaban, Ali Husein (Syria)
One of four Syrians who had been living in a house in Kabul before the US-led invasion, and who were subsequently seized on the Pakistani border (see the story of Ahmed Ahjam, above), Shaaban, who was just 19 years old when he was seized, came from a poor family in Syria and had been an ironsmith in his father’s store. He told his tribunal at Guantánamo that he went to Afghanistan because he wanted to move there to seek a new life.

ISN 328 Mohamed, Ahmed (China)
One of 22 Uighurs held in Guantanamo (see the entry for Yusef Abbas, ISN 275), and also identified as Hammad Mohammed, he is one of an unknown number of prisoners subjected to “do-over” tribunals at Guantánamo, after the military panels responsible for reviewing their cases in 2004 and 2005 concluded that they were not “enemy combatants” and should be released. These “do-over” tribunals were convened in secret in Washington D.C. — often on more than one occasion — until the military officers delivered the desired verdict, and in Mohammed’s case he was not finally vindicated until a subsequent military review board cleared him for release in 2006. In his initial tribunal, he explained why his desire for military training was aimed at China and not America. “The Chinese people have tortured and pressured the Uighur people really bad,” he said. “The Uighur people are trying to go all over the world now. One sixth of the world’s population is in China. They are a threat to the whole world. If I have such a large enemy, why would I go and fight with another enemy?” Throughout his tribunal, the only explanation for the administration’s determination to continue holding him was an allegation that he was a weapons instructor from May to October 2001. In response, he called one of his compatriots as a witness, who explained, “I saw that he was sick during that time. He has a stomach problem and he was helping with the kitchen work and helping the cook. He was also studying the language.” The allegation was then dropped, but in the meantime ludicrous new allegations were added to his Unclassified Summary of Evidence, in which it was claimed that he “was identified as Abdul Jabar, an al-Qaeda member with the Islamic Movement of Turkistan,” and was also “identified as a visitor to known al-Qaeda guest houses.”

ISN 329 Al Hamawe, Abu Omar (Syria)
One of four Syrians who had been living in a house in Kabul before the US-led invasion, and who were subsequently seized on the Pakistani border (see the story of Ahmed Ahjam, above), al-Hamawe, who was just 20 years old when he was seized, told his tribunal at Guantánamo that he had been working at a store in Kabul, but that he planned to move on to Pakistan when a friend sent him money from Syria, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files. He also stated that the house in Kabul was close to the Pakistani embassy and that their neighbors, who worked for the Red Cross, “knew that all of us were not fighters or Taliban, just refugees.”

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

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners. Cross-posted on The Public Record, Uruknet and New Left Project.

Featuring some stories that were not available at the time of writing, and others that were excluded to keep the book at a manageable length, this additional chapter also focuses on the stories of eight of the 18 Uyghurs (or Uighurs), Chinese Muslims who had fled persecution in their homeland, and were living in a run-down settlement in the Tora Bora mountains.

Unconnected with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, the Uyghurs have long been the most unfortunate group of prisoners at Guantánamo, and their story is currently very topical, as, after years of abuse, neglect and political manipulation by the authorities, their release into the United States was ordered by a District Court judge on October 7. The government has appealed, reviving long-discredited claims that the men remain a threat to the United States, but I hope the stories in this additional chapter help to demonstrate that the opposite is true; that the Uyghurs have only one enemy (the Chinese government), and that they have long looked to the United States as a potential savior, and a beacon of democracy.

Note: The first two additional online chapters are available here and here, and see the left-hand column for the other six.

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

While critics might point out that holding prisoners without an effective screening process, labeling them all as “enemy combatants,” to be held without charge or trial, transporting them halfway round the world to an illegal offshore interrogation center, and depriving them of the protections of the Geneva Conventions might also be regarded as “an unprecedented step in the history of warfare,” what is distressing about this latest batch of releases (which brings the total number of prisoners released to 506) is that two of the men — those from Afghanistan and the UAE — have left Guantánamo as unknown as they arrived: ghost-like and anonymous, and not even identified by the Internment Serial Numbers which replaced their names for the last five or six years of their life.

As some sort of compensation, however, the third prisoner — Jarallah al-Marri, Guantánamo’s sole Qatari prisoner — has been identified, and his story is fascinating for various reasons. Married with children, al-Marri was 28 years old when he was seized by Pakistani forces crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001 at a time when around a third of Guantánamo’s total population (at least 250 prisoners) were captured. As I explain in my book The Guantánamo Files, many of these men were missionaries, humanitarian aid workers, economic migrants or drifters enticed by rumors that the Taliban were crafting a “pure Islamic state in Afghanistan.” Others — al-Marri included — had been encouraged to travel to Afghanistan “to participate in the jihad,” as described in al-Marri’s tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004 or 2005. However, not all of these men were aware of the reality of the jihad, and al-Marri was one of many who stated that he had been tricked.

Arriving in Afghanistan just days before the 9/11 attacks, al-Marri admitted that he had met people in Saudi Arabia who had arranged his trip to Afghanistan, and also admitted attending the al-Farouq training camp (a camp for Arabs, established by the Afghan warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the early 1990s, but associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11). However, he only arrived at the camp on September 10, and left the following day, without receiving any training, when the camp was shut down. After hiding out at various locations in Afghanistan — including a stint in the mountains near Kabul — he said that “an individual in Afghanistan arranged for [him] to be smuggled across the border into Pakistan,” and that he “crossed the border on a motorcycle, using a gate at which the smuggler seemed to know the guard.” He was then seized “while taking a bus from one town to another in Pakistan … after a guard boarded the bus and questioned [him] on his nationality.” At no point was he accused of raising arms against US forces, and in his tribunal, at which he authorized his Personal Representative to speak on his behalf, after requesting the services of a lawyer, he explained, “I never fought anyone. I did not want to continue because it was wrong.”

In statements made to interrogators, al-Marri elaborated on his misgivings about the situation in Afghanistan. He said that he “was misled” about the jihad and explained that he did not realize, until he was in Afghanistan, that it “was a battle of Muslim against Muslim.” He also stated that he “learned after his arrival in Afghanistan that the Taliban were not as good as he was told,” and made a point of adding that “he had second thoughts and wanted to return to Qatar after learning that the al-Farouq camp was owned by Osama bin Laden.” In addition, when questioned about al-Qaeda, he made a point rarely mentioned by other prisoners: that he did not hear the name “al-Qaeda” until after his capture, because “al-Qaeda, along with all the fighters and trainees, were called Mujahideen.”

Despite the fact that he did not undertake military training in Afghanistan, and never raised arms against US forces, al-Marri was treated abysmally in Guantánamo. In 2005, his lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, reported that “Mr. al-Marri has been in solitary confinement for over 16 months and often goes as long as 3 weeks without being allowed outside his cell for recreation. The lights in Mr. al-Marri’s cell remain on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and he has been denied adequate bedding and clothing. Mr. al-Marri is able to sleep only 2 hours a night, and his physical and mental health have deteriorated significantly.”

In summer 2005, he was one of at least 200 prisoners who undertook a mass hunger strike to protest about their daily living conditions and the injustice of their seemingly endless imprisonment without charge or trial. As a result, although he only weighed 122 pounds (8 stone 10 pounds) on arrival at Guantánamo, his weight dropped to 105 pounds (7 stone 7 pounds) and he was hospitalised and placed on an IV, his situation complicated by a deteriorating heart condition. He explained to Jonathan Hafetz that “the government had a nurse make sexual advances towards him while he was lying in his hospital bed in a vain attempt to convince him to give up his hunger strike.”

What has not been made clear about Jarallah al-Marri’s case is his relationship with his brother Ali, a legal US resident who was seized by the FBI in Peoria, Illinois in December 2001 and has been held in complete isolation as an “enemy combatant” on the US mainland since June 2003, without charge or trial. Although the government alleges that Ali al-Marri was part of a US-based al-Qaeda sleeper cell, references to him are scant in the documentation relating to Jarallah, and relate primarily to the grand jury indictment of May 2003, in which he was accused of “making false statements to the FBI” in relation to the 9/11 attacks. What is curious is that Jarallah was released from Guantánamo just two weeks after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, although Ali has some vague right to appeal his untested designation as an “enemy combatant,” the President’s dictatorial powers, granted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, remain intact, and he has the right to imprison any American, either citizens or residents, and hold them forever without charge or trial if he believes them to be “enemy combatants.”

The timing of Jarallah’s release may be coincidental, particularly as Jonathan Hafetz explained to me that he was cleared for release after an administrative review in April, and it may be that, in an attempt to reduce the population of Guantánamo in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the prisoners have constitutional habeas corpus rights, his repatriation — and those of his unknown fellow prisoners — was a straightforward process, which enabled a quietly desperate administration to prevent a few more prisoners from challenging the basis of their detention in the District Courts in the coming months.

Certainly, the case against him would, I am sure, appear dismally weak when scrutinized by a proper court rather than the mockery of justice served up at Guantánamo, where, as noted by former insider Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, the tribunal system was designed merely to rubber-stamp the prisoners’ designation as “enemy combatants,” without any meaningful way for them to challenge the “evidence” against them. Jonathan Hafetz also wondered if his release was timed to avoid a court showdown over a motion regarding the destruction of evidence relating to Jarallah, which, he stated, “was presumably about to go forward.”

I can’t help wondering, however, if Jarallah’s release was not also timed to remove a potential witness from his brother’s case, one who might have exculpatory evidence proving that Ali was a legitimate student in the United States, and that the case against him, which is based solely on information provided by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during the first few months of his torture in secret CIA custody in spring 2003, is nothing more than a web of lies spun by a prisoner who, as torture victims do, told his captors whatever they wanted to hear to get the torture to stop.

POSTSCRIPT: The prisoner from the UAE has been identified as Abdullah al-Hamiri. What little is known of his story can be found here.

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

Note:

The prisoners’ numbers are as follows:

ISN 334: Jarallah al-Marri (Qatar)
ISN 48: Abdullah al-Hamiri (UAE)

The Afghan, whose identity was unknown at the time of his release, is:

ISN 1165: Mohammed Mussa Yakubi (his story will be described in a forthcoming online chapter, but I can reveal that he was a security officer working for the government of Hamid Karzai)

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the eleven prisoners released from February to June 2009, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here).

This additional chapter complements Chapter 5 of The Guantánamo Files, looking at the stories of 16 prisoners not mentioned in the book, who were the first to be captured crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. They are referred to as “Osama’s bodyguards,” because of dubious allegations made by Mohammed al-Qahtani, an alleged “20th hijacker” for the 9/11 attacks, during the months that he was tortured at Guantánamo in late 2002 and early 2003, but their stories also contain many other unattributed allegations made by unidentified sources and “al-Qaeda operatives” that are equally suspicious.

Nearly six and a half years since Guantánamo opened, it is to America’s shame that this is the first time that many of these men’s stories have been revealed, especially as none of them appear to have had anything whatsoever to do with the inner workings of al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks, which is the purported reason for their long incarceration without charge or trial.

It is, I believe, equally shameful that the majority of them –- who are from the Yemen –- remain in Guantánamo, with no sign of when, if ever, they will be released, because of the inability of the US and Yemeni governments to come to some sort of agreement about the conditions of their repatriation. The fact that the majority of the Saudis –- whose stories are remarkably similar –- were repatriated in 2006 and 2007 only adds to the realization that Guantánamo –- touted as a prison holding “the worst of the worst” –- is actually a failed experiment in torture and interrogation, and that politics, rather then justice, determines who gets to leave, and when.

Note: The first two additional chapters are available here and here, and see the column on the left for the other nine.

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