US Honors Deal to Release Convicted Bin Laden Cook from Guantánamo to Sudan; 87 Cleared Men Still Await Release

14.7.12

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Getting out of Guantánamo is such a feat these days (with just three men released in the last 18 months) that it is remarkable that Ibrahim al-Qosi, a Sudanese prisoner who agreed to a plea deal at his war crimes trial in Guantánamo in July 2010, guaranteeing that he would be freed after two years, has been repatriated as promised. 168 prisoners now remain in Guantánamo.

With a typical disregard for the principle that a prisoner — any prisoner — must be freed when their sentence comes to an end, the US has maintained, since the “war on terror” began nearly 11 years ago, that prisoners at Guantánamo can continue to be held after their sentence has come to an end, and be returned to the general population as “enemy combatants,” even though President Bush failed to do this when he had the opportunity — with Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden who was freed after serving a five-month sentence handed down after his military trial in 2008.

A source with knowledge of al-Qosi’s case, who does not wish to be identified, told me that the Obama administration was unwilling to detain al-Qosi after his sentence came to an end, and I believe that one of the reasons that the President negotiated a waiver to the provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, allowing him to bypass restrictions on releasing prisoners that were imposed by Congress, was to prevent Republicans from trying to force him to continue holding al-Qosi.

This, it should be noted, is not out of kindness. Al-Qosi’s plea deal — preventing him from serving 14 years, as decided at his trial — has been used in Guantánamo to encourage other prisoners to accept plea deals, in exchange for providing the authorities with information they can use against other prisoners. If al-Qosi had not been freed, it would have derailed a plan that is already on shaky ground, because of the Canadian government’s refusal to repatriate Omar Khadr, who also accepted a plea deal, in October 2010, which was supposed to guarantee that, after one more year in Guantánamo, he would be returned to Canada to serve the rest of an eight-year sentence in his homeland.

As Carol Rosenberg, who broke the story in the Miami Herald, explained, Khadr’s presence at Guantánamo, eight months after he was supposed to have left the prison, “has meant that prosecution plea deal offers have fallen on deaf ears.” Al-Qosi’s release, in contrast, “may break a logjam in plea deals attributed to the Khadr case.” Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, the chief defense counsel for the military commissions, told Rosenberg, “Clearly if the government can’t carry through on their end of the bargain, it has a chilling effect on the willingness of others to plead.”

For al-Qosi, his release will allow him to be reunited with his family. Unlike many other prisoners, all of his immediate family are still alive. As Paul Reichler, his Washington-based civilian attorney, who represented him pro bono for seven years, explained, “He is now in his 50s, eager only to spend his life at home with his family in Sudan — his mother and father, his wife and two teenage daughters, and his brothers and their families — and live among them in peace, quiet and freedom.”

His Pentagon-appointed defense lawyer, Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, noted that, last week, al-Qosi was moved to “special quarters,” with “a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator that let him eat at his leisure and a small outdoor gravel-topped patio, all inside a locked enclosure.” Cmdr. Lachelier added there was also “a real bed rather than a steel bunk topped with a mat,” but that al-Qosi slept on the floor before leaving “because he suffers from a bad back.”

Although al-Qosi is technically a convicted war criminal, this says more about the distortions introduced by the United States after 9/11 than it does about al-Qosi himself. He was seized in December 2001, escaping from the Tora Bora mountains, where a showdown had taken place between al-Qaeda and the Taliban on the one hand, and the United States and their proxy Afghan army on the other, but there was no indication that he held any kind of leadership position. He was seized with other men who were later described as being bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, but those are largely discredited allegations, made by prisoners notorious for making false statements about their fellow inmates.

Al-Qosi was a trained accountant, who had been the book-keeper for one of the businesses that Osama bin Laden ran in Sudan during his stay in al-Qosi’s homeland between 1992 and 1996, and he then followed bin Laden to Afghanistan, but he was never anything more than a peripheral figure, sometimes working as a driver for bin Laden (like Salim Hamdan), and sometimes cooking at an al-Qaeda compound named Star of Jihad, in Jalalabad.

As Carol Rosenberg noted, he was also one of the first prisoners “to formally allege torture,” including “the use of strobe lights, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, [and] being wrapped in the Israeli flag,” in a petition filed in federal court in 2004, although that was not revealed publicly at the time, and he had to drop all allegations about his torture and abuse as part of his plea deal.

With his long ordeal behind him, al-Qosi will return to his hometown, Atbara, north of Khartoum, where he will help to run his family’s shop. His wife, Mariam, the daughter of another former Guantánamo prisoner, Abdullah Tabarak, a Moroccan released in July 2003, who he married in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks, moved to Atbara from Morocco last year, with their daughters, to await his return.

Summing up his client, Paul Reichler said, “He is an intelligent, pious, humble and sincere individual who has endured much hardship the past 10 years. But he returns home without hatred or rancor.”

In conclusion, while it is reassuring that the Obama administration has honoured its agreement to release al-Qosi, it remains deeply dispiriting that 87 other men — never charged, never tried and cleared for release up to eight years ago — are still held. New homes are required for some of these men who cannot be safely repatriated, because they are from countries where they would be unsafe if returned — China, for example, or Syria — but 58 of them are Yemenis, held because of an unjust and hysterical response to would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s capture in December 2009.

When it was revealed that Abdulmutallab had been recruited in Yemen, President Obama responded by issuing a moratorium on releasing any more Yemenis, which has stayed in place ever since, even though not releasing Yemenis — some cleared as long ago as 2004 — is nothing less than guilt by nationality, and a disgrace that, unfortunately, no one in a position of power and authority wishes to address.

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 April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the 69 prisoners released from February 2009 to April 2012, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (herehere and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (herehere and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 —1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs to Bermuda, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad), 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni, 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; October 2009 — 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); December 2009 — 2 Somalis4 Afghans6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland1 Egyptian1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini); July 2010 — 1 Algerian1 Syrian to Cape Verde, 1 Uzbek to Latvia, 1 unidentified Afghan to Spain; September 2010 — 1 Palestinian, 1 Syrian to Germany; January 2011 – 1 Algerian; April 2012 – 2 Uighurs to El Salvador.


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17 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    On Facebook, introducing this article, I wrote, “The injustice is immense; the silence deafening,” and my friend Anne McClintock wrote:

    Yes, Andy. The silence is definitely deafening in the US. Not a peep out of the corporate press. Please keep it up!

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    SisterTogether Filleh wrote:

    they should give him a red carpet and a lot of compensation , they honour the deal ? to free a free man , that is call …SENSE and justice not honour !

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Anne and Sister and everyone who has liked and shared this. And you’re right, of course, Anne, about the silence. The story’s been reported, but there’s no one forcefully joining the dots and saying that the release of al-Qosi makes it an absolute disgrace that 87 men – cleared for release for up to eight years – are still held.

  4. Andy Worthington says...

    On Digg, cosmicsurfer wrote:

    87 men – some stolen from their lives as boys, sitting in concrete and steel cages for being brown and in the wrong place at the wrong time but the US lets Bin Laden’s cook – convicted of being a “war criminal” after being treated to American hospitality of war crimes – go to the Sudan.

    87 men – some stolen from their lives as boys, sitting in concrete and steel cages for being brown and in the wrong place at the wrong time…..all declared innocent of anything except being brown and in the wrong place at the wrong time…no hope; no chance of living a life or going home

    Aren’t we somethin’?

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, cosmicsurfer. Now we just need many, many more people to share your outrage.

  6. The Porcupine - At Guantánamo, Another Bleak Ramadan for 87 Cleared Prisoners Who Are Still Held by Andy Worthington says...

    […] this injus­tice, the release two weeks ago of Ibrahim al-Qosi, a Sudanese pris­oner, can only have added to the sense of mis­ery per­me­at­ing […]

  7. At Guantánamo, Another Bleak Ramadan for 87 Cleared Prisoners Who Are Still Held « freedetainees.org says...

    […] this injustice, the release two weeks ago of Ibrahim al-Qosi, a Sudanese prisoner, can only have added to the sense of misery permeating Guantánamo this […]

  8. Eleven Years After 9/11, Guantánamo Is A Political Prison | IndepthAfrica says...

    […] of the charade that had dominated the Bush years resumed, and to date only four prisoners — Ibrahim al-Qosi, Noor Uthman Muhammed, Omar Khadr and Majid Khan — have seen their cases proceed to trial, […]

  9. arcticredriver says...

    Thanks Andy!

    I am going to note here that Steve Vladeck wrote about a recent development in al-Qosi’s case. The Government (Sort of) Wins a Guantánamo Military Commission Appeal He wrote:

    At first blush, this ruling seems innocuous enough. But the 2014 CMCR decision from which Captain McCormick was seeking to appeal had denied her application for “funding from the Department of Defense that would allow her to travel to Sudan with an interpreter to seek out and meet with Al Qosi so that she could consult with him, and he could make an informed decision on whether he wanted her to represent him and whether she should challenge his military commission conviction,” on the (in my view, rather circular) ground that the CMCR could find no evidence that McCormick and al-Qosi had an attorney-client relationship–notwithstanding the fact that McCormick had been appointed by the military commissions’ Chief Defense Counsel as al-Qosi’s appellate defense counsel.

    Wow. This strikes me as showing incredible bad faith. I think when the first conviction of “providing material support for terrorism” was struck down, because it wasn’t a crime when the alleged acts took place I think all similar convictions should have been struck down.

  10. Andy Worthington says...

    Interesting, arcticredriver. I had missed that, so thanks for mentioning it. I agree that all the convictions in the military commissions relating to material support should have been struck down after the Hamdan ruling, but I suppose – not being a legal scholar – that the law doesn’t work that way and individual rulings must be challenged.
    It looks like the judge presumed al-Qosi wasn’t very interested in having his conviction thrown out, and so chose to issue a ruling that would have looked much worse if he had demonstrated an interest in wiping the slate clean – not a very just way to proceed, I agree. I wonder if this is the end of it, or if there’ll be more?

  11. Doulomb says...

    “He is now in his 50s, eager only to spend his life at home with his family in Sudan — his mother and father, his wife and two teenage daughters, and his brothers and their families — and live among them in peace, quiet and freedom.”

    Yeah, he’s doing a great job in regards to that from Yemen.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/dec/31/ibrahim-al-qosi-released-from-guantanamo-emerges-a/?page=all

    “they should give him a red carpet and a lot of compensation , they honour the deal ? to free a free man , that is call …SENSE and justice not honour !”

    On the contrary, this guy was one of “the worst of the worst” and should have gotten a life sentence like Ali Bahlul. Instead he now calls for attacks on innocent people as a leading idealogue. Hopefully a drone will take care of this guy one day.

  12. U.S. Prepares To Release Ahmed Al-Darbi In Plea Deal, Less Significant Prisoners Have No Prospect Of Release | PopularResistance.Org says...

    […] period from 2010 to 2013 — with former child prisoner Omar Khadr, low level al-Qaeda assistant Ibrahim al-Qosi, and military trainer Noor Uthman Muhammed all released via plea deals — as President Obama sat […]

  13. arcticredriver says...

    Greetings! Andy, thanks for all the important work you do.

    Can I note here Carol Rosenberg’s recent report that the US is offering a $4 million bounty for al Qosi?

    A few years before AQAP started working with him the military lawyer he worked with during his Guantanamo case petitioned for funds, to contact him. She argued that, following the ruling that the charges against other captives who had pled guilty for “material support for terrorism” had been thrown out, making them officially innocent – not convicted war criminals, he too would have his conviction overturned, if he initiated an appeal. She argued his appeal would have been open and shut, since an appeal in another case had ruled the charge itself violated the long-standing principle that no-one should be convicted for a crime that wasn’t on the books, at the time it was committed.

    Her appeal for modest funds, to contact him, and initiate that pro forma appeal, was denied. It was denied on the grounds she could not prove she had an ongoing lawyer-client relationship with him.

    Did it make sense to overturn a bogus conviction, even if Prosecutors remained convinced he was guilty of something? Well, we were all taught, in nursery school, that two wrongs don’t make a right.

    If her appeal for those modest funds were denied out of fiscal prudence, then the $4 million bounty shows that fiscal prudence was extremely shortsighted.

    If his arguments that he only served al Qaeda in a non-military role, as a cook, and accountant, were true, and that he never served al Qaeda in a military or terrorist role, and had no advance knowledge of terrorist attacks, then overturning his conviction was the fair thing to do. What about if prosecutors and intelligence officials remained convinced his denials were all false, but they couldn’t prove he played a military or terrorist role? Well, even as children, we are taught we are the good guys, because we honour the rule of law.

    I think throwing arbitrary barriers in the way of overturning his conviction, out of unprovable confidence his denials were false, shows disrespect for the rule of law.

    One of the shocking things I learned from reading the Administrative Review Board transcripts was that Guantanamo captives whose hearing concluded they had been innocent civilian bystanders, captured in error, could nevertheless advise continued detention, if they suspected the captive had been embittered by years of abusive and coercive interrogation, and detention without trial. In several ARB board transcripts captives are explicitly warned that the Board will recommend their continued detention, solely because they failed to convince the Board that the terrible treatment they had endured, in US custody, had not embittered them, and turned them into potential threats to the USA.

    At least a year, maybe a couple of years, passed between when Al Qosi was eligible for having an appeal overturn his conviction, to the point when AQAP first broadcast a video claiming he endorsed their activities.

    Well, if his conviction had been overturned, maybe he would not have endorsed AQAP?

  14. arcticredriver says...

    Oops! Here is the link to Carol’s article… https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/politics/gitmo-reward.html

  15. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, arcticredriver. Great to hear from you, as always.
    I saw the al-Qosi article a few days ago. Thanks for mentioning it. I think you’re absolutely right that his bogus conviction should have been overturned, but I suspect it wasn’t because the authorities wanted to retain some credibility for the commissions.
    As for your comment about the ARBs, that’s the situation that some of the 40 men still held are in – not accused of having a significant role as terrorists (because they were nothing more than foot soldiers), but considered to have a bad attitude, with no consideration given as to why they might not be enamored of the US, after so many years of being held without rights that most of us can take for granted.

  16. arcticredriver says...

    And this brings us to to another point where the well-respected SCOTUS has failed.

    Guantanamo apologists claim that the USA can hold these individuals there, even if they aren’t facing charges, or even if they face trial, and are acquitted.

    Presumably, this claim is based on a vague recollection of the Geneva Conventions authorizing detention “for the duration of hostilities”. Vague recollections of this Geneva Convention authorization leave off a key detail. The Geneva Conventions authorize holding POWs until hostilities cease, and it was the official position of the Bush administration that the Guantanamo captives weren’t entitled to POW status.

    I think this means there is no allowance in International Law to hold them without laying charges against them, and then trying them.

    And, of course, the Geneva Conventions require the USA to try enemies who are suspected of war crimes in the same kinds of court, and under the same rules of evidence, as they would use to try their own soldiers suspected of war crimes.

  17. Andy Worthington says...

    None of it has ever made sense, arcticredriver. They were intended to be prisoners without any rights whatsoever, and that’s what they still are fundamentally, even though that flies in the face of everything that supposedly law-abiding democracies recognise as indispensable – due process, charges, trials, PoW status.

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Andy Worthington

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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