[wvns] 8 Wrongly Imprisoned Men Released from Guantanamo
The Anonymous Victims of Guantánamo
Eight More Wrongly Imprisoned Men are Quietly Released
By ANDY WORTHINGTON
06/10/2007
http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=21939
Hot on the heels of the release of Mohammed al-Amin, a Mauritanian
student who was just a teenager when he was kidnapped for a bounty
payment on a street in Pakistan over five years ago, the Pentagon has
released another eight detainees -- six Afghans, a Libyan and a Yemeni
-- thinning "the worst of the worst" at Guantánamo from 778 men to
just 335.
Of the six Afghans released, the identities of three are unknown. This
is hardly surprising, as the Department of Defense never reveals the
names of those it releases, and the media long ago abandoned turning
up in Kabul to welcome back another bunch of farmers, shopkeepers and
Taliban conscripts from their brutal and surreal sojourn in a small
corner of Cuba that is forever America. Of the 163 Afghans released
since Guantánamo opened (out of a total of 218), a dozen of those
released in the last few years have not been identified, and these
three look like remaining just as anonymous.
To compensate, however, the three Afghans who have been identified
represent a microcosmic cross-section of the ineptitude of the US
military and the Pentagon during the two years that followed the
US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, consisting of a
pro-US, anti-Taliban military leader, another man who was arrested
after his house was bombed, and another who was seized while walking
in the street.
The pro-US military leader -- one of several dozen actively
pro-American Afghans held at Guantánamo over the years -- is Sabar Lal
Melma. 40 years old at the time of his capture, Melma was the military
aide to Haji Roohullah, the commander of a long-standing anti-Taliban
militia based in Kunar province, which was aligned with the Northern
Alliance. Roohullah, who was also described by Ghulam Ullah, the head
of education in Kunar, as "a national religious leader," had fired the
first salvo against the Taliban in Kunar after the US-led invasion,
and as a result of his anti-Taliban credentials and his support for
Hamid Karzai, he was rewarded with an important position in the
province's post-Taliban administration, and was also made a member of
the Loya Jirga, the prestigious gathering of tribal leaders that
elected Karzai as President in June 2002. Betrayed by a rival
probably Malik Zarin, the head of the rival Mushwani tribe, who had
ingratiated himself with the Americans and was using them for his own
ends Roohullah, Melma and eleven others were seized by US forces in
August 2002 and taken to the US prison in Bagram airbase for
questioning, where they were accused of being part of an Islamic
extremist group and helping al-Qaeda fighters to escape from Tora
Bora, even though they had had numerous meetings with senior American
officials and had offered support for the Tora Bora campaign.
Although the others were subsequently released, the Americans decided
that both Roohullah and Melma had sufficient intelligence value to be
transferred to Guantánamo in August 2003. According to an Associated
Press report, they believed, despite overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, that Roohullah "had strong links with Middle Eastern
fighters in Afghanistan, particularly Saudi Arabians like Osama bin
Laden," and thought it significant that he was a follower of the
Wahhabi sect of Islam. In his tribunal, Melma pointed out the
injustice of imprisoning him with members of the Taliban: "The only
thing I want to tell you that is so ironic here is that I see a Talib
and then I see myself here too, I am in the same spot as a Talib. I
see those people on an everyday basis, they are cursing at me ... They
say, 'See, you got what you deserved, you are here, too.'"
Astonishingly, though Melma has now been released, Haji Roohullah
remains in Guantánamo, with no immediate prospect of release.
The man who was taken to Guantánamo because his house was bombed is
Mohibullah, from Uruzgan province, who was just 21 when he was
captured. Woken in the night by the sound of firing, he went into his
compound and fired three warning shots into the air to ward off what
he thought were burglars. Soon after, an American plane dropped a bomb
on his compound, injuring him, and he was captured by Special Forces
the following morning. "I never worked with the Taliban, or talked
with them or ate with them," he told his tribunal at Guantánamo. "I
was a bus driver." Two years ago, in an attempt to secure his freedom,
he wrote a habeas corpus petition, without the help of a lawyer, in
which he explained more about the circumstances of his capture, noting
that he was severely injured when his house was destroyed, but that
when the Americans, who admitted that the bombing might have been a
mistake, took him away, claiming that they were going to treat his
wounds, he was transported to Guantánamo instead. "Now it has been two
and one-half years that I have been detained here and I do not why,"
Mohibullah wrote. "Even the interrogators have still not told me what
my crime was and why they detained me."
The third Afghan -- the one who was captured in the street -- is
Azimullah. Just 20 years old at the time, he explained to his tribunal
in Guantánamo that he was captured near a madrassa (religious school),
where he was studying. He was accused of acting "as a guide to a group
of individuals attacking the Salerno Fire Base" (a US base), but he
said that he didn't know anything about this group, or about
allegations that they had "weapons, surveillance equipment (cameras
and binoculars) and radios," or that he "met with an Arab man and an
Afghan man who gave him money prior to the attack." Asked about the
circumstances of his arrest, he said that he was walking towards the
village with a man named Salim, whom he did not know previously, but
whom he had met "on the way going to the village," when a group of
Afghan soldiers "saw us and arrested us." He explained that he was not
told why he was arrested at the time, but that "when they took me to
the base," where he was handed over to the US military, "they told me
that I attacked them and that I did this and this."
The story of the released Libyan, Abu Sufian Hamouda, is rather more
complicated. Hamouda, who is 48 years old, was a refugee from his
homeland. According to the US military's "evidence," accumulated over
the last five years, he had served in the Libyan army as a tank driver
from 1979 to 1990, but was "arrested and jailed on multiple occasions
for drug and alcohol offenses." Having apparently escaped from prison
in 1992, he fled to Sudan, where he worked as a truck driver. In an
attempt to beef up the evidence against him, the Department of Defense
alleged that the company he worked for, the Wadi al-Aqiq company, was
"owned by Osama bin Laden," and also attempted to claim that he joined
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant group opposed to the
rule of Colonel Gaddafi, even while admitting that an unidentified
"al-Qaeda/LIFG facilitator" had described him as "a noncommittal LIFG
member who received no training."
After relocating to Pakistan, Hamouda apparently stayed there until
the summer of 2001, when he and a friend crossed the border into
Afghanistan, traveling to Jalalabad and then to Kabul, where Hamouda
found a job working as an accountant for Abdul Aziz al-Matrafi, the
director of al-Wafa, a Saudi charity which provided humanitarian aid
to Afghans, but which was regarded by the US authorities as a front
for al-Qaeda. Over the years, dozens of Guantanamo detainees were
tarred as terrorists because of their associations with al-Wafa. The
majority have now been released, but one of those who remains in
Guantánamo, little-known and barely reported, is al-Matrafi, who was
kidnapped on a flight from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia in November 2001.
It's difficult to ascertain whether there is any truth in the
allegations that al-Wafa was a front for al-Qaeda. According to the
"evidence" against Hamouda, "Members of the Taliban would frequently
visit the al-Wafa office in Kabul and had dealings with the director
of that office," which was hardly surprising, as the Taliban was the
government at the time. Less clear is the claim that, according to
various accounts, including a statement allegedly made by Hamouda,
"the director of the al-Wafa office was connected to al-Qaeda and knew
Osama bin Laden." Even setting aside the dubious circumstances under
which this "confession" was produced, other detainees have claimed
that bin Laden was actually suspicious of al-Wafa, because of its
Saudi links.
What's apparent, however, is that Hamouda's involvement with the
organization centered on its humanitarian work, as another
"allegation," which actually had nothing to do with terrorism, made
clear. In the "evidence" presented for his Combatant Status Review
Tribunal, under factors purporting to demonstrate that he "supported
military operations against the United States or its coalition
partners," it was stated that, while working for al-Wafa, he traveled
to Kunduz "to oversee the distribution of rice that was being guarded
by four to five armed guards." In Guantánamo, it seems, even the
distribution rice can be regarded as a component in a military operation.
Captured in Islamabad, after fleeing from Afghanistan following the
US-led invasion, Hamouda was held for a month by the Pakistani
authorities, and was then handed over to the Americans, who began
mining him for the flimsy "evidence" of terrorist activities outlined
above. Earlier this year, he was cleared for release, and, despite
misgivings on the part of his lawyers, stated that he was prepared to
return to Libya, even though what awaits him may not be any better
than what he was suffered over the last five years. Perhaps, as one of
Guantánamo's truly lost men, he has decided that, if he is to spend
the rest of his life in prison for no apparent reason, he would rather
be in Libya, where his wife and his family might be able to see him,
than in Guantánamo, where, like every other detainee, he was more
isolated from his relatives than even the deadliest convicted mass
murderer on the US mainland.
The last of the eight, Ali Mohammed Nasir Mohammed, was 19 years old
when he was seized by Pakistani soldiers and delivered to the US
military in December 2001. Slightly evasive in his tribunal, he said
that he went to Afghanistan to "look around to see how the people were
doing," and added, "In my imagination I thought I was going to see
many centers with a lot of guards in them and I would see a lot of
Muslims. I would find out how the Muslims were worshipping and what
they do." He admitted, however, that he attended a training camp for
40-45 days and also admitted that he had worked for the Taliban,
although he said that he had worked only in the kitchens or as a guard
behind the front lines, and had not participated in military
operations against the US-led coalition, telling his tribunal, "I have
never shot one bullet in my life." After escaping from Afghanistan by
passing through the Tora Bora region to reach Pakistan, he was
captured by Pakistani soldiers after asking directions to the Yemeni
embassy.
What makes his story unusual is that, once the Pentagon had decided
that it was not worth holding onto a cook for the Taliban who clearly
knew nothing about al-Qaeda, confusion over his identity prevented his
release for 16 months. Back in May 2006, as the Washington Post
described it four months ago, "He got a checkup. His photo was taken,
as were his fingerprints. He was measured for clothes and shoes, then
offered a meeting with the Red Cross. As the Pentagon tersely put it
later in an e-mail to his attorneys: 'Your client has been approved to
leave Guantánamo.'" However, as his lawyer, Martha Rayner, explained,
"He never went home." "Stuck," as the Post article went on, "in a
limbo of mistaken identities, bureaucratic inertia and official
neglect," his case was "an indictment of a system, still cloaked in
the strictest secrecy and largely beyond accountability, in which a
man who face[d] no charge and no sentence remain[ed] deprived of the
freedom he was granted" in May 2006. "It's a lovely illustration of
what happens when there's no oversight of the jailer," Rayner noted,
acutely.
The Washington Post article went on to describe what had happened to
prevent Mohammed's release for 16 months. Although he was born in
Saudi Arabia and had been living there before his all-advised trip to
Afghanistan, he was regarded as a Yemeni, under both Yemeni and Saudi
law, because his parents are from the Yemen, where they still live,
and Mohammed had a Yemeni passport and grew up there. What particular
confused matters was the fact that the US military regarded Mohammed
as a Saudi, and while the Saudi authorities washed their hands of him,
and the Yemeni government said that it was "unaware of his case," he
languished in Guantánamo for another 16 months, imprisoned in Camp
Six, where even cleared detainees are held in solitary confinement,
until a new arrangement could be made.
As these eight men finally leave Guantánamo after five years or more
in US custody without charge or trial, their cases clearly do nothing
to salvage the administration's reputation for illegal incompetence.
And it can only get worse. Of the 335 detainees still held in
Guantánamo, the government has admitted that it only intends to put
forward around 80 for trial by Military Commission. Of the remaining
255, at least 70, like the men just released, have been cleared for
release (some for two years or more), and despite the administration's
blustering this summer that it intended to hold dozens of others
indefinitely because, in another revolutionary legal twist, they are
too dangerous to be released, but not dangerous enough to be charged,
it now seems inevitable that they too will eventually be given their
freedom. Even if the 80 proposed trials go ahead, which is extremely
unlikely, it must surely be impossible for the architects of this
disaster to claim that an 11% success rate is sufficient justification
for the moral, ethical, judicial, and financial cost of an operation
that has been manifestly revealed not as the triumphant prison wing of
the "War on Terror" but as an inept, cruel, degrading and ultimately
failed experiment.
Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's
Illegal Prison' (to be published by Pluto Press in October 2007).
He can be reached at: andy @ andyworthington.co.uk
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