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

Please support my work!

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

This is Part 8 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 third 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 Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine and Part Ten of this series.

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

Ejaz Ahmad Khan (ISN 135, Pakistan) Released November 2003

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar” (one of 12 additional online chapters, telling stories that were not available in The Guantánamo Files, either for reasons of space, or because they were not known at the time), I told Ejaz Ahmad Khan’s story, based on an article by Tom Lasseter for an important series on 66 former Guantánamo prisoners that was published by McClatchy Newspapers in 2008.

Lasseter had interviewed Khan — identified as Ijaz Khan — in Islamabad, and stated that he had been 26 years old when he was seized in northern Afghanistan after the fall of Kunduz, and transported to a prison in Sheberghan run by Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum, on a journey that is known as “the convoy of death,” because thousands of prisoners died, mainly of suffocation, in containers that were used to transport them.

Khan admitted to Lasseter that he had traveled to Afghanistan as a fighter, and explained that he had ended up in “the convoy of death” after surrendering to General Dostum’s men at Kunduz. “They threatened to kill us,” he said. “They pointed their guns like they were going to shoot us, then they made us get in the containers. When I woke in the morning, there were piles of bodies lying around me; I don’t know if they were dead or alive.” On arrival at Sheberghan, after he had “stumbled over the mounds of bodies and out into the daylight,” Dostum’s men, he said, “herded the prisoners” through the gates “by hitting them with sticks and iron rods.”

He added, “The commanders were treated differently than the common Taliban. They were taken away for three days, and when they came back they were unable to lie down, they were urinating on themselves … they had injuries all over them, they had bruises on every part of their skin. The normal fighters like me were hit with sticks and punched and kicked. They would take me out of the cell to beat me; it was too crowded to do it in the cell. They beat me unconscious many times.”

After a month, he said, he was taken to Kandahar, where he was stripped naked, thrown to the ground, so that “gravel tore into his skin,” and subjected to an anal probe. He also explained how the prisoners had tried to resist the everyday brutality of the guards. “We protested,” he said, “we made a lot of noise. We were shaking the fence walls of our cells. It gave us some kind of release. I’m not a human? Why did they keep me in this cage? I’m not an animal. I don’t keep my pets in a cage in my house. But the Americans caged us.” He added, “Luckily I have not lost my mental balance, because it was nothing short of madness.”

Although he declined to talk about Guantánamo, he made it clear that his experiences in Kandahar had tainted the rest of his life. He said that he “frequently lost his temper and that he was very angry about how the Americans had treated him,” and added, as an example of his lingering fury, that “he once saw a guard at Kandahar toss a Koran into a bucket that detainees used as a toilet. The Koran, he said, is at the very center of his life; it is the reason he lives.” He told the reporter, “You can imagine what I felt when I saw this.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated August 2, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was noted that he was born in 1975, and was “diagnosed with Chronic Hepatitis B,” but was “otherwise in good health.” After identifying him as a graduate with a mechanical engineering degree “from an unidentified university in Pakistan,” who had worked as “a natural gas pump attendant and a natural gas plant operator,” the Task Force confirmed that he had traveled to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, stating that, on November 6, 2001, he left his home, “bound to fight in the jihad.” By “word of mouth,” he then joined a group of Taliban fighters in Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, where he “fought on the front lines for two days and was then shot in the right thigh at which time he was taken to the hospital in Kunduz.”

Soon after, he was told that the Taliban were surrendering, and was also told that, “after surrendering, the Mujahideen/Taliban would be permitted to go home.” He and 10-12 others then set off for Mazar-e-Sharif to surrender, but encountered the forces of Northern Alliance commander General Rashid Dostum at Yanghareq, on the outskirts of Kunduz, where they were seized. The “convoy of death” was not mentioned in his assessment, but what was mentioned instead was that, on June 11, 2002, he was sent to Guantánamo, allegedly “because of his knowledge of routes of travel into AF [Afghanistan].”

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

[T]he “Reasons for Transfer” included in the documents, which have been repeatedly cited by media outlets as an explanation of why the prisoners were transferred to Guantánamo, are, in fact, lies that were grafted onto the prisoners’ files after their arrival at Guantánamo. This is because, contrary to the impression given in the files, no significant screening process took place before the prisoners’ transfer. As 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 [135] 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, its interests and/or its allies.” As a result, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of  Guantánamo at the time, recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer.”

Salahuddin Ayubi (ISN 138, Pakistan) Released September 2004

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,” I explained how Salahuddin Ayubi, who was 27 years old when he was captured, was one of 35 Pakistani prisoners released from Guantánamo on September 17, 2004 and subsequently held for questioning in Pakistan. Speaking to the Associated Press on his release from Pakistani custody in June 2005, he said, “During interrogation, whenever I would make a reference to the Koran, they would hit me in the face with a copy. They would tear it into pieces. They would tell me that Koran teaches us terrorism. They would throw the Koran against the roof, which would tear it into pieces, and they would say, ‘This is the real source of terrorism.’”

Speaking to the Nation, he reiterated his complaints, saying, “American soldiers having nefarious designs against Muslim Ummah, have been committing desecration of the holy Koran at Guantánamo,” and in the Pakistan Daily Times it was reported that he joined with Mohammed Hanif (ISN 305, see Part Four of this series), who was 19 years old when he was seized, and another freed prisoner, Hafiz Ehsan Saeed (ISN 98, see Part Two) in saying that the prisoners were prevented from practicing their religion for the first year of their imprisonment, but that they were “given some religious freedom after the Red Cross’s intervention.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated January 25, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that his name was Salahodin Ayubi and that he was born in 1974. It was also stated that he had “latent tuberculosis, [was] a chronic Hepatitis B carrier, ha[d] constant pain in the left shoulder due to a previous shrapnel injury, and suffer[ed] from general anxiety,” but was “otherwise in good health.”

It was also stated that, in July 2001, he had traveled to Kunduz to participate in Jihad against the Northern Alliance,” and “was trained to provide medical assistance to Pakistani military personnel associated with the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) Organization,” a Pakistani militant group. He explained that he received 10 days’ training before traveling to Kunduz, and then “worked at a JEM clinic” until November 26, 2001, when it was damaged during the allied bombing campaign. He then fled to Khawaja Ghar, but was wounded by a mortar explosion, and taken to hospital in Kunduz for a week, and then to a JEM clinic for two weeks. He was then seized by Northern Alliance soldiers and sent to Sheberghan, perhaps having avoided “the convoy of death.” After a month in Sheberghan, he was transferred to US control, and was sent to Guantánamo on approximately January 17, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of the Jaish-e-Mohammed Organization.”

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 [138] 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 US 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, “During a visit to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 3 to 10 August 2002, Pakistani Intelligence officers interrogated [ISN 138] and concluded that he had little or no intelligence value. They stated that their government would accept custody of [him] if released by the US government.”

Hafiz Liaqat Mansoor (ISN 139, Pakistan) Released November 2003

In “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,”, I told Hafiz Liaqat Mansoor’s story, based on an article by Tom Lasseter for an important series on 66 former Guantánamo prisoners that was published by McClatchy Newspapers in 2008.

Mansoor, described in the interview as Hafiz Liaqat Manzoor, was 24 years old when he was captured by troops loyal to General Dostum, and was interviewed in Islamabad, where, over four years after his release from Guantánamo, he was a third-year law student. He explained that, after being seized, he was held for about three weeks in Sheberghan, and was then transferred to the US prison at Kandahar airport, which was used to process the prisoners for Guantánamo. His recollections match those of many other released prisoners who have described how brutal the regime was at Kandahar (and which is discussed at length in Chapter 8 of The Guantánamo Files).

The McClatchy report noted that Manzoor said that, on the plane to Kandahar, “US soldiers struck him with their guns every time he moved his head.” After he landed, “a soldier shaved off his beard,” and he spent his first night “naked and shackled, sleeping on the floor of an airport hangar with about ten other men, surrounded by concertina wire.” The next day, “guards gave him clothes and a number, 18, and told him that was his new name.” He explained that he spent about 17 days in Kandahar, but “was interrogated only once — he was asked basic questions such as his name and place of birth — then was left sitting in a tent outside for the rest of the time,” although he added that other prisoners “often came back bleeding” after interrogations. He also noted that on one occasion, “during a search of the tent next to his, a guard threw a Koran into a bucket that detainees used as a toilet.”

Describing his experiences at Guantánamo, he said, “They caged us there, in cages similar to what we use for poultry,” and proceeded to explain that, in his first interrogation, about 20 days after he’d arrived, “I told them I went to Afghanistan for the fight … They said, ‘You have been fighting against us. Do you know that?’ I said, ‘Yes, I know that; I accept that.’” Despite this admission, he said he “wasn’t interrogated again for about six months, when he was called in to repeat his previous remarks,” and stated, “I said that I will only tell the truth: I was there fighting you.” Several months later, after a new prisoner was moved into the neighboring cell, he was interrogated again, when he was informed that his new neighbor was telling interrogators that he was “a top Taliban commander.” He explained that he denied the allegation, “asking why he’d acknowledge being a jihadi fighter in his first questioning only to lie later.”

Manzoor was clearly fortunate to be a Pakistani, as the Pakistani government’s cooperation with the US facilitated the return of prisoners even when, as in Manzoor’s case, they had traveled to Afghanistan to engage US forces. Had he been from another country, it’s probable that he would have been held for much longer, and would also not have been so easily able to shrug off the allegation that he was a Taliban leader.

At the conclusion of the interview, he explained that he was imprisoned for about a year after his return, but that he then decided to devote himself to the law. As the report described it, “The only lesson he learned, he said, was the importance of the law; it was something that occurred to him during his days of sitting in a cell at Guantánamo without a lawyer or a trial.” He added, “Whatever I have been through so far in my life suggests that law is the only field” for working toward justice.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated January 25, 2003, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that his name was Lequat Manzur and that he was born in 1977. It was also stated that, although he had “latent tuberculosis and chronic pain in the right knee,” he was “otherwise in good health.”

It was also stated that, in early August 2001, he “traveled by truck from his home in Islamabad” to “participate in Jihad against the Northern Alliance.” Reaching Kunduz, he worked as a guard at a Taliban compound, both in Kunduz and in Khawaja Ghar, before surrendering to Northern Alliance forces on or around November 26, 2001, which was essentially where the account he gave to Tom Lasseter began.

Despite being thoroughly insignificant, he was sent to Guantánamo on or about January 16, 2002 on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of a specific Harakat Al-Jihad Al-Islamic [sic] Training Center, where he received training in 1998, and of the Taliban guard force in Kunduz.” It is not known who was the neighbor who falsely — if understandably — told interrogators that he was “a top Taliban commander.”

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 [139] 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 US 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, “During a visit to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 3 to 10 August 2002, Pakistani Intelligence officers interrogated [ISN 139] and concluded that he had little or no intelligence value. They stated that their government would accept custody of [him] if released by the US government.”

Mohammad Saghir (ISN 143, Pakistan) Released October 2002

A 49-year old woodcutter from Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, Mohammad Saghir (also identified as Mohammed Sagheer), was, as I explained in Chapter 3 of The Guantánamo Files, “also a missionary with Jamaat-al-Tablighi, a vast worldwide proselytizing organization whose annual gatherings in Pakistan and Bangladesh attract millions of followers. Over the years he had been involved in numerous preaching missions to Afghanistan, but on this occasion he and nine other missionaries were seized by Northern Alliance troops” after the fall of Kunduz. After his release, his story was told in association with a lawsuit he filed against the US government, in an article by James Meek in the Guardian in December 2003, and in an article in Newsline in February 2004.

The lawsuit, for $10.4 million, was because of “his illegal detention and suffering, torture and humiliation at the hands of US forces,” as Newsline described it. Saghir explained that he was “mired in debts accrued by his family — including his wife, six sons and three daughters — during his year-long absence. His sons spent whatever the family had on their sojourns to Afghanistan in search of their father … To provide for the family’s daily expenditure they took loans which they now need to pay back.” Saghir added, “The business is closed and it’s hard to cope with the situation. It’s difficult to make both ends meet.”

After his capture, Saghir was held for a night at Yanghareq, where the thousands of soldiers and civilians who surrendered after the fall of Kunduz were held, before their transfer to Sheberghan on “the convoy of death,” Saghir explained after his release that he “witnessed wounded and injured men buried alive with the dead,” and was then taken to Qala Zeini [en route to Sheberghan] and herded into a container. “The journey took five hours,” he said. “It was dark, hot and suffocating as there was not enough air in the container. Fifty out of the 250 prisoners died on [the] way.”

At Shebarghan jail, “he spent one-and-a-half months along with other prisoners from Kunduz,” as Newsline explained. Saghir stated that “[t]he conditions inside the prison were poor and the attitude of the troops extremely bad,” explaining, “We were given six loaves of bread and one pot (lota) of water for 70 persons. Our bodies were searched and we were deprived of all our belongings there as well.”

From Shebarghan he was taken along with 15 other prisoners to the US prison at Kandahar. He told James Meek that he “had not even had a cursory interview at Sheberghan before he was bound hand and foot, blindfolded and helicoptered to Kandahar,” where, he said, “They would just pick us up and throw us out [of the plane]. Some people were hurt, some quite badly.” He also explained how, before being flown to Guantánamo, the prisoners were shaved, ostensibly because they had picked up lice. “We resisted, but four or five commandos came and they had a machine and just shaved off my beard and moustache,” Saghir said.

On arrival in Guantánamo, after a 24-hour flight, Saghir said that, as with the arrival at Kandahar, the prisoners “were thrown off the plane on arrival.” He stated that “some had their noses broken,” and added, “I got a bruise under my left eye where my face hit the ground.”

In Camp X-Ray, Saghir told James Meek that “there was little tolerance for the practice of Islam, with its requirement of prayer five times a day.” He said, “In the first one-and-a-half months they wouldn’t let us speak to anyone, wouldn’t let us call for prayers or pray in the room. We were only given 10 minutes for eating. I tried to pray and four or five commandos came and they beat me up. If someone would try to make a call for prayer they would beat him up and gag him. After one-and-a-half months, we went on hunger strike.” Saghir also stated that he was locked up in solitary confinement, and also subjected to collective punishment, after “an Arab spat at a guard and the entire line of 24 cages was punished with solitary.” Speaking to Newsline, he said that he was held in solitary confinement on two occasions — once for two days and the second time for 16 days. “There was no light in the solitary confinement cell and they used to pump cold air inside the cell,” he explained.

Saghir also confirmed that the interrogators’ questions were monotonously repetitive. “They would ask: ‘Where is Osama? Do you know any of the al-Qaida leaders? Have you met them?’ Things like that,” he told James Meek. “They would not get angry with my answers. We would ask them and they would say: ‘We don’t know when you will be let free. Only our bosses know, we are here to do our job.'”

In 2008, Saghir traveled to Islamabad to speak to Tom Lasseter for McClatchy Newspapers’ report on 66 released prisoners, when much of what he had stated in his earlier interviews was confirmed. The interview also included an explanation of how his lawsuit had come to nothing, and how, on his return to Pakistan, he had “found out that he was responsible for 1.2 million rupees — almost $20,000 — in loans that his family had taken out to survive without his income and to finance trips to Afghanistan to search for him.” He added, “My family thought I had been killed in Afghanistan; people came to pay their respects,” until letters arrived from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Saghir also told Lasseter that he had “worked for more than five years and sold all his land to pay off the debt,” although he still owed some 400,000 rupees” — about $6,000.

Presenting additional information to that in the previous accounts, Saghir told Lasseter that, in Sherberghan, “he watched many around him die of infections,” and also spoke more about his time in Guantánamo, explaining that, when he” joined a hunger strike to protest rules that forbade detainees from talking to one another and prohibited prayer, and he went for three days without food,” the guards, in his own words, “came in with riot shields, grabbed me by the neck and gave me an injection. I fell down unconscious and woke up in the hospital. They had put a tube in me.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated September 27, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” his account was largely confirmed. The Task Force described him as “a farmer and missionary,” and also noted, contrary to his own statements, that his “missionary trip to Afghanistan with nine other individuals was the first time he left Pakistan,” for which he also “receiv[ed] his spouse’s permission.” The Task Force also stated that he had planned to preach for between two and four months, but was seized by General Dostum’s forces “while he was fleeing Kunduz for Pakistan after the bombing campaign started.” He was sent to Guantánamo on January 17, 2002, and the spurious reason given for his transfer was because of “his knowledge of General Dostum’s treatment of captured personnel transported from Kunduz to Sheberghan” — a low point in the feeble reasons given for transfer to Guantánamo, as it involved US forces suggesting that they took him halfway round the world to an experimental prison outside the law simply to find out more about how their close ally had been murdering prisoners of war.

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 [143] is assessed as not affiliated with Al-Qaida, and as not being a Taliban leader. Moreover … the detainee has no further intelligence value to the United States and will not be seen for further intelligence purposes. [He] has not expressed thoughts of violence nor made threats toward the US or its allies during interrogations or in the course of his detention. Based on the above, detainee does not pose a future threat to the US or US 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 the Pakistani government had “stated it [was] willing to accept the custody of [ISN 143], if released by the US government.”

Mohammed Ilyas (ISN 144, Pakistan) Released September 2004

In Chapter 9 of The Guantánamo Files, Ilyas was briefly mentioned as being 59 years old at the time of his capture, and I also noted that he was probably seized with two other recruits from villages in Sindh province — 20-year old Abid Raza (ISN 299), and 21-year old Mohammed Anwar (ISN 524).

In his Detainee Assessmernt Brief, dated May 28, 2004, which was an “Update Recommendation [for] Transfer to Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” his name was noted as Mohammed Euas, born in 1942, and it was also stated that he had “significant” medical issues, having been “diagnosed with diabetes mellitus type II, hypertension and hyperlipidemia,” all of which had apparently been “stabilized with medications.”

It was also stated that, on November 20, 2002, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander of Guantánamo at the time, had recommended that he be “considered for release or transfer to the control of another government,” on the basis that he “was not affiliated with Al-Qaida or a Taliban leader, and [did] not pose a future threat to the US or US interests.”

After that, however, new information evidently derailed his release — specifically, a claim that, although he had “stated in May 2001 he went willingly to Afghanistan (AF) to preach the teachings of Islam,” he did so as part of Jamaat al-Tablighi, the vast missionary organisation, with millions of members, which, nevertheless, was regarded by the US authorities — at Guantánamo, if nowhere else — as “a Tier 2 NGO target.” These were helpfully described as organizations that “have demonstrated  the intent and willingness to support terrorist organisations and are wiling to attack US persons or interests.” Disgracefully, the Task Force added, “JT is a NGO that has direct ties to Al-Qaida.”

In addition, the Task Force claimed that a Saudi, Majid al-Harbi (ISN 158, released in February 2007), identified Ilyas as “an imam named Mohammed Elias in Lahore, Pakistan (PK), who issued a fatwah against US and Northem Alliance forces,” even though it was almost inconceivable that a Saudi, picked up crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan, would know anything about him. The Task Force also claimed that a Pakistani, Fazaldad (ISN 142, released in September 2004), claimed that Ilyas was “one of the recruiters and leaders at the Mansehra Jihad Training Camp” in Pakistan, which was reportedly controlled by Harkat Ul-Mujahideen Al-Alami (HUMA), described as “a Tier 1 terrorist target.” It was also claimed that Fazaldad had described Ilyas as “a leader of the Taliban in Kunduz,” because he saw him “using a walkie-talkie to communicate with and direct Taliban guards,” although, as with the Saudi allegation, there was no reason to presume that there was any truth in Fazaldad’s claims.

As a result, Ilyas was upgraded to “a high risk,” who “may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and was “of medium intelligence value.” Even so, the Task Force recommended that he “be transferred to the custody of another country for continued dentition,” but the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) disagreed. On May 19, 2003, “CITF stated that they were unable to make a risk assessment,” and as a result, JTF GMTO and CITF were unable to agree about his disposition, until someone gave the go-ahead for his transfer just four months later.

Hamood Ullah Khan (ISN 145, Pakistan) Released September 2004

As I explained in “The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras (7) – From Sheberghan to Kandahar,” Khan, identified as Hamoodullah Khan, was interviewed by Tom Lasseter in Karachi in 2008 for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 former Guantánamo prisoners. Seized by Northern Alliance troops towards the end of 2001, when he was 30 years old, he told Lasseter that he was then “transferred to a series of Pakistani prisons and jails for nine and a half months,” and claimed that he had traveled to Afghanistan because he was a pharmaceutical sales representative, and was “trying to set up a business.”

Lasseter seemed doubtful, noting that, because Khan was released before the tribunals were convened, there was “no transcript that lays out the military’s case against him or any indication of what American interrogators thought about the credibility of his claim that he decided to take a business trip to Afghanistan in November 2001, when battles raged between Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters on one side and American troops and their Afghan allies on the other.” For his part, Khan seemed unperturbed by any doubts the authorities might have had towards him. He explained that “the interrogators told him that he was lying, but they didn’t seem too upset as they asked the same questions and he gave the same answers in one session after the next.”

His treatment had not always been so benign, however, and his account of his treatment in US custody in Afghanistan echoed that of Hafiz Liaqat Manzoor. He explained that, as the helicopter taking him to Kandahar from Sheberghan banked and his body “slumped over,” an American soldier “kicked him and yelled, ‘Don’t move!’ His body shifted again as the helicopter pitched downward toward the landing zone, he said, and the soldier hit him with a rifle butt and screamed at him to sit still.” He added, “After we landed they told us to get on the ground. A soldier sat on me and another soldier came up, grabbed my hair and beat my face into the ground. My nose started bleeding, then I passed out. When I woke up, I was naked. They gave me some clothes.”

After less than three weeks at Kandahar — where, “on the way to and from interrogations, walking in shackles with hoods on, ‘the guards would slam us against the walls, punch us on the stomach’” — Khan was transferred to Guantánamo, enduring random violence on the plane, on the bus to Camp X-Ray, and on arrival at the prison. He said he “got the message,” and spent the rest of his time as “a model prisoner. He didn’t participate in hunger strikes. He didn’t argue with guards. He remained quiet, kept to himself and looked at the ground when soldiers walked by his cell.” As a result, he said, “he was never hit or kicked in his cell,” although “he saw it happen to other detainees all the time.” Citing the example of Juma al-Dossari, the joint Saudi-Bahraini national released in July 2007, who attempted suicide on at least 13 occasions, he said that he’d “seen what happened when men stepped out of line … The psychological effects of repeated trips to isolation cells and regular beatings, he said, drove some detainees out of their minds.”

Khan spent the last year in Camp Four, where compliant prisoners shared rudimentary dorm-like facilities, and explained, “They said that my behavior was good, that I was not a danger to them.” He noted that the authorities were “particularly pleased” with prisoners who refused to take part in hunger strikes. “I never participated in the hunger strikes,” he said. “There was no use … the hunger strikes would not free us, so why go on a hunger strike?” Instead, he “spent most of his time at Camp Four the same way he had in his previous cellblocks: memorizing the Koran and praying.”

In 2008, Khan taught at a madrassa, and had only one abiding question about his imprisonment. “There is still one big question that remains in my mind,” he said. “Why was I there? I keep wondering about that.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated July 9, 2003, which was a “Revocation of Recommendation to Release or Transfer to the Control of Another Government,” it was stated that his name was Hamood Ullah Khan and that he was born in 1971, and it was also noted that he had latent tuberculosis, in common with many of the prisoners, and also “serological evidence of prior Hepatitis B infection,” although it was stated that he was “not currently infectious,” and was “otherwise in good health.”

Reinforcing the story that he later told to Tom Lasseter, Khan told his interrogators that he and “a long-time friend, Abdul Kareem, owned a pharmaceutical business in Pakistan,” and that they “decided to travel to Afghanistan to sell pharmaceutical products there because of the high profit potential.” Khan said he was “concerned about going to Afghanistan because of the ongoing war,” but Kareem, whose parents were Afghans, was confident because of his “numerous trips” there, and because he had “the language skills and contacts necessary to do business in Afghanistan.”

According to Khan’s account, the two men arrived in Pul-i-Khumri in Baghlan province in November 2001, but he (Khan) became ill, and stayed indoors in a house while Hakeem sold all the pharmaceuticals. Hakeem then said he would visit relatives before heading back to Pakistan, but he did not return, and Khan, instead, sought help from a stranger, Muhammad Arif, who turned out to be a member of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, who informed him that all the roads to Pakistan were closed, but said that he would help him.

The two men took public transport to Kunduz, “where they went to an abandoned school controlled by 10-15 members of Jaish-e-Mohammed,” and where Khan remained “for approximately one week and worked by helping the doctor dispense over-the-counter medication.” Khan added that, after a week, he and Arif departed for Kandahar, where they were seized by Northern Alliance troops. He was then taken to Sheberghan, perhaps on “the convoy of death,” and was sent to Guantánamo on January 14, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of a Taliban training school in Kunduz; biographical information on Muhammad Arif; the Amson Pharmaceutical and Biological Company in Karachi where he had previously worked; the quantity and quality of medications available in Afghanistan and Pakistan; and on pharmaceutical products available in Pakistan for black market distribution in Afghanistan.”

That was quite a list of reasons for detention grafted onto his largely random presence in US custody, but primarily doubts arose because of his presence in Kandahar and because of one comment made by an unattributed fellow prisoner, who apparently “recognized” Khan as “being an associate affiliated with al-Qaeda,” even though, on November 20, 2002, Maj. Gen. Miller had recommended that Khan “be considered for release or transfer to the control of another government.” The Task Force acknowledged that “the source did not know his name or any further information concerning” Khan, but was worried about how he could have been captured in Kandahar, when the Northern Alliance was not, at that time, operating that far south.

The Task Force also worried that, at university, he had been “affiliated” with the Muhajir Quami Movement  (MQM), described in the file as “an extremist group, which has been tied to the murder of two Americans in Pakistan, in 1995,” even though the organisation is actually the student wing of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the third largest political party in Pakistan, and the largest liberal and secular political party. It was also noted that, after university, Khan “moved inexplicably to Malaysia (possibly fleeing Pakistan),” where he “lived for five years and continued his affiliations with MQM,” even though an innocent explanation was provided in the assessment, when it was noted that Khan “has relatives” in Malaysia.

This was a typical failure of intelligence on the part of the US authorities, but it contributed to Khan’s reassessment as someone who was “affiliated with several extremist groups that either have Al-Qaida links or who have targeted Americans,” and the decision to consider him “a serious threat to the United States” who “should be detained for further intelligence purposes.” He was, furthermore, described as “possess[ing] a confirmed high threat to the US, its interests, and its allies.” As a result, it took another 14 months until he was released.

Mourad Benchellali (ISN 161, France) Released July 2004

As I explained in Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, Mourad Benchellali, who was 19 years old when he was seized, traveled to Afghanistan in summer 2001 from Venissieux, a poor suburb of Lyons, with his friend Nizar Sassi (ISN 325, see Part Four). He told his story to Le Figaro in February 2006, and in an op-ed in the New York Times in June 2006, and, according to these accounts, after attending a training camp, Benchellali and Sassi spent some time in Jalalabad, where they met up with Hervé Djamel Loiseau, a convert to Islam from Paris. Loiseau was a close friend of another French prisoner, Brahim Yadel, a Parisian who arrived in Afghanistan in July 2001, accompanied by Redouane Khalid, who was also from Paris. Completing the connections between the men, Khalid traveled in Afghanistan with Khaled bin Mustafa, from Lyons, who had met him at his wedding in Paris. Yadel, like Benchellali and Sassi, was released in July 2004, while the others were freed in March 2005.

From Jalalabad, where the men had been living before the US-led invasion, they fled to Pakistan in two groups. Benchellali explained that he had seen Osama bin Laden in Jalalabad, when the remaining Arabs in Afghanistan were asked to choose whether “to leave Afghanistan, or to take up arms,” and said that, having chosen to leave, “More than a thousand of us left by way of the mountains to get to Pakistan.” He and Sassi travelled with Loiseau, but their companion died on the way. When they arrived in Pakistan, they were captured by locals and handed over to the Pakistani army, who sold them for $5,000 each to the Americans.

When it came to his motivations, Benchallali acknowledged that he came from a family with aspirations to fight in defense of Muslims facing oppression. As I explained in The Guantánamo Files:

His father was a radical imam who had tried (and failed) to fight in Bosnia, his brother Menad had tried (and failed) to fight in Chechnya, and his brother, his father and even his mother had all spent time in French prisons, but he insisted that he went to Afghanistan for “an adventure” and as a way of enhancing his status, hoping that he would be “viewed differently” in his neighbourhood, and that his reputation might “match” that of his brother. He admitted that his sense of adventure was “misguided and mistimed,” and blamed his brother for encouraging him to go, and for arranging for him to attend a training camp. “For two months, I was there,” he wrote after his release, “trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity.”

Benchellali also described the abuse to which he and other prisoners were subjected in US custody in Kandahar and Guantánamo, which involved some very damaging claims:

[In Kandahar] they hit us. They piled us one on top of the other. Sometimes, they took photos of us completely naked. We were interrogated several times a day. They handcuffed us to hurt us. I was tied to a bar placed above my head or then they tied me up very low on my back. Americans peed on detainees. I saw the Red Cross, but its representatives told me that there was nothing they could do.

Then, in January 2002, I was transferred to Guantánamo. I was beaten up on the bus that was taking us to the camp. We were treated differently depending on whether or not we responded to questions. Those who did not “cooperate” were awakened every hour with the aim of preventing them from sleeping at all costs. They might put us in a room with the music very loud broadcast through large speakers or make us endure flashes of light for several hours at a time. Sometimes, they left us handcuffed for hours to a chair or then they turned down the air conditioning. The humiliations were numerous, in particular of a sexual nature. The Americans had prostitutes come into the camp. One of them planted herself in front of a Saudi — they were in the majority at Guantanamo — and smeared her menstrual blood on his face. The searches were constant and humiliating. They tied the Koran above us and took pleasure in batting it around.

In an interview with Matthew Schofield in 2008 for McClatchy Newspapers’ major report on 66 former Guantánamo prisoners, Benchellali reiterated that his trip to Afghanistan had been an “adventure,” and denied claims that he was driven psychologically to prove himself. He told Schofield, “It was June 2001, and I thought I’d take a vacation, be back in time for classes in September. Later, the papers would say I was a desperate outsider, trapped looking in on an uncaring nation. But that’s not true. I was happy. I was getting an education. I had a job. I had a fiancee. I just thought I wanted a bit of adventure.”

The interview also provided further information about the training camp that Benchellali and Sassi had attended, after he had been persuaded to go to Afghanistan by his brother. He stated that “there wasn’t much available to them” in Afghanistan, because “[t]hey didn’t speak a word of the local languages, Dari and Pashtu, nor Arabic, so they stumbled around for a few days before they met some Algerians who spoke French,” and who “suggested that they spend part of the summer at a Muslim camp.”

This was an al-Qaeda camp — the al-Farouq camp that provided basic training — but Benchellali reiterated that he felt “trapped.” He told Schofield that he and Sassi “studied the Quran, ate not quite enough and did physical training, which consisted of a lot of running and exercises.” He also said that they studied weapons, although he “claimed that he was never allowed to use one,” and talked about jihad.

Adding that they were “terrified,” he explained that they “realized that the only people who were able to leave were those who got sick, so they pretended to be sick.” However, there was a hospital in the camp, and it was only when Sassi really got sick, losing 45 pounds, that he was sent to a hospital in Kandahar, leaving Benchellali alone. It was at that point, he said, that “everyone was really excited, talking about how a great man was coming to speak to us.” He added that he “was ushered into an open area with 200 others,” where “everyone was chanting, ‘Osama, Osama,’ but because he “didn’t understand a word,” he “went back to his tent.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated March 27, 2004, which was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” it was stated that he was born in July 1981, and the Task Force ran through the story that Benchellali himself told after his release — how he was encouraged to travel to Afghanistan by his brother, how he and Nizar Sassi traveled first to London, and then to Islamabad on June 29, 2001, and how they then attended the al-Farouq training camp, and fled to Pakistan after the US-led invasion. The Task Force explained that, “along with several other French-speaking Arabs,” Benchellali and Sassi “traveled across the Pakistan border until they reached a large village where the local inhabitants locked them in the mosque. Pakistani officials arrested them the following morning, 15 December 2001, without incident.” Unsubstantiated in all this was a claim that they “likely participated in fighting against US and allied forces.”

No specific reason was given to purportedly justify Benchellali’s transfer to Guantánamo, although it was noted that he “possesses intelligence information.” Referring to how the Bush administration perceived its naval base in Guantánamo Bay, it was noted, under the heading, “Reasons for Continued Detention in Another Country,” that he had “possible connections” to the the Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat (GSPC). Also mentioned were the supposed terrorist connections of the owner of “the Algerian House,” a house he stayed in in Jalalabad, and extensive information about his family which had come from the French intelligence services.

In its assessment, the Task Force stated that it regarded Benchellali as “a member of Al-Qaida and having several ties to other global terrorist networks,” who had “demonstrated a commitment to Jihad, ha[d] links to key facilitators in Al-Qaida’s international terrorist network, ha[d] participated in terrorist training and hostilities against the US and coalition forces [this was never proved, of course], and maintain[ed] the capability to continue to do so.” He was, additionally, “assessed as a high threat because of his close ties with active elements of Al-Qaida, including several members of his immediate family who are known terrorists and who are active in the procurement and use of chemical weapons” (again, something that was not proved). As a result, JTF GTMO determined that he posed “a high risk, as he [was] likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” but, nevertheless, recommended that he “be transferred to the control of another country for continued detention,” despite knowing that the French government would not be able to hold him — or the other ex-prisoners — without charge or trial.

Since their release from Guantánamo, Benchellali and four of the other ex-prisoners — Nizar Sassi, Brahim Yadel, Khaled bin Mustafa 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 by a French researcher for Cageprisoners that the men’s conviction had been upheld by the Court of Cassation.

After his release, Benchellali also wrote a book about his experiences, Voyage Vers L’Enfer (published in May 2006).

Imad Kanouni (ISN 164, France) Released July 2004

Unlike the five French prisoners whose stories were somehow connected (see Mourad Benchellali, above), Imad Kanouni, who was 24 years old at the time of his capture, said that he traveled to Afghanistan “to pursue religious education,” as I explained in Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, drawing on an Associated Press report that dealt with the start of the former prisoners’ trial in July 2006, at which his lawyer, Felix de Bellay, called the trial “intellectually as well as legally shocking.” Although Kanouni admitted that he was “ready to die for a good cause, [to] defend people who were attacked in their countries,” he insisted that he did not agree with the ideas of Osama bin Laden and had never visited a training camp.

When five former prisoners were convicted of “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise” in December 2007, Kanouni was acquitted, as the Associated Press reported. The AP report on the trial, reiterating Kanouni’s own account, stated that he “said he went to Afghanistan for spiritual reasons” and “was acquitted, as the prosecutor had recommended.” The report added that Felix de Belloy “said he would try to seek reparations on behalf of Kanouni, though he did not elaborate on how he planned to do so.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 27, 2003, which was a “Recommendation to Retain under DoD Control,” he was described as Imad Achab Kanouni, born in March 1977, and he was also described as a Moroccan national, even though he is a French citizen. The Task Force broadly accepted his reason for traveling to Afghanistan, as stated after his release, but injected it with suspicion. After stating that he “claim[ed] he immigrated to Afghanistan (AF) in March 2000 to further his studies of Islam and live in a purist Islamic state,” the Task Force noted that, on arrival in Kabul, he “stayed at the Wazir Akbar Khan Mosque,which [had] been visited by many extremists and [was] in the same neighborhood as several Al-Qaida and Taliban safehouses, including one that Osama Bin Laden used,” where he met Abu Bilal, described as “a potential Al-Qaida facilitator, who helped him find an apartment.” The Task Force also attempted to shine a suspicious light on Kanouni’s claim that “he spent his time attending classes given by Sheik Abu Walid Ansari at Ansari’s home,” which, as the Task Force saw it, “may have been the Al-Ansar guesthouse, an Al-Qaida guesthouse located in Kabul.”

Dealing with the circumstances of his capture, the Task Force noted that, after the 9/11 attacks, he “claim[ed] he fled Kabul with 10 Arabs,” including two French prisoners described as being “connected to Al-Qaida,” staying briefly at “the Algerian guesthouse in Jalalabad,” before fleeing with other Arabs to Pakistan, where they were seized. He was flown to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was “because of his knowledge of Al-Qaida and Taliban facilities and personnel in the Kabul, AF, area, as well as persons known to associate [sic] or support the Taliban or Al-Qaida in the Kabul, AF, area.”

Mostly, however, the Task Force was suspicious about Kanouni in general. The authorities were worried about his statement that, “in the winter of 1999, he briefly left Germany to fight against the Serbs in Albania but returned to Germany in early 2000, [and] advised he left Germany for good in March 2000, where he decided to study Islam in Afghanistan through his own funding.” The authorities were also concerned that, “though cooperative,” Kanouni had “not been completely forthright,” and had “failed to explain the circumstances surrounding his travels to Albania to fight against the Serbs,” and had “been careful not to incriminate himself through his associations with any extremists he may have connections to through his attendance of several mosques in Germany,” which, according to the authorities, “were known at the time to promote jihad.” It was also noted that he “reportedly traveled extensively in the United Kingdom” but had “yet to explain those travels,” and suspicions were also expressed about his connections with the other French prisoners.

As a result, Kanouni was “assessed as being a possible member of Al-Qaida,” who was “of intelligence value to the United States,” and posed “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US its interests or its allies,” and Maj. Gen. Miller recommended that he be “Retain[ed] under DoD control.” It was, however, also noted that the Task Force “notified the Criminal Investigative task Force of this recommendation on 8 December 2003,” and, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders CITF will concur with JTF GTMO’s assessment that the detainee poses a medium risk,” which perhaps indicates that CITF were not convinced. Whatever the case, he was freed seven months later.

Mehdi Ghezali (ISN 166, Sweden) Released July 2004

As I explained in Chapter 7 of The Guantánamo Files, Mehdi Ghezali, who was 22 years old at the time of his capture, told Reuters after his release that he had traveled to Pakistan to study Islam in August 2001, and was visiting a friend in Jalalabad when the US-led invasion began. He decided to return to Pakistan when he heard that Afghan villagers were selling foreigners to the US forces, but was captured in a village near Peshawar by locals who sold him to the Pakistani police, who in turn sold him to the Americans.

Ghezali also explained that, in Guantánamo, he had initially cooperated with his interrogators, but “stopped talking” when they “kept asking the same questions.” He added that, in April 2004, “the military changed their tactics,” subjecting him to the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were applied to at least one in six of the prisoners.

“They put me in the interrogation room and used it as a refrigerator,” he said, adding, “They set the temperature to minus degrees so it was terribly cold and one had to freeze there for many hours — 12 to 14 hours one had to sit there, chained.” After explaining that “he had partially lost the feeling in one foot since then,” he also said he was “deprived of sleep, chained for long periods in painful positions, and exposed to bright flashes of light in a darkened room and loud music and noise.”

“Speaking of the chaining in painful positions — known as “short-shackling” — he said, “They forced me down with chained feet. Then they took away the chains from the hands, pulled the arms under the legs and chained them hard again. I could not move.” After “several hours” of this, “his feet were swollen and his whole body was aching.” As he explained, “The worst was in the back and the legs.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated April 10, 2004, which was a “Recommendation [for] Transfer to the Control of Another Country for Continued Detention (TRCD),” it was stated that he had traveled to Portugal in 1999, where he was reportedly “jailed for theft,” and had then traveled to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) in January 2000. Back in Sweden, he met a man who convinced him to travel to London with him, and from there they flew to Islamabad, and then traveled to Afghanistan. Ghezali told his interrogators that he stayed in a house near Jalalabad for approximately five months, and stated that “all he did for those five months ‘was to study the Koran and go for walks.'”

Ghezali said that, after the coalition bombing began, he left Jalalabad “with a group of women and children in fear of being captured and executed by the Northern Alliance because he was a foreigner of Arab descent,” although it was also stated that the man in whose house he was staying arranged for “Ali (a Moroccan) and Ismael (a Tunisian)” to take him to Pakistan. After a month, he and his companions were seized by the Pakistani authorities after crossing the border. Ghezali stated that “the Pakistani authorities confiscated his passport, driver’s license, and an unknown amount of money.” He was sent to Guantánamo on January 17, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was to “provide general-to-specific information on the cultural, religious, and ethnic recruitment of Muslim foreign nationals attending the Haj in Saudi Arabia.”

When it came to the “Reasons for Continued Detention in Another Country,” it was stated that he had been “uncooperative, unforthcoming and deceptive during interrogations,” and that he had “systematically recanted both the original and later versions of his story.” Various terrorism-related allegations were dug up from Sweden, and it was also claimed that he was “captured with 23 other Arabs from various countries to include Denmark, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, some of whom have admitted to being Al-Qaida or members of and associated with other Tier 1 terrorist organisations,” described as “terrorist groups,especially those with state support, that have demonstrated the intention and the capability to attack US persons or interests.”

In its assessment, the Task Force described Ghezali as “a possible Al-Qaida member,” who “had gone to Afghanistan to support the Taliban.” It was also noted that he posed “a medium risk, as he may possibly pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies,” and Brig. Gen. Mitchell R. Leclaire, the Deputy Commander of Guantánamo, recommended that he “be transferred to the control of another country for continued detention.” It was also noted that the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) had “not evaluated” him at all.

In September 2009, Ghezali was seized in Pakistan, with initial reports claiming that he had been captured with eleven other men, on suspicion of being involved with terrorism. It later transpired that he had been seized with two other Swedish citizens, “28-year-old Munir Awad and 19-year-old Safia Benaouda, and their two and a half-year-old boy,” and the three stated that they had traveled to Pakistan at short notice, as part of a tour of Muslim countries, and had been planning to meet up with representatives of the vast missionary group Jamaat al-Tablighi when they were captured.

The Swedes were released and flown back home on October 10, 2009, and Ghezali’s lawyers subsequently explained that, “despite Ghezali being released from Guantánamo in 2004 without being accused of any wrong doing, he and his family have been under the surveillance of Swedish security service Säpo ever since.” In an op-ed, the lawyers wrote, “The situation seems familiar to all of us who’ve read Franz Kafka,” adding that they felt that the Swedish media’s coverage of Ghezali was marked by “xenophobic undertones,” and stating, “As no government agency has ever accused him of terrorism or spying, it seems a reasonable request that the Swedish press corps can also abstain from formulating those types of accusations.”

Ravil Gumarov (ISN 203, Russia) Released February 2004

Ravil Gumarov, a former businessman, who sold fertiliser, is a Tatar from Bashkortostan, north of Kazakhstan, and was 39 years old at the time of his capture. He was one of four prisoners from the former Soviet Union who survived the Qala-i-Janghi massacre in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 (see Rasul Kudayev in Part One, and Shamil Khazhiyev and Ruslan Ogidov, below).

The massacre 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. Gumarov and the other survivors (86 in total) hid in the basement for a week, where they were bombed and, finally, flooded.

As I explained in Chapter 2 of The Guantánamo Files, drawing on an article in the St. Petersburg Times in December 2002:

Gumarov’s father said that his son’s desire to live under Islamic law grew so strong that, in 2000, he abandoned his wife, four children and elderly parents to travel to Afghanistan. “When I asked him what he would do abroad,” his father said, “Ravil said he was ready to tend sheep if he could live under the rule of Islam.”

Leonid Syukiainen, a Russian academic, drew parallels between the Russian prisoners and the idealistic Westerners who moved to the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution to help build a socialist society. “Of course, there had to be a combination of reasons for these people to flee to Afghanistan,” he said, “but I believe that their strongest motive was that they sincerely sought a fair Islamic society there.”

Igor Tkachyov, the head of a team of Russians who visited the prisoners at Guantánamo, made even more specific comments about what happened to the men. He said that [all but two of the eight Russian prisoners] traveled via Tajikistan, where members of the Islamic opposition to President Rahmonov helped them get to Afghanistan, and added that once they were there they “found themselves in a kind of totalitarian sect commanded by the Taliban … They were not allowed to be alone and had to do everything together, obeying strict regulations that left no time for anything but prayers.”

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 5, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that his name was Karji Omar Gumarof and he was born in 1962. It was also noted that he “arrived [in Guantánamo] with several bone fractures in his legs that have been treated and still require regular dressing changes, but they are steadily healing and he no longer requires inpatient care.” The Task Force also stated, explicitly, that he “traveled to Afghanistan to pursue religious freedom,” but that, on arrival in Afghanistan, “Uzbek soldiers detained and imprisoned” him, and “he was held prisoner in Kabul from August 2000 until August 2001,” when he “was tasked to repair and perform general vehicle maintenance.”

According to this account, he was “moved to Kunduz in August 2001, and to Mazar-e-Sharif late in November of 2001.” No mention was made of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, but it did not appear from this account that the Task Force considered that he had been responsible for his own movements in Afghanistan. He was sent to Guantánamo on or about February 11, 2002, and the spurious reason given for his transfer was that it was “based on his knowledge of several detainment facilities, and of Tahir Ildash, the leader of the detention facility in Afghanistan.” This was presumably a reference to Tahir Yoldash, the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, although there may have been some confusion with Juma Namangani, the previous leader of the IMU, who was reportedly killed in the Qala-i-Janghi massacre.

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 [203] is assessed as not 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.”

It was also noted that, “During a visit to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 14 to 19 November 2002, Russian Intelligence officers interrogated [ISN 203] 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.

Ravil Gumarov told Human Rights Watch that officials from the FSB and UBOP called him at least once a week, beginning right away after he returned home from the Pyatigorsk prison to Naberezhnyi Chelny. They frequently requested that he come down to their offices for questioning, and a car followed his every movement outside the home for about a month after he returned. Two investigators from the FSB and the UBOP called so often that Gumarov’s mother recognized their voices and knew their names and telephone numbers.”They called Ravil in all the time, whenever anything happened. There was a shooting somewhere, and they called him in; somebody committed a murder somewhere, and again they called him in.”

After this harassment, Gumarov was finally detained on April 1, 2005, on suspicion of participating with Timur Ishmuratov (another former Guantánamo prisoner) in a gas pipeline explosion in January 2005. Human Rights Watch explained that “he confessed to the pipeline explosion as a result of torture by FSB and UBOP officials, even though he later recanted that confession in court testimony.” Nevertheless, he was convicted and sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment.

He told Human Rights Watch that he was “deprived of sleep for seven or eight days after his arrest,” and “was kept in a tiny cage, about one meter by half a meter, where he was allowed to sit on a tiny bench during the day while being interrogated, but at night he was fastened by one handcuff to the bars of the cage over his head.” He also explained that he “was continually asked to confess to the pipeline explosion.” Human Rights Watch also explained:

After a week or 10 days he was transferred to a room in the administrative building housing the FSB in Bugulma. There he was tortured using a common technique of Russian law enforcement: a gas mask is put over the detainee’s head and then the oxygen is turned off, producing the beginnings of asphyxiation and a sense of panic. This form of torture is known in Russia as “little elephant,” or “slonik,” because the tube dangling from the front of the mask resembles the trunk of an elephant.

Gumarov also told Human Rights Watch that investigators had “pulled hairs from his beard, and on one occasion poured an entire bottle of vodka down his throat, a particularly offensive form of mistreatment for an observant Muslim.” He said, “I hadn’t had any alcohol for seven years, they poured a bottle in me and I was out of it.”

He also told a Moscow press conference that:

[A]t one point, while he was being beaten on his back to force a confession, he said, “What are you doing? This is like 1937 [the height of Stalin’s repression],” and they answered, “If this were 1937, you’d have been shot a long time ago.” He told his mother that investigators had drugged him with a special kind of tea to get him to sign a confession. Eventually, he did. In a handwritten letter that was smuggled out of the detention facility in Bugulma and brought to his mother, Gumarov wrote, “Mama, don’t listen to the authorities, no matter what they say about me My nerves gave in, I couldn’t take it. I spoke against myself and the worst thing is that I spoke against others. Everyone has a limit for what they can take, and many break sooner or later. They broke me too. It seems I’m destined to serve time for something I didn’t do.”

Shamil Khazhiyev (ISN 209, Russia) Released February 2004

Also a Tatar from Bashkortostan, north of Kazakhstan (like Ravil Gumarov, above), Shamil Khazhiyev (also identified as Shamil Khazhiev) was a police lieutenant, and was 30 years old when he was seized. He too was a survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, but less is known about him. According to the St. Petersburg Times, his colleagues said that, in 1999, “he was studying law at Ufa State University by correspondence and, upon finishing the course, he expected a career promotion.” Yamil Mustafin, the acting head of the town’s police force, was at a loss to explain what happened next. “We don’t know what happened to him or how to explain his escape to Afghanistan,” he said.

In the classified military assessments released by WikiLeaks, all that exists in Khaziyev’s case is a one-page memo, described as a “Deferment Assessment,” dated December 6, 2003, in which, after noting that his name was Almasim Rabilavich Sharipugg, the Task Force noted a disagreement between itself and the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF). On December 5, 2002, JTF GTMO “completed an assessment [and] concluded that he was a medium threat,” recommending him for transfer, whereas on December 6 CITF’s Behavioral Science Consultation team (BSCT) “completed a risk assessment [and] concluded that he [was] a high threat.” As a result, the Task Force noted, “In the interest of national security and pursuant to an agreement between the CITF and JTF GTMO Commanders, JTF GTMO will defer to the CITF assessment that the detainee poses a high threat.” Nevertheless, “The JTF GTMO recommendation for the transfer to the control of another government for continued detention remains unchanged.”

After his release from Russian custody in June 2004, as Human Rights Watch explained:

Shamil Khazhiev returned to Uchali, a small town in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, where his family lived. Human rights activist Alexandra Zernova, who met with Khazhiev on several occasions, said that he was repeatedly questioned by local FSB and UBOP officials after his return, and was briefly detained in Ufa, the Bashkortostan capital, in December 2004, on suspicion of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. He was released without charge. In September 2005, while riding on a train, he was questioned by UBOP officials from Samara. According to Zernova, Khazhiev has been unable to secure employment since his return from Guantánamo. He left Russia in March 2007.

According to Human Rights Watch, in a report in February 2009, Khaziyev “sought refuge in the Netherlands in 2007. The Dutch authorities subsequently granted [him] political asylum based on the harassment and abuse he suffered at the hands of the Russian intelligence services upon his return to Russia from Guantánamo.”

Ruslan Ogidov (ISN 211, Russia) Released February 2004

The fourth of the Russian survivors of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, Ruslan Ogidov (also identified as Ruslan Odizhev) was a Balkar from Nalchik, in Kabardino-Balkaria. 28 years old at the time of his capture, he reportedly left home partly because he had been tortured by the Russian intelligence services in 1999, but little else was known of his case until the WikiLeaks documents were released.

In his Detainee Assessment Brief, dated December 5, 2002, which was a “Transfer Recommendation,” it was stated that his name was Ruslan Otijev, and that he was born in 1973. It was also noted that, as well as having latent tuberculosis, (in common with many of the prisoners), he suffered from “panic disorder,” and had been “diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder, for which he received inpatient psychiatric care but was later released in November 2002” although he was, reportedly, “otherwise in good health.”

As with Ravil Gumarov, the Task Force stated, explicitly, that he “traveled to Afghanistan for religious freedom reasons.” He had, apparently, “traveled to Chechnya on previous occasions to join in the fight for religious freedom, and to assist the anti-Russian resistance movements,” and had “moved from Chechnya to Kabul, Afghanistan, in November or December of 2000.” Soon after this, he “became ill with tuberculosis and was hospitalized, after which he was turned over to General Dostum’s forces,” and was “taken first to Mazar-e-Sharif” — a veiled reference to Qala-i-Janghi — “and after that to Sheberghan before being transferred to US forces,” although there was no clue in this narrative as to who had turned him over to Dostum’s forces in the first place. He was sent to Guantánamo on June 13, 2002, on the spurious basis that it was because of “his knowledge of Chechnya [sic]fighters in Afghanistan, interactions between Chechnya fighters and the Russian military, and information regarding Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan safe houses in 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 [211] is assessed as not 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.”

It was also noted that, “During a visit to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, from 14 to 19 November 2002, Russian Intelligence officers interrogated [ISN 211] and stated that their government would accept custody of [him] if released by the US government.” Crucially, as with Ravil Gumarov, 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 his release from Russian custody in June 2004, he returned to his family’s home in Nalchik. According to his mother, who spoke to Human Rights Watch:

[T]he harassment began immediately: “They came all the time, threatening, calling him all the time to the department, the first department, the sixth department [the UBOP, which was] well-known to us, the Gestapo.” She drew aside the curtain at the apartment’s window to point out to Human Rights Watch researchers where a modest, unmarked car used to be always parked, so the FSB could keep an eye on their movements.

His mother also explained that he was “unable to obtain his internal passport (national identity document), which was necessary to obtain formal work,” and she expressed her belief that “pressure from the FSB kept the local police from giving him the document because it was only through the intervention of a friendly FSB officer that Odizhev finally did receive his passport in spring 2005. However, he went into hiding soon thereafter, never having had a formal job after his release from Guantánamo.”

On June 27, 2007, he was killed in the centre of Nalchik, apparently while resisting arrest, although Geydar Dzhemal, of the Islamic Committee of Russia, stated that his guilt had not been established and that he could have been captured alive. A Pentagon report, citing the Russian authorities, claimed that he “had taken part in several terrorist acts including an October 2005 attack in the Caucasus region that killed and injured several police officers,” and that he “was found with pistols, a grenade, and homemade explosive devices on his body.”

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

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, 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.