The Man They Never Knew: Said Bakush Is Repatriated from Guantánamo to Algeria; 30 Men Now Remain, 16 Also Approved for Release

A prisoner at Guantánamo (Photo: John Moore/Getty Images). No photo of Said Bakush has been made public, and, as noted below, a photo that the US military claims is of him is of another unidentified prisoner instead.

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On April 20, the last Algerian in Guantánamo, Said Bakush (also known as Saeed Bakhouche), was repatriated after being held for nearly 21 years without charge or trial.

Bakush, a Berber, who is now 52 years old, was freed just over a year after his approval for release, when a Periodic Review Board (a parole-type process established under President Obama) “determined that continued law of war detention [was] no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States,” and it is to be hoped that he will somehow be able to pick up the pieces of his broken life, even though he was not married, and has no children, and no one seems to know whether he has any relatives who are in a position to provide him with the support that will be needed after he lost over a third of his life in Guantánamo.

30 men now remain at Guantánamo, and 16 of them, like Bakush, have been approved for release. His release is to be commended, but it is imperative that these other men are also freed as swiftly as possible, although the release of the majority of them is complicated by the fact that they cannot be repatriated, because of provisions preventing their return to their home countries that have been included by Republicans in the annual National Defense Authorization Act for over a decade, and third countries must be found that are prepared to offer them new homes.

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Guantánamo and the U.S. Courts: When Is A War Not Over? Apparently, When It’s the “War on Terror”

Guantánamo prisoner Khalid Qassim, and Senior Judge Thomas Hogan, of the District Court in Washington, D.C., who is responsible for delivering a ruling in a case brought by Qassim, whose lawyers are seeking to have Judge Hogan order his release, on the basis that he was nothing more than a foot soldier in Afghanistan at the time of his capture over 21 years ago, and that, as such, the U.S. government can no longer claim any right to hold him, after the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in August 2021.

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It’s a sign of the fundamental lawlessness of Guantánamo that, 19 months since the United States decisively brought to an end its nearly 20-year military presence in Afghanistan by withdrawing all its troops, a Guantánamo prisoner — who is not alleged to have been anything more than a foot soldier for the Taliban at the time of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan — is fighting in a U.S. court to try to get a judge to recognize that, given the definitive end to the U.S.’s involvement in hostilities in Afghanistan, he must be freed.

The prisoner in question is Khalid Qassim (aka Qasim), a Yemeni who has been held for nearly 21 years without charge or trial at Guantánamo, and is still held, even though, last July, a Periodic Review Board (a parole-type review process introduced by President Obama) approved him for release, recognizing his “low level of training and lack of a leadership role in al Qaida or the Taliban.”

This was an important decision, which finally brought to an end the U.S. government’s insistence that it could continue to hold him not because of anything he was alleged to have done prior to his capture, but because of concerns regarding his lack of compliance during his imprisonment at Guantánamo.

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Convicted Guantánamo Prisoner Ali Hamza Al-Bahlul Seeks An End to His 14 Years of Solitary Confinement

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, in a photo taken at Guantánamo and included in his classified military file, dated November 15, 2007, which was released by WikiLeaks in 2011.

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Does anyone even remember Ali Hamza al-Bahlul?

14 years ago, on November 3, 2008, the day before Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a 39-year old Yemeni, who had been held in the prison at Guantánamo Bay since he arrived on the first flight into the prison on January 11, 2002, received a life sentence in his military commission trial, for which he had refused to mount a defense, and has been held ever since in solitary confinement.

That ought to be a shocking situation, but uncomfortable truths tend to be swallowed up in Guantánamo, and al-Bahlul’s apparently endless solitary confinement has been largely forgotten.

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Somali Prisoner at Guantánamo, Approved for Release a Year Ago, Calls on a US Court to Act on His Case

Guantánamo prisoner Guled Hassan Duran, photographed at the prison in 2019 by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Recently, in London, campaigners for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay held a vigil outside the US Embassy, by the River Thames in Nine Elms, at which, using the slogan, “Free the Guantánamo 20,” they highlighted the plight of the 20 men still held at Guantánamo, out of 35 prisoners in total, who have been approved for release by high-level government review processes, but are still held.

As I explained in an article about the vigil, the problem for the men approved for release is that the processes that led to their approval for release — initially, under President Obama, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, and, since 2013, the Periodic Review Boards — are ”purely administrative, and no legal mechanism exists to compel the US government to actually free [them].”

This is a shameful state of affairs, as is apparent from a moment’s reflection about how disgraceful it would be if no legal mechanism existed to compel the government to release people from federal prisons after they had completed their sentences, but at Guantánamo, of course, the men approved for release haven’t even been charged with a crime.

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As Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo’s Oldest Prisoner, Is Finally Freed, Here’s the Full Story of His Shameful 19-Year Imprisonment

Saifullah Paracha, photographed after his release from Guantánamo, having a cup of tea in a branch of McDonald’s in Karachi.

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It took 19 years and three months, but finally Saifullah Paracha, 75, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, has been freed from the prison and repatriated to Pakistan, where he has been reunited with his family. The photo at the top of this article was taken as he celebrated his freedom in Karachi, with a cup of tea in a branch of McDonald’s. It was posted on Twitter on October 29 by one of his lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, who called it a “belatedly happy day,” noting that “he should never have been kidnapped & locked up 18 [actually 19] yrs ago.”

In a follow-up tweet on October 30, Stafford Smith added that he had “just had the nicest morning chat” with Saifullah, also explaining that, until the very end, the hysterical over-reaction that has typified the US’s treatment of the 779 men it largely rounded up indiscriminately, sent to Guantánamo, and then fabricated reasons for holding them indefinitely without charge or trial, was still in place. “It took 40 US personnel to take one 75 yo home from Guantánamo Bay”, Stafford Smith wrote.

The over-reaction was grotesque on two fronts: firstly, because Saifullah was regarded as a model prisoner at Guantánamo, who, as the US authorities explained in 2016, “has been very compliant with the detention staff and espouses moderate views and acceptance of Western norms,” and “has focused on improving cell block conditions and helping some detainees improve their English-language and business skills”; and, secondly, because a robust government review process — the Periodic Review Boards, involving “one senior official from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and State; the Joint Staff, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence” — had unanimously concluded, in May 2021, that “continued law of war detention [was] no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

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The US Government’s Entirely Predictable Problems with Resettling Guantánamo Prisoner Majid Khan

Majid Khan over the years: as a student in 1999, prior to his capture; shortly after his arrival at Guantánamo, after three and a half years of forture in CIA “black sites”; during the negotiations regarding his plea deal; and in recent years.

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

It’s difficult enough to get out of Guantánamo at the best of times, and considerably more difficult when the US authorities have to find a third country prepared to take in former prisoners, generally because it is unsafe for them to be returned to the countries of their birth.

In dozens of resettlement cases over the years, the US government has made resettlement additionally difficult by refusing to concede that the men in question might have been fundamentally insignificant by sharing assessment files from Guantánamo with the governments of these countries (fundamentally, the files released by WikiLeaks in 2011), which, more often than not, are full of lies about the prisoners, extracted from their fellow prisoners under duress, or through the promise of favorable treatment, to justify their lawless imprisonment (without any adequate screening at the time of capture) in the first place.

Last week, a new twist on these difficulties came to light in the District Court in Washington, D.C., as Justice Department lawyers sought to prevent a judge from addressing a habeas corpus petition submitted by the Pakistani national Majid Khan, who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo since September 2006, and who previously spent three and a half years in CIA “black sites,” where he was subjected to torture.

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Mentally Ill Torture Victim Mohammed Al-Qahtani Approved for Release from Guantánamo

Mohammed al-Qahtani, photographed before his capture, in 2001, and subsequently photographed at Guantánamo.

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

On February 4, another Guantánamo prisoner was approved for release from the prison by a Periodic Review Board, a parole-type process established by President Obama, which led to the release of 36 men in his second term in office. Of the 39 men still held, 19 — very nearly half of those still imprisoned — have now been approved for release, with 14 of those decisions taking place since President Biden took office just over a year ago.

There was surprise in some quarters, because the prisoner in question, Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi, was, in Guantánamo’s early days, considered the 20th intended hijacker for the 9/11 attacks, and was subjected to a specific torture program, approved by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, which, as the New York Times reported after the PRB decision was announced, involved him “undergo[ing] two months of continuous, brutal interrogation by the US military inside a wooden hut at Camp X-Ray in late 2002 and early 2003.”

The details of his torture shocked the world when a day-by-day interrogation log was leaked to Time magazine in 2006. As the Times described it, the log revealed how “military interrogators placed Mr. Qahtani in solitary confinement, stripped him naked, forcibly shaved him, and subjected him to prolonged sleep deprivation, dehydration, exposure to cold, and various psychological and sexual humiliations like making him bark like a dog, dance with a man and wear women’s underwear on his head.” As the Times added, “They extracted a confession, which he later recanted,” which included allegations that he had made against 30 other prisoners, falsely claiming that they were bodyguards of Osama bin Laden.

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For First Time Since 2010, A Judge Grants a Guantánamo Prisoner’s Habeas Corpus Petition, Ruling that Asadullah Haroon Gul’s Imprisonment is Unlawful

Asadullah Haroon Gul’s parents, Ibrahim and Sehar Bibi, with photos of their son, taken in their home in the Shamshatu refugee camp in Pakistan in January 2021 (Photo: Aftab Khan).

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

In an important ruling in the District Court in Washington, D.C. last week, Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama nominee, granted the habeas corpus petition of Asadullah Haroon Gul, an Afghan prisoner held at Guantánamo without charge or trial since June 2007, and identified by the US authorities simply as Haroon al-Afghani.

The ruling is significant because it is the first time since July 2010 that a judge has granted a Guantánamo prisoner’s habeas corpus petition on the basis that his detention is unlawful. After the Supreme Court granted the Guantánamo prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, in Boumediene v. Bush, in June 2008, there followed a two-year period that was the only time in Guantánamo’s history that the courts were able to objectively assess the basis of the prisoners’ detention, and in 38 cases judges ruled that the government had failed to establish that they had any meaningful connection to either Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

By 2010, however, politically motivated appeals court judges had passed a number of rulings that gutted habeas corpus of all meaning for the Guantánamo prisoners. The last man freed after having his habeas corpus petition granted was Mohammed Hassen (aka Mohammed Hassan Odaini), a Yemeni who was freed in July 2010 after having his habeas petition granted in May 2010. Two other prisoners had their habeas petitions granted in July 2010, but they were amongst the six men whose successful petitions were subsequently overturned by the court of appeals, and, from July 2010 until October 2011, eleven men had their habeas petitions denied, until they, and their lawyers, gave up. Several efforts were made in the following years to interest the Supreme Court in taking back control of Guantánamo detainee issues, and to break through the obstacles raised by the court of appeals, but all, sadly, were in vain.

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Fighting Guantánamo in the Courts Under President Biden

Three of the Guantánamo prisoners who are currently seeking their release from the prison through the US courts. From L to R: Khalid Qassim and Abdulsalam al-Hela, both Yemenis, and Asadullah Haroon Gul, an Afghan.

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I wrote the following article (as “The Ongoing Legal Struggles to Secure Justice for the Guantánamo Prisoners Under President Biden”) for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

In the nineteen unforgivably long years since the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay was first established, lawyers have worked tirelessly to challenge and overturn the Bush administration’s outrageous contention that everyone who ended up at Guantánamo was an “enemy combatant” with no rights whatsoever, who could be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

There have been victories along the way, but the sad truth is that Guantánamo’s fundamental lawlessness remains intact to this day. Since 2010, only one prisoner has been freed because of the actions of lawyers and the US courts (a Sudanese man whose mental health issues persuaded the Justice Department, in this one instance only, not to challenge his habeas corpus petition), and, as the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency showed, if the president doesn’t want anyone released from Guantánamo, no legal avenue exists to compel him to do otherwise.

The lawyers’ great legal victories for the Guantánamo prisoners came in the Supreme Court in what now seems to be the distant, long-lost past. In June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to have the evidence against them objectively assessed by a judge. That ruling allowed lawyers into the prison to begin to represent the men held, breaking the veil of secrecy that had allowed abusive conditions to thrive, but Congress then intervened to block the habeas legislation, and it was not until June 2008 that the Supreme Court, revisiting Guantánamo, ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Congress had acted unconstitutionally, and affirmed that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas rights.

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Clinton Advisor Anthony Lake and Close Guantánamo Co-Founder Tom Wilner Call on President Biden to Close the Prison

Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997 (photo via Unicef), and Close Guantánamo co-founder Tom Wilner, photographed calling for the closure of Guantánamo in Washington, D.C. on January 11, 2012 (photo via Shrieking Tree).

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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and Close Guantánamo co-founder Tom Wilner, who was counsel of record to Guantánamo detainees in the two Supreme Court cases establishing their right to habeas corpus and in the case establishing their right to legal counsel, made a powerful case for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which we’re pleased to be cross-posting below.

Thursday marked the end of the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency, and while we’re aware that the new administration has had a huge workload to deal with after four ruinous years of the Trump presidency, and with the unprecedented challenge of dealing with Covid-19, it remains imperative that the scandal of the prison at Guantánamo is dealt with sooner rather than later, because its continued existence is an affront to all of the US’s cherished notions of itself as a country that respects the rule of law.

Using, as a springboard, the recent release of the movie “The Mauritanian,” which tells the story of former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Lake and Wilner run through the reasons why Guantánamo’s continued existence is so shameful and counter-productive — a hugely expensive offshore prison where the US “detains men indefinitely, without charge or trial or the basic protections of due process of law,” whose continued existence also damages US national security by inflaming tensions within the Muslim world.

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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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