The “Ghost” of Guantánamo is Freed; Ridah Al-Yazidi, Never Charged, Held Since Day One, and Approved for Release 15 Years Ago

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

 

In welcome news, the Pentagon has announced that it has repatriated from Guantánamo Ridah Al-Yazidi, 59, a Tunisian prisoner held without charge or trial since the very first day of the prison’s operations nearly 23 years ago, on January 11, 2002.

Although almost completely unknown to the outside world, because of the mainstream media’s persistent lack of interest in investigating the mundane lawlessness of so much of the prison’s operations, Al-Yazidi’s case is one of the most outstanding cases of casual injustice at Guantánamo.

Along with two other men who are still held, he was approved for release 15 years ago, through the deliberations of the high-profile Guantánamo Review Task Force, comprising officials drawn from various government departments and the intelligence agencies, who met once a week throughout 2009 to administratively decide the fate of the 240 prisoners that President Obama had inherited from George W. Bush.

156 of those men were recommended for release when the Task Force’s report was published on January 22, 2010, but, although Obama eventually released 153 of them during his eight years in office, al-Yazidi, and the two other men still held — Toffiq Al-Bihani, a Yemeni, and Muieen Abd Al-Sattar, an even more mysterious prisoner, who is a seemingly stateless Rohingya Muslim — were left behind.

Although little is known about Al-Yazidi, it seems evident, from intelligence assessments at Guantánamo, that he had left Tunisia for Italy in 1986, when he would have been 21 years old, where he undertook various menial jobs and was arrested twice on drug charges. In 1999, after being briefly imprisoned, he made his way to Afghanistan, where he evidently ended up as a low-level foot soldier for the Taliban in their inter-Muslim civil war with the Northern Alliance, like so many of the men held at Guantánamo.

The only words that he has ever uttered that have been reported to the outside world came after the Bush administration introduced cursory reviews of the men’s cases in 2004 — the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), fundamentally lawless review processes that relied on classified evidence that was not disclosed to the prisoners, and in which they were not allowed legal representation.

In his hearing, as I explained in an article about him and the other two long-term “forever prisoners” approved for release in February this year, “it was alleged that he ‘traveled to Afghanistan from Italy in 1999, that he attended the Khaldan training camp [an independent camp unaffiliated with Al-Qaeda], and that he fought on the Taliban front lines in 2001.’ In response, he ‘stated that he did not engage in any significant combat during the entire time he was on the front lines,’ but, like most of the men whose cases were reviewed, he was found to have been an ‘enemy combatant’ who could continue to be held indefinitely.”

As I also explained, “His classified military file, dating from June 2007 and released by WikiLeaks in 2011, recommended him for ongoing imprisonment, but as I discovered for an article in June 2012, a subsequent Bush-era review process, the Administrative Review Boards (ARBs), a successor to the CSRTs, recommended him for release on November 19, 2007. When Obama took office, however, all of the outstanding recommendations for release under George W. Bush, relating to at least 40 men, were discarded, to be replaced by the recommendations of the Guantánamo Review Task Force.”

Al-Yazidi’s long imprisonment ever since he was approved for release can be explained — but not justified — by difficulties within both the Obama and Biden administrations regarding negotiations with his home government, but also through his own refusal to deal with the authorities at Guantánamo, for which no mechanism to prevent prisoners disappearing into a legal or even an existential “black hole” has ever existed.

When the Supreme Court ruled, in June 2004, that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights, finally allowing attorneys to begin representing them, Brent Rushforth was assigned to represent him, but in 2015, when Carol Rosenberg, then at the Miami Herald, wrote an article about the men on the first flight into Guantánamo, and spoke to Rushforth, he told her that he “met Al-Yazidi only once in 2008,” and since that time he had “refused calls and invitations to other meetings.”

In December 2016, as I explained here, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that officials had told him that the Obama administration was “reluctant to repatriate” Al-Yazidi, and two other men, “for reasons having to do with their home countries,” but all efforts to find a third country for his resettlement were thwarted because of his refusal to engage with anyone.

Reporting on his eventual release, Carol Rosenberg, now at the New York Times, spoke to Ian Moss, who “spent a decade at the State Department arranging prisoner and detainee transfers,” and who confirmed that he “did not leave earlier because Tunisia was deemed too dangerous or uninterested in taking him,” and he “was unwilling to meet with other countries that might have resettled him.”

As Moss also explained, “He could have been gone a while ago but for Tunisian foot-dragging.”

What was not known until his release is that the Biden administration had been negotiating his repatriation for some time. The Pentagon’s press release reveals that the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, “notified Congress of his intent to support this repatriation” almost a year ago, on January 31, 2024, fulfilling an irritating requirement in US law, introduced by Republicans, requiring Congress to be notified 30 days before any Guantánamo prisoner is released.

The Pentagon also explained that, “in consultation with our partner in Tunisia, we completed the requirements for responsible transfer” prior to his release, although, as is always the case with releases from Guantánamo, the details of arrangements with home governments — or host governments in the cases of men who cannot, for various reasons, be repatriated, and who are resettled in third countries — are classified, and do not contain any evident mechanism for securing humane treatment from the receiving governments. Because so much of Al-Yazidi’s story is shrouded in mystery, it is not even known publicly whether he has surviving family members in Tunisia who will be able to help him rebuild his life after his long ordeal.

With Al-Yazidi’s release, 26 men are still held at Guantánamo, 14 of whom have been approved for release — 12 between October 2020 and September 2022, plus Al-Yazidi’s two fellow long-term “forever prisoners.” Of these two men, Toffiq Al-Bihani’s long imprisonment remains inexplicable, as he was meant to be put on a flight to Saudi Arabia with other prisoners approved for release in April 2016, but was held from boarding the plane at the last minute, for which no explanation has ever been provided.

For Muieen Abd Al-Sattar, his ghost-like status is, however, even more pronounced than that of Ridah Al-Yazidi, as, not only is his nationality uncertain, but he has never even been represented by an attorney.

With just 20 days to go until Donald Trump slouches into the White House once more, I cannot even begin to express how important it is for the Biden administration to have put in place arrangements for the release of these 14 men, most of whom need resettling in third countries, because they are largely Yemenis, and Republicans have, for many years, persistently included provisions in the annual defense spending bill, prohibiting the repatriation of prisoners to certain proscribed countries, including Yemen.

Will Muieen Abd Al-Sattar be freed, or will he remain, as Ridah Al-Yazidi was until yesterday, as a “ghost” whose presence demonstrates, all too compellingly, how, along with all its other crimes, Guantánamo is, and always has been capable of disappearing people entirely, like the dank corners of some appalling medieval dungeon?

* * * * *

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009 (out of the 532 released by President Bush), the 196 prisoners released from February 2009 to January 2017 by President Obama, the one prisoner released by Donald Trump, and the 13 prisoners released by President Biden from July 2021 to December 2024, 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, and for the stories of the other 390 prisoners released by President Bush, see my archive of articles based on the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011: June 2007 – 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 – 16 Saudis; August 2007 – 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 – 16 Saudis; 1 Mauritanian; 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 – 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; 14 Saudis; December 2007 – 2 Sudanese; 13 Afghans (here and here); 3 British residents; 10 Saudis; May 2008 – 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 – 2 Algerians; 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 – 2 Algerians; September 2008 – 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 – 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; 2 Algerians; 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; 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); 2 Somalis; 4 Afghans; 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland; 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania; 1 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); 1 Algerian; 1 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; July 2012 — 1 Sudanese; September 2012 — 1 Canadian (Omar Khadr) to ongoing imprisonment in Canada; August 2013 — 2 Algerians; December 2013 — 2 Algerians; 2 Saudis; 2 Sudanese; 3 Uighurs to Slovakia; March 2014 — 1 Algerian (Ahmed Belbacha); May 2014 — 5 Afghans to Qatar (in a prisoner swap for US PoW Bowe Bergdahl); November 2014 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fawzi al-Odah); 3 Yemenis to Georgia, 1 Yemeni and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia, and 1 Saudi; December 2014 — 4 Syrians, 1 Palestinian and 1 Tunisian to Uruguay; 4 Afghans; 2 Tunisians and 3 Yemenis to Kazakhstan; January 2015 — 4 Yemenis to Oman, 1 Yemeni to Estonia; June 2015 — 6 Yemenis to Oman; September 2015 — 1 Moroccan and 1 Saudi; October 2015 — 1 Mauritanian and 1 British resident (Shaker Aamer); November 2015 — 5 Yemenis to the United Arab Emirates; January 2016 — 2 Yemenis to Ghana; 1 Kuwaiti (Fayiz al-Kandari) and 1 Saudi; 10 Yemenis to Oman; 1 Egyptian to Bosnia and 1 Yemeni to Montenegro; April 2016 — 2 Libyans to Senegal; 9 Yemenis to Saudi Arabia; June 2016 — 1 Yemeni to Montenegro; July 2016 — 1 Tajik and 1 Yemeni to Serbia, 1 Yemeni to Italy; August 2016 — 12 Yemenis and 3 Afghans to the United Arab Emirates (see here and here); October 2016 — 1 Mauritanian (Mohammedou Ould Slahi); December 2016 — 1 Yemeni to Cape Verde; January 2017 — 4 Yemenis to Saudi Arabia; 8 Yemenis and 2 Afghans to Oman; 1 Russian, 1 Afghan and 1 Yemeni to the United Arab Emirates, and 1 Saudi repatriated to Saudi Arabia for continued detention; May 2018 — 1 Saudi to continued imprisonment in Saudi Arabia; July 2021 — 1 Moroccan; March 2022 — 1 Saudi (Mohammed al-Qahtani); April 2022 — 1 Algerian; June 2022 — 1 Afghan; October 2022 — 1 Pakistani (Saifullah Paracha); February 2023 — 1 Pakistani to Belize (Majid Khan); 2 Pakistanis; March 2023 — 1 Saudi; April 2023 — 1 Algerian; December 2024 — 1 Kenyan; 2 Malaysians.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.