19.5.09
As the Obama administration prepares to relaunch Dick Cheney and David Addington’s reviled Military Commissions (with claims that they will be used for less than 20 of the 240 prisoners still held), senior officials have been largely silent about the eventual fate of the rest of the prison’s population, with the exception of a few recent remarks indicating that they are also thinking of pressing for a form of “preventive detention” for 50 to 100 of the prisoners.
The irony — that all the prisoners have been enduring a form of “preventive detention” for over seven years — is apparently lost on the government, which has also maintained a resolute silence in response to a handful of habeas corpus cases (in which the prisoners are seeking to have their cases dismissed by the courts, as mandated by the Supreme Court last June) that have resulted in judges pouring scorn on the government’s supposed evidence.
In an article last week, “Judge Condemns ‘Mosaic’ Of Guantánamo Intelligence, And Unreliable Witnesses,” I analyzed a devastating ruling by District Court Judge Gladys Kessler in the habeas corpus hearing of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed. A Yemeni, Ali Ahmed has always maintained that he was a student, staying in a guest house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and that, when he was seized in a raid on the house, on March 28, 2002, he had no knowledge that the house was, apparently, tangentially connected to the alleged senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. Furthermore, in response to the government’s other allegations, he has also “denie[d] ever going to Afghanistan, training at an al-Qaeda camp, fighting against anyone, or being a member of a terrorist group.”
Authorizing Ali Ahmed’s habeas claim, Judge Kessler demolished the government’s case against him, painting a disturbing picture of unreliable allegations made by other prisoners who were tortured, coerced, bribed or suffering from mental health issues, and a “mosaic” of intelligence, purporting to rise to the level of evidence, which actually relied, to an intolerable degree, on second- or third-hand hearsay, guilt by association and unsupportable suppositions.
This follow-up article looks in depth at Ali Ahmed’s story, and those of the 15 men seized with him in the “Issa” guest house in Faisalabad, with the aim of encouraging the Justice Department to abandon its cases against these other men, either as part of its secretive Executive review of the prisoners in Guantánamo (with its uncomfortable echoes of the Bush administration’s love of Executive decisions made without consulting Congress or the judiciary) or by refusing to contest their habeas cases in the District Courts.
I propose this course of action because the cases against these other men demonstrate a similar reliance on dubious allegations, and a similar “mosaic” of inferences that will not stand up to outside scrutiny, as was noted by Judge Kessler in her ruling, when she wrote, “It is likely, based on evidence in the record, that at least a majority of the [redacted] guests were indeed students, living at a guest house that was located close to a university.”
Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed’s testimony at Guantánamo
Ali Ahmed, who was just 17 years old at the time of his capture (although the Pentagon claims that he was 18), repeatedly explained at Guantánamo that he was seized and held by mistake. His statements were made in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, convened to assess whether, on capture, he had been correctly designated as an “enemy combatant” who could be held without charge or trial, and in the subsequent annual Administrative Review Boards, convened to assess whether he still posed a threat to the US or its allies.
As I have explained at length in my book The Guantánamo Files, and in numerous articles over the last two years, these hearings were monstrously unjust, as they relied on classified evidence that was not disclosed to the prisoners, and also prevented them from having legal representation. In addition, as Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, a veteran of US intelligence, has explained, based on his involvement in the tribunals in 2004 and 2005, the body responsible for compiling the information to be used as evidence had little or no access to the databases of the relevant intelligence agencies, and, as a result, relied largely on “generic” information that did not specifically relate to the prisoners, and, in most cases, on “information obtained during interrogations of other detainees,” which, as Judge Kessler’s recent ruling confirms, were often made by prisoners who were tortured, coerced, bribed or suffering from mental health issues.
Nevertheless, the transcripts of these hearings are often the only means by which we know anything about the prisoners at Guantánamo, and in his most recent publicly available review (made available by the Pentagon four months ago, and dating from 2007), Ali Ahmed made it clear that, after five years in Guantánamo, he was still struggling to understand why he was being held, as the following exchange makes clear:
Presiding Officer: Can you tell us why you were arrested?
Detainee: I learned about why after I was arrested. They told me that this house is for the al-Qaeda and the Taliban … They told us after we were arrested in the house and in the interrogations.
Presiding Officer: Do you have any idea why they would think that?
Detainee: I do not know.
After refuting the allegations against him, it was unsurprising that, when Ali Ahmed was given the opportunity to make a statement, he delivered the following plea:
Detainee: What is the main accusation against me that kept me here for five years? What is the main accusation? Is it my travel to Pakistan? Is that an accusation? True, I went during a very difficult situation, but is that an accusation that would keep me here for five years?
The following exchange then took place:
Presiding Officer: The purpose of this board is for an administrative review. To determine whether you should be released, transferred, or continue to be detained. Your status as an enemy combatant has already been determined.
Detainee: I don’t even know why they made that decision when I don’t have a problem with Americans. I’ve never fought Americans, I’ve never fought anybody. I’ve never ever participated in any wars, any, anything else. Why would I be an enemy combatant?
Presiding Officer: We understand and take your statements on board and will consider those in our decision.
Detainee: I know an enemy combatant is someone who participates in the war and helps the war, or someone who is a threat and dangerous to the United States, but I was 17 years old, I’ve never done anything. [W]hat makes me dangerous to the United States at that time?
Although the review board had no response to Ahmed’s questions, the officers involved refused to approve his release from Guantánamo, and it has taken another two years, and the Supreme Court ruling granting habeas corpus rights to the prisoners last June, for him to be able to test the government’s allegations against him in a court of law, and to secure the resounding legal victory that was delivered by Judge Kessler last week.
Even so, it should be noted that judges do not actually have the power to order the government to release prisoners, even if, as in Ali Ahmed’s case, they have established, “by a preponderance of the evidence,” that he should never have been detained in the first place. This is because of a truly disturbing appeals court ruling in the case of 17 Uighurs at Guantánamo (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), which took place in February, after the government dropped its claims that they were “enemy combatants,” and a District Court judge ordered their release into the United States last October. As lawyer Jana Ramsay explained, two judges — although ostensibly dealing with the right of the Uighurs to be admitted into the United States — stated that “the due process clause does not apply to detainees at Guantánamo,” because it is “not sovereign territory of the United States,” and that “the right to be released” was not “a necessary corollary to unlawful detention or compensation for such detention.”
The stories of the other prisoners seized with Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed
Moving beyond Ali Ahmed’s story, an analysis of the stories of the 15 other men seized in the raid on the “Issa” guest house — mostly Yemenis, and mostly aged between 18 and 24 — reveals that the majority of them have also maintained, throughout their long imprisonment, that they never set foot in Afghanistan, never trained or fought with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and had no connection whatsoever with terrorism. This analysis also reveals that the government’s allegations against them rely, for the most part, on similar witnesses and a similar “mosaic” of intelligence as those dismissed so comprehensively by Judge Kessler in Ali Ahmed’s case.
Although one of the 15, Ali Abdullah Ahmed al-Salami, was one of three prisoners who died in Guantánamo in June 2006, apparently by committing suicide, nine of the surviving 14 prisoners have maintained that they were students at Salafia University, run by the vast missionary organization Jamaat-al-Tablighi, two have stated that they traveled to receive medical treatment, and another, Fahmi Ahmed, said that he went to Pakistan to buy fabrics, taking money that he had borrowed from his mother, but explained that he actually spent most of his time “like a wild man,” drinking and smoking hashish. Another young man, Mohammed Hassen, was not even living at the house, and was caught up in the raid after visiting for dinner and staying the night, and two others — a Russian and a Yemeni — arrived at the house just two weeks before the raid.
In hearings at Guantánamo, several of the men have pointed out that they were told shortly after their capture that they had been seized by mistake. Mohammed Tahir, one of the Yemeni students, explained,
The army translator and the interrogator from the Pakistani intelligence said, “yes, all of what this man said … about his story in Pakistan is correct, and therefore that is why we are going to give him back his passport that we took” … I was really surprised that the American intelligence refused all of these proofs and they said no. “We still need him,” they said, and then they took me.
Another Yemeni student, Emad Hassan, who stated that he was near the end of a seven-month trip to the university to study the Koran when he was seized, said that, while in Pakistani custody, “the person who was in charge came and told us we didn’t have anything to worry about,” and that “our sheet was clean.”
Fayad Ahmed, also a Yemeni student, told his tribunal four years ago that he had recently been told in Guantánamo that he would be released. “The interrogator and the investigator about a month ago that met with me told [me] that there was nothing against me and that I am an innocent man and should [be] released,” he said.
Of the two prisoners who said that they had traveled to Pakistan to receive medical treatment, Abdul Aziz al-Noofayee, a Saudi, said that he went to receive treatment for a back problem, and Mohammed Salam, a Yemeni, said that he went for treatment on his nose. After explaining that a “generous person” paid for his trip, the following exchange took place, which demonstrated a cultural gap between the US military and Muslims from the Gulf:
Tribunal Member: I don’t know your culture very well, but … in our culture people just don’t step up and say, “I’ll pay for the trip for you.”
Detainee: In our culture, in Islam, there is such a thing … Indeed, it is an obligation for any Muslim who is rich to pay for someone who is poor.
Despite the protestations of these prisoners, the authorities at Guantánamo have persistently claimed that Jamaat-al-Tablighi was “used to mask travel and activities of terrorists” — even though this allegation has never been regarded as legitimate outside Guantánamo — but what should be troubling the Justice Department right now, after Judge Kessler’s ruling, is the extent to which the cases against these other 15 men rely, as with Ali Ahmed, not on confessions made by the prisoners themselves, but on statements made by other prisoners which appear to be just as dubious as those derided by Judge Kessler.
The weakness of the supposed evidence
To give just a few examples, the transcripts of the most recently publicly available ARBs (from 2007) include the sweeping statement that “Students at Salafia University are encouraged to fight in the Jihad against the West,” and, to cite just one case, Emad Hassan, who denied ever being in Afghanistan or attending a training camp, “was identified as an al-Qaeda recruiter and travel facilitator who helps ‘fund other individuals’ travel’ to Afghanistan,” as “a member of al-Qaeda who swore bayat [an oath of loyalty] to Osama bin Laden,” and as “one of 50 men” at the al-Farouq training camp in Afghanistan, who were identified as bin Laden’s bodyguards.
In the case of Mohammed Hassen, who was only visiting the house when he was seized (and who is one of only two of the “Issa” guest house prisoners to be cleared for release after a military review), the allegations in the previous round of ARBs consisted of precisely three allegations: that “An individual who was in Afghanistan identified [him] as a fighter who traveled between Kandahar and Khost, Afghanistan,” that “A student who trained at al-Farouq identified [him] as a Yemeni who trained at al-Farouq,” and that “A senior al-Qaeda operative noted that a photo of the detainee may be a Yemeni and that he may have seen him at one point ‘inside,’ meaning Afghanistan.”
In the case of Abdul Aziz al-Noofayee (also cleared for release after an ARB, but, like Hassen, still held), the only allegations were that “A senior al-Qaeda operative stated that [he] attended the Khaldan camp in approximately 1997,” and that he “was captured with a Casio F-91W watch,” allegedly “used in bombings that have been linked to al-Qaeda and radical Islamic groups with improvised explosive devices” (and this, believe it or not, is an allegation that has been leveled at dozens of prisoners over the years).
In some of the other cases, no allegations whatsoever have been made publicly available beyond the “guilt by association” of staying in the guest house, and although in a handful of cases the government claims to have secured confessions that the men “admitted to fighting with enemy forces,” doubts about the circumstances in which these confessions were produced indicate that, under scrutiny in a court, even these allegations may be less clear-cut than they appear. As a result, I hope to have demonstrated, as I stated at the start of this article, that the Justice Department would be well advised to abandon its cases against these other men before it suffers similar defeats in future habeas hearings.
The bigger picture regarding false allegations
Moreover, the Justice Department also needs to take a long, hard look at the information it is relying on as evidence in numerous other cases. With one exception, the identities of the four unreliable witnesses in Ali Ahmed’s case were redacted by the government, but enough evidence is publicly available, from the statements of released prisoners, to demonstrate that the coercive techniques that were widely used at Guantánamo between 2002 and 2004 (and derived from the US military’s SERE program) caused numerous prisoners to make false confessions in order to bring an end to their suffering.
In addition, further publicly available information also demonstrates that certain witnesses at Guantánamo — whether through torture-induced fear, in one case, or bribery, in others — made false allegations against dozens of their fellow prisoners, which, crucially, are still used by the government as part of its supposed evidence.
The first example to surface in public — who appears to be one of the men whose testimony was dismissed by Judge Kessler, and by another judge in the case of another prisoner, Mohammed El-Gharani — was described by Corine Hegland in February 2006, in an article for the National Journal. Hegland described how, in the tribunal of a Yemeni prisoner, Farouq Ali Ahmed, his personal representative (an officer assigned in place of a lawyer) had discovered, by investigating his case files, that a key allegation against him had been made by a prisoner described in an FBI memo as a notorious liar. In another case, of a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, the personal representative discovered that this same prisoner had made false allegations against 60 of his fellow inmates, placing each of them in Afghanistan before they even arrived in the country.
The prisoner who made all these false allegations is Yasim Basardah, who was cleared for release after a habeas review six weeks ago. Profiled in the Washington Post in February, a disturbing picture emerged of a man who, “with other informers,” lives in a group of cells away from the other prisoners. As the Post described it, “he has received a CD player, chewing tobacco, coffee, library books and other perks, according to court documents,” including a video game console, even though the man described by some officials at Guantánamo as their “star witness” has, in the opinion of other officials, been the subject of “reservations about [his] credibility” since 2004.
As the Post’s article made clear, Basardah is not the only liar whose false confessions have infected the government’s “evidence.” An Iraqi, repatriated in January, was also well-known in Guantánamo, as is Abdul Rahim al-Ginco, a Syrian “rescued” by US forces from a Taliban jail. Tortured by al-Qaeda operatives, because they thought he was a spy, al-Ginco suffers from severe mental health problems (and may also be one of the witnesses dismissed by Judge Kessler), but although he has renounced some of his false confessions, others remain, locked forever in the case files of the prisoners, with no way of challenging them except in a court.
Most importantly, however, false allegations are not the exclusive preserve of a handful of industrious informants. As I mentioned above, almost any prisoner could be persuaded to make up false stories when they could no longer bear the grueling interrogations, or the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” to wear them down, and, as the few examples of the Faisalabad guest house prisoners cited above also indicate, the case files are also littered with allegations made by “senior al-Qaeda operatives” — individuals like Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other “high-value detainees” who were held (and tortured) for years in secret CIA prisons before their transfer to Guantánamo in September 2006, and others, like Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who died in a Libyan prison last week, who were held in a network of secret prisons and proxy prisons around the world.
In all these prisons — and in Guantánamo, and in the prisons in Afghanistan — prisoners were shown what Chris Mackey, the pseudonym of a senior interrogator in Afghanistan, referred to in his book The Interrogators as the “family album,” which featured photos of other prisoners. And from all these places, therefore, it is difficult to see how much of the “evidence” against the prisoners can be anything other than a tissue of lies, extracted using the same techniques of torture, coercion, bribery, and the exploitation of mental illness that Judge Kessler identified in the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed.
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 also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.
As published on the Huffington Post, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch and ZNet. Also cross-posted on Common Dreams.
For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases, see: Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history and Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? (both December 2007), The Supreme Court’s Guantánamo ruling: what does it mean? (June 2008), Guantánamo as Alice in Wonderland (Uighurs’ first court victory, June 2008), What’s Happening with the Guantánamo cases? (July 2008), Government Says Six Years Is Not Long Enough To Prepare Evidence (September 2008), From Guantánamo to the United States: The Story of the Wrongly Imprisoned Uighurs (October 2008), Guantánamo Uyghurs’ resettlement prospects skewered by Justice Department lies (October 2008), Guilt By Torture: Binyam Mohamed’s Transatlantic Quest for Justice (November 2008), After 7 Years, Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo Kidnap Victims (November 2008), Is Robert Gates Guilty of Perjury in Guantánamo Torture Case? (December 2008), A New Year Message to Barack Obama: Free the Guantánamo Uighurs (January 2009), The Top Ten Judges of 2008 (January 2009), No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo (January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (January 2009), How Cooking For The Taliban Gets You Life In Guantánamo (January 2009), Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics (February 2009), Bad News And Good News For The Guantánamo Uighurs (February 2009), The Nobodies Formerly Known As Enemy Combatants (March 2009), Farce at Guantánamo, as cleared prisoner’s habeas petition is denied (April 2009), Obama’s First 100 Days: A Start On Guantánamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies (July 2009), Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (July 2009), Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think (July 2009), How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad, July 2009), Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave (August 2009), Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (August 2009). Also see: Justice extends to Bagram, Guantánamo’s Dark Mirror (April 2009), Judge Rules That Afghan “Rendered” To Bagram In 2002 Has No Rights (July 2009).
Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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28 Responses
5th Estate says...
Meanwhile, the UK somehow manages to keep its terror suspects in ordinary prisons and to give them ordinary court trials. What’s up with that?
...on May 19th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Only up to a point, 5th Estate.
Britain imprisoned dozens of foreign “terror suspects” without charge or trial for three years from December 2001, until the Law Lords ruled that it was illegal. They then introduced control orders, and got the policy approved by Parliament, even though the control order regime is a form of house arrest — and also a form of “preventive detention” — that has been picked up on by other countries, including Canada, and is probably being scrutinized right now by those in the US — some of whom should know better — who want to apply it to some of the prisoners in Guantanamo.
Resist! Resist!
You can’t go around imprisoning people for what they might do …
Britain also has dozens of men imprisoned on “deportation bail,” also without charge or trial, as the government struggles to repatriate them, even though sending people back to countries where they face the risk of torture is illegal (it’s also what the US authorities have tried, and mostly failed to do at Guantanamo).
The archive for the UK articles is here:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/category/belmarsh-control-orders-deportation-and-extradition/
And you might find these specific articles useful:
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/02/22/abu-qatada-law-lords-and-government-endorse-torture/
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/03/17/britains-insane-secret-terror-evidence/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/mar/30/civil-liberties-human-rights1
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/04/01/britains-guantanamo-calling-for-an-end-to-secret-evidence/
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/04/03/britains-guantanamo-fact-or-fiction/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/apr/29/secret-evidence-terror-suspects
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/may/15/ibn-al-sheikh-al-libi-prison
...on May 19th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
5th Estate says...
thanks for setting me straight.
...on May 20th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] A Prison Built On Lies Posted on May 20, 2009 by dandelionsalad by Andy Worthington Featured Writer Dandelion Salad http://www.andyworthington.co.uk 20 May […]
...on May 20th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Andy Worthington says...
I don’t normally cross-post comments from other sites, but I rather liked this comment by Salpha, who wrote the following message in response to publication of the article on the Huffington Post:
“You should be honoured for your long quest in getting justice for these detainees. It is beyond me that the Huffington Post decided to place your comment in the World section. It should be in the Politics section since Gitmo has so much become a politicized issue. Very few will see your comment or read it. Putting Gitmo comments on the world section is like saying it isn’t a US issue. I am following this with a letter to the Huffington Post.
“You are a lonesome voice and I hope some day the US do the right thing. So much depends on people being informed. As far as I can see these things get very little attention. If the public does not get informed than the outrage that should be going one right now is not going to happen and thank you so much.”
It reminded me that, in June 2004, when the Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that the prisoners had habeas rights because they were “imprisoned in territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control,” the Court was supposed to have established, once and for all, that the Bush administration’s attempts to claim that Guantanamo was actually Cuban, and that therefore it was a legal black hole, were despicably fraudulent and groundless.
And yet, of course, when Judges Randolph and Henderson turned down the Uighurs’ appeal just three months ago, they not only ruled that “the right to be released” was not “a necessary corollary to unlawful detention or compensation for such detention” (gutting Boumediene of all meaning), but also had the nerve to state that “the due process clause does not apply to detainees at Guantánamo,” because it is “not sovereign territory of the United States.”
After all this time, therefore, the illusion that Guantanamo is “outside the law” — and outside the United States — still exists, and I’m grateful to Salpha for pointing out that not placing it center stage as a US political issue tends to reinforce the ideas put forward by Judges Henderson and Randolph rather then those put forward by the Supreme Court.
...on May 20th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
And in response to 5th Estate:
I didn’t set out to “put you straight,” by the way. The shocking truth is that the situation in Britain is almost completely unknown, and I dare say that only the tiniest fraction of those who know about Guantanamo know about the British government’s lawless activities.
...on May 20th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Frances Madeson says...
I confess I am at times rocked by dark premonitions about what else could be contained in this tissue of lies. If Colin Powell could be so easily deceived with such disastrous results why should we think that was the last such monstrous deception? Or, for that matter, the first?
My mind is being pulled downward with an almost gravitational force toward the Project for the New American Century Report. I am seized with the conviction that the report should be scrutinized in light of what we now know they are capable of. It is time for some serious and careful remedial close reading. Calling all brilliant literary critics to contribute to this urgent effort!
Hitler, who Cheney increasingly resembles, laid out his whole hideous roadmap in Mein Kampf. I feel, deep in my gut, that the PNAC report is of a similar significance. I tremble to think of where it might take us, to what stark, deeply hurtful and shatteringly unacceptable realizations. But that’s where we’re headed. I know it. I just know it.
Andy, that Zelikow is implicated in both the torture memos and the 9/11 Commission is truly scaring me at this point. How can it be a coincidence? How can that be?
...on May 20th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
turning the page on tyranny « seeking spirit says...
[…] often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, […]
...on May 24th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Forgotten: The Second Anniversary Of A Guantánamo Suicide by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] two Yemeni prisoners have had their habeas corpus petitions granted by US courts (and more are likely to follow), and with each passing day it becomes more apparent that President Obama’s promise to close […]
...on June 1st, 2009 at 3:37 am
The Lies Told About The Saudi Hunger Striker Released From Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody.” And yet, one year later, either through Justice Department obstruction, or the slow deliberations of Obama’s Guantánamo Task Force, Justice Kennedy’s words have […]
...on June 22nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] if you were imprisoned for seven years without charge or trial, and then a judge ruled that the government’s case against you consisted solely of unreliable allegations made by other […]
...on August 4th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] unreliable witnesses and dubious “mosaics” of intelligence, but also because she suggested that her ruling had ramifications for the cases of some, or all of the other men seized with Ali Ahmed, when she stated, “It is […]
...on August 18th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait « freedetainees.org says...
[…] And Unreliable Witnesses (May 2009), Pain At Guantánamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantánamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Free The Guantánamo Uighurs! (May 2009), Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): […]
...on December 12th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] more sense to defuse the “recruiting tool” sooner rather than later, sending back some more of the patently innocent Yemenis still in Guantánamo rather than allowing the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening on […]
...on January 8th, 2010 at 5:32 am
On Democracy Now! Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo, Yemen, Lies, Hysteria and the False Recidivism Report « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] and ran through a few of the men’s stories, to demonstrate how innocent men — some of them students seized in a house raid in Pakistan — are being made to pay the price for political opportunism and presidential […]
...on January 8th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers « Dark Politricks Retweeted says...
[…] sense to defuse the “recruiting tool” sooner rather than later, sending back some more of the patently innocent Yemenis still in Guantánamo rather than allowing the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening on […]
...on January 9th, 2010 at 2:48 am
The Liberty Voice » Web-Only Content » “On Democracy Now! Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo, Yemen, Lies, Hysteria and the False Recidivism Report” says...
[…] and ran through a few of the men’s stories, to demonstrate how innocent men — some of them students seized in a house raid in Pakistan — are being made to pay the price for political opportunism and presidential […]
...on January 9th, 2010 at 4:09 am
Happy 8th Birthday Gitmo: an interview with watchdog Andy Worthington « Pluto Press – Independent Progressive Publishing says...
[…] his habeas corpus petition last May and was finally released by Obama in October. There were around 15 other men seized in that house — eight of whom are Yemenis — but although one was cleared for […]
...on January 19th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers « Dark Politics says...
[…] sense to defuse the “recruiting tool” sooner rather than later, sending back some more of the patently innocent Yemenis still in Guantánamo rather than allowing the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening on […]
...on April 4th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers – Dark Politricks says...
[…] sense to defuse the “recruiting tool” sooner rather than later, sending back some more of the patently innocent Yemenis still in Guantánamo rather than allowing the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening on […]
...on April 10th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
No Escape from Guantanamo: Uighurs Lose Again in US Court « EUROPE TURKMEN FRIENDSHIPS says...
[…] Guantلnamo, But Not Enough (May 2009), Pain At Guantلnamo And Paralysis In Government (May 2009), Guantلnamo: A Prison Built On Lies (May 2009), Guantلnamo: A Real Uyghur Slams Newt Gingrich’s Racist Stupidity (May 2009), Free […]
...on June 7th, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Transcript Of President Obama’s Speech About Guantánamo And Terrorism « Covering Delta says...
[…] often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our […]
...on April 14th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] (a military official assigned instead of a lawyer) investigated Basardah’s file, and found that he had made similar claims against 60 other prisoners. In January 2009, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Richard Leon (an appointee of […]
...on April 26th, 2011 at 8:28 am
arcticredriver says...
Thanks Andy! Mohammed Tahar was killed, by a drone strike, on March 2nd, 2017. Fox News, yipes, so eager to report alarmist reports, reported his death as two deaths. “2 former Gitmo detainees killed in US airstrikes in Yemen”
There is lots of alarmist reporting, as to how he returned to the battlefield, or reasonable equivalent. I see no recent reporting of how he was captured far from Afghanistan, in a house full of foreign students — not a “battlefield”. I see no recent reporting noting that he saw his brother die, in Afghanistan, under highly questionable circumstances.
Your 2011 reporting on Tahar notes how he testified interrogators told him he was captured in error, and would soon be released. I haven’t seen any recent reporting to pick up on this important point.
We know the Bush OARDEC status review boards, and the Obama reviews, were authorized to recommend the continued detention of innocent men, when the officers suspected that the men now represented a danger to the USA, solely due ot years of torture and inhumane indefinite detention.
I think that is what we saw here — another instance of the foolhardiness of cruelty, or intellectual cowardice. Would he have been radicalized if he and his brother were released promptly, if intelligent, mature, well-educated, adult intelligence officers had had an opportunity to promptly determine they never should have been held in the first place?
Thanks again!
...on March 7th, 2017 at 5:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your comments, arcticredriver. Always good to hear from you.
I agree with everything you say. It’s depressing that we haven’t heard about how he was never alleged to have been captured on battlefield, or, as you noted, that he mentioned that he had been told he had been captured in error. personally, I’d always like to see the media report on Judge Kessler’s ruling about the men captured in the Issa House when any of them are being discussed. In a habeas hearing in May 2009, Judge Kessler stated, “It is likely, based on evidence in the record, that at least a majority of the [redacted] guests were indeed students, living at a guest house that was located close to a university.”
See: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/14/judge-condemns-mosaic-of-guantanamo-intelligence-and-unreliable-witnesses/
...on March 7th, 2017 at 8:44 pm
arcticredriver says...
I re-read his formerly secret JTF-GTMO assessment. It hinged largely on the misconception that Abu Zubaydah was an al Qaeda leader. I choose to follow Occam’s razor, and trust that most of what Abu Zubaydah said, that has been made public, was basically the truth.
The assessment claims, at various points, that officials had evidence he used a forged passport to travel to, and fight in Afghanistan. But later we find this passage.
This is probably where the claim he used a forged passport came from. They have a record of a Pakistani named Muhammad Tahir attending the Khalid Bin al-Wahid training camp, in August 1998. They have ISN 679 Mohamed Tahar’s passport, which does not show travel to Afghanistan or Pakistan, in 1998. So, the only way he could have traveled in 1998 is if he used a fraudulent passport.
Whoever drafted the claim he used a false passport was unwilling or unable to conceive he had a namesake, while whoever drafted the passage I quoted could conceive he had a namesake.
Explaining the pervasiveness and inherent risks of this namesake problem should be in the first chapter of “analyzing GWOT captives’ cases for dummies”. The Anglosphere has a surname namespace that is very rich, with surnames from cultures around the world. Very few people with the surname Smith, name their kid “John”, when there are so many choices of given names. Still John Smith is regarded as the most generic common name. Well, the surname namespace in the Arabic countries, and in Afghanistan, is quite small. Practically everyone is in the same place as John Smith.
One of the allegations against poor old Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was that he was the second in command of the mythical “Forty-man unit”. Intelligence officials believed they knew that a guy named “Abdul Razzaq” was the mythical unit’s second in command. Well, Guantanano held over half a dozen guys named Abdul Razzaq. And, when we finally got that one list of 650 Bagram captives, over a dozen of them were named Abdul Razzaq.
In 2032, when the classified documents become unclassified, I’ll bet it will turn out that practically every one of the individuals named Abdul Razzaq was held, in part, because he was suspected of being the second in command of the Taliban’s 007s.
...on March 9th, 2017 at 9:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Great points about the inadequacy of the intelligence regarding the Guantanamo prisoners, arcticredriver, as we have discussed before over the years. Misidentification based on names – or on kunyas or aliases, as is so often mentioned in the so-called “evidence” – is rife in the prisoners’ files, as interrogators and analysts clutched desperately at straws.
...on March 9th, 2017 at 11:35 pm
My Message To Obama: Great Speech, But No Military Commissions and No “Preventive Detention” by Andy Worthington – Dandelion Salad says...
[…] The President began by being openly critical of his predecessors, who, “faced with an uncertain threat … made a series of hasty decisions. Even though those decisions were “motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people,” he made it clear that many of them were “based upon fear rather than foresight,” and, interestingly, noted that the Bush administration “all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions” — a statement which appears to refer to the inadequacy of the evidence against numerous Guantánamo prisoners, which I have been writing about for over three years, and have highlighted in two recent articles. […]
...on May 21st, 2021 at 6:35 pm