[Ppnews] 14 Saudis Just Released from Guantánamo

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington11142007.html

November 14, 2007


The Stories of the 14 Saudis Just Released from Guantánamo


Innocents and Foot Soldiers

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

Whether through a desire to impress the Supreme 
Court with its sense of justice prior to next 
month's showdown over the detainees' rights, or, 
as is more probable, through a placatory deal 
with the Saudi government following the death of 
a third Saudi detainee in Guantánamo in May this 
year, the US administration released another 14 
Saudi detainees on Saturday. Whichever way you 
look at it, however, the administration loses. Of 
the 136 Saudi detainees originally held as the 
"worst of the worst," 107 have now been released 
(45 in the last four months alone). Removing from 
these figures the three men who died, this means 
that just 26 Saudi detainees remain in Guantánamo.

Drawing on the research I conducted for my book 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America's Illegal Prison -- and 
additional information released by the Pentagon 
just two months ago -- I can reveal exclusively 
that the stories of these men do nothing to 
bolster the administration's claims, first voiced 
nearly six years ago, that those detained in the 
"War on Terror" were so uniquely dangerous that 
it was worth breaking domestic and international 
law, shredding the Constitution, abandoning the 
Geneva Conventions and introducing torture as 
official US policy to hold them without charge or 
trial -- potentially forever -- in conditions 
that are worse than those endured by the most 
hardened convicted criminals on the US mainland.


The missionaries

Of the 14 men, seven -- five humanitarian aid 
workers and two missionaries -- had no connection 
whatsoever with any kind of militancy. I found 
the story of the first of the missionaries, 
24-year old Khalid al-Bawardi, utterly convincing 
while conducting my research. After pompously 
lecturing his tribunal about the finer details of 
Sunni Islamic practice, he explained that he had 
traveled around Pakistan and Afghanistan 
hectoring his fellow Muslims for their failings 
(mainly to do with raised graves and good luck 
charms) and also providing food and clothing, and 
had been handed over to US forces by 
opportunistic border guards, after crossing into 
Pakistan after the US-led invasion began.

The second, 26-year old Sultan al-Uwaydah, did 
not take part in any of the tribunals or review 
boards in which, though deprived of legal 
representation and subject to secret evidence 
obtained through torture, coercion or bribery, 
the detainees were at least allowed to present 
their stories. Looking at the "evidence" 
presented by the administration, however, his 
explanation for being in Afghanistan -- that he 
traveled to "teach the Koran to poor and 
disadvantaged Muslims," and that he duly taught 
the Koran to children in various locations, 
before hooking up with his uncle in Khost and 
escaping to Pakistan, where he was arrested -- 
was severely at odds with the authorities' version.

This other scenario included an allegation that 
he was "arrested after crossing into Pakistan 
from Afghanistan with 30 other persons suspected 
of being Osama bin Laden bodyguards," and other 
allegations, from an unidentified "source," from 
"an al-Qaeda operative," and from "a senior 
al-Qaeda operative," that purported to reinforce 
this notion that he was one of 30 bodyguards for 
bin Laden. One of these "sources," for example, 
stated that "he knew the detainee and that he was 
probably an Osama bin Laden bodyguard because the 
detainee was always with Osama bin Laden." 
Noticeably, however, it has been established that 
the bodyguard story was concocted by a fellow 
detainee, Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th 
hijacker" on 9/11, during the four months that he 
was tortured in Guantánamo in late 2002, and it's 
difficult, therefore, to lend much credence to 
all the other unsubstantiated allegations.


The humanitarian aid workers

Of the five humanitarian aid workers, the most 
complete story was told by 28-year old Mohammed 
al-Harbi, whose release was clearly long overdue. 
A successful grocer in Saudi Arabia, al-Harbi 
batted away an allegation that he was a 
mujahideen fighter in Kandahar, insisting that he 
had never been to Afghanistan, and explaining 
that he traveled to Pakistan in November 2001 to 
deliver nearly $12,000 to those in need of 
humanitarian aid. Adding that he was only 
planning to stay for a few weeks at most, because 
his wife was pregnant at the time, he proceeded 
to explain that "The Pakistani police sold me for 
money to the Americans," even though "I had a 
return ticket home and it was clear I wasn't 
planning to stay or ever cross into Afghanistan." 
He added that, although the Saudi authorities 
intervened to help him while he was in custody in 
Pakistan, the ISI (the Pakistani intelligence 
services) deliberately hid his passport, 
presumably to protect the reward money they were 
receiving from the Americans, who were paying an 
average of $5,000 a head for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects.

The story of the second aid worker, 28-year old 
Sa'id al-Shihri, was unknown until the Pentagon 
released its new batch of documents in September. 
According to the government's own "evidence," 
al-Shihri decided to do charity work in Pakistan 
after hearing a speech by a sheikh in his local 
mosque. Twelve days after 9/11, he flew to 
Pakistan, and then "traveled with an Afghan 
driver, another Saudi man who worked with the Red 
Crescent, and a member from the Saudi embassy in 
Pakistan," in a vehicle taking supplies to a 
refugee camp near the Afghan border between Spin 
Boldak and Quetta. Presumably wounded in a 
bombing raid (though this was not stated), he was 
taken to a Red Crescent hospital in Quetta, where 
he and four others stayed for a month and a half, 
"awaiting a plane to come and take them back to 
Saudi Arabia. However, when they were moved from 
the hospital they were put on a plane and taken 
to Kandahar," to the US prison at the airport, 
where al-Shihri stayed for ten days before being 
flown to Guantánamo. To counter this detailed and 
non-military explanation for al-Shihri's presence 
on the Afghan border, the authorities managed to 
come up with nothing more than a few wildly 
tangential allegations: that he "trained in urban 
warfare at the Libyan Camp north of Kabul," and, 
even more improbably, that, according to "an 
individual," he "instigated him and another 
person to assassinate a writer," based on a fatwa issued by a radical sheikh.


Al-Wafa: terrorist entity or legitimate charity?

The other three aid workers were, to varying 
degrees, involved with the Saudi charity al-Wafa, 
whose headquarters were in Kabul. Blacklisted two 
weeks after 9/11 and regarded as a front for 
al-Qaeda, dozens of detainees were tarred as 
terrorists because of their association with the 
charity, even though humanitarian aid was clearly 
the main focus of the organization.

27-year old Zaid al-Husain al-Ghamdi, whose 
family did not even know he was in Guantánamo 
until earlier this year, because the US 
authorities had described him as a Jordanian, 
traveled to Afghanistan in July 2001, and was 
declared an "enemy combatant" after his tribunal 
in October 2004 on the basis of three 
particularly thin allegations: that he was a 
member of al-Wafa, that he "carried a weapon in 
Afghanistan," and that he was "present and 
wounded during military operations at Khost" in 
December 2001. These allegations were augmented 
in the years that followed, but nothing about 
these additional claims suggests that they were 
reliable. The authorities alleged that he "was 
identified" as the "occasional leader" of a group 
of fighters in the northern city of Taloqan, but 
ignored another narrative that could be pieced 
together from other statements: that al-Ghamdi 
reported that he left home "to provide help for 
the refugees in Afghanistan," that he worked for 
al-Wafa as a laborer in Kabul, and that he 
traveled to Taloqan because, after approaching 
Taliban representatives in Kabul to find out 
"places needing assistance with orphans," he had 
been told that Taloqan was a suitable area. The 
additional information compiled by the 
authorities also provided an explanation of the 
circumstances of his capture, which contradicted 
the claim that he was "wounded during military 
operations." After fleeing to Khost, al-Ghamdi 
said that he "stopped in the first Taliban center 
he came to," which was subsequently bombed. 
Injured and "rendered unconscious," he awoke in a 
hospital in Miram Shah, in Pakistan, where he was 
arrested and transferred to US custody.

The stories of the other two were unknown until 
this September, because they did not take part in 
any tribunals or review boards, and the Pentagon 
had not released any of the "evidence" against 
them. Al-Wafa litters the story of 23-year old 
Jabir al-Qahtani, but none of the allegations 
come close to any evidence of militant activity. 
By the time of his last administrative review, in 
April 2006, all the authorities had managed to 
come up with were allegations that he traveled to 
Lahore in March 2001, "with his travel partly 
financed by the head of al-Wafa," that he worked 
in a warehouse in Lahore for six months, and that 
he then moved to a warehouse in Kabul. Captured 
by the Northern Alliance in November 2001, he was 
held for four months before being turned over to 
US forces. With only one dubious allegation of 
militancy -- that he "was identified as a fighter 
who preferred to spend most of his time lounging 
around [various] guest houses" -- the authorities 
resorted to alleging that he "depicts (sic) many 
counter-interrogation techniques attributed to 
al-Qaeda training and consistent with al-Qaeda 
members," and that, in Guantánamo, he "was 
identified as the leader of a cell block, and has 
issued a fatwa on the United States."

A more shocking set of allegations was leveled 
against 35-year old Abdullah al-Wafi al-Harbi. He 
told his interrogators that he traveled to 
Afghanistan via Iran, approximately three weeks 
after 9/11, and that, when he reached the border 
and told the guards that "he had come to 
Afghanistan to assist in humanitarian efforts," 
they "informed him about a group called al-Wafa 
and advised him to join the group if he wished to 
help the poor." After two weeks in Kabul -- in 
other words, when the US-led invasion of 
Afghanistan began -- he said that "he was told by 
the Afghanis that they had to leave because there 
was a problem with Arabs," and explained that 
representatives of al-Wafa provided him "with 
directions on how to leave Afghanistan." He then 
traveled by taxi, with three other men, to Khost, 
where they stayed for a month before crossing 
into Pakistan, where he was arrested.

Ranged against this account was a bewildering 
array of unsubstantiated allegations: that he 
"was identified as an experienced fighter who 
allegedly fought against the Russians in 
Afghanistan and Bosnia (sic)," and that a 
"source" -- or various sources -- claimed that he 
"was in Bosnia with a known al-Qaeda operative," 
that he attended the Khaldan training camp in 
Afghanistan, that he was "well known by clerics 
and imams in Saudi Arabia as a recruiter and 
fundraiser for jihad," and that he, along with 
others from Mecca, who were known as "the Mecca 
Group," "ate with Osama bin Laden while at Tora 
Bora." Another unidentified "individual" made the 
astonishing claim that al-Harbi told him that 
several of the 9/11 hijackers "stayed at his 
house during Haj, possibly in 1999." It was also 
stated that a "source" said that al-Harbi "told 
him he had lied to interrogators" in Kandahar, 
claiming to work for al-Wafa "rather than 
admitting to fighting in the jihad," even though 
this was directly contradicted by the next 
allegation from another "source," who stated that 
he was "ranked high in al-Wafa."


The Taliban foot soldiers

Of the seven men who fought with the Taliban, 
three of the stories appear fairly 
straightforward, although two of the men -- 
26-year old Turki al-Asiri and 19-year old Nayif 
al-Nukhaylan -- did not take part in any 
tribunals or review boards. Al-Asiri was accused 
of answering a fatwa urging support for the 
Taliban, of training at al-Farouq (the main camp 
for Arabs, associated with Osama bin Laden), and 
of fleeing, via Tora Bora, from Jalalabad to 
Pakistan, where he was arrested. Al-Nukhaylan, 
who was also accused of attending al-Farouq, 
apparently received additional training at a 
Moroccan camp in Jalalabad, where he was wounded 
in a US air strike and spent some time in a coma 
in an Afghan hospital. The third man, 25-year old 
Fahd al-Sharif, who had been a policeman in 
Mecca, apparently remained seduced by the 
jihadist fantasies that had been used to recruit 
him. He told his review board that he traveled to 
Afghanistan in 2000 "for the purpose of jihad 
with the Taliban government" and that he hoped to 
become a martyr, but added that he went only to 
fight the Northern Alliance, "to help thousands 
of millions of Afghan Muslims to return their 
hopes, their countries and their lives."

The stories of two other willing recruits are 
notable only because of the additional 
allegations that mounted up against them. 29-year 
old Hani al-Khalif, who had served as a soldier 
in the Saudi army during the Gulf War, explained 
that he "had been taught the doctrine of jihad in 
the mosque he attended," and "specifically that 
it was a Muslim's duty to wage jihad against 
anyone who killed Muslims." He added that he 
wanted to fight in Chechnya, which was "a greater 
jihad," because "the fight was not against other 
Muslims as in Afghanistan," but was unable to 
arrange travel to Chechnya, and settled on 
Afghanistan instead, where he trained at 
al-Farouq, and then fought on the front lines 
against the Northern Alliance until he was 
ordered to surrender to General Dostum, one of 
the Alliance leaders. Despite the coherence of 
this narrative arc, however, it was also alleged 
that "a senior al-Qaeda operative" identified him 
as the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in Karachi, Pakistan.

The story of 29-year old Faha Sultan (described 
on his release as Fahd al-Osaimi al-Otaibi) was 
unknown until just two months ago. After 
responding to a fatwa, he traveled to Afghanistan 
in January 2001, and was identified by two 
detainees as having worked in a distribution 
center. Less reliable was an allegation that he 
was "identified as a friend of a senior al-Qaeda 
leader and had a good relationship with another 
individual who was a close associate of the 
senior al-Qaeda leader," because, although the US 
authorities claimed that he had "acted as if in a 
catatonic state during interviews," on one 
occasion being overheard "telling another 
detainee that he had fooled the interrogator into 
thinking that he was 'messed up,'" it was also 
stated that, as long ago as July 2002, "a foreign 
delegation" -- presumably Saudi intelligence -- 
identified him as being "of low law enforcement and low intelligence value."


Hunger strikes in Guantánamo

The stories of the last two Taliban recruits are 
particularly depressing, not because of their 
military recruitment, which followed a 
well-established pattern, but because of what 
happened to them in Guantánamo. Yousef al-Shehri 
was just 16 years old when he was captured by 
Northern Alliance soldiers, in a group of around 
120 fighters, after the surrender of the northern 
Afghan city of Kunduz in November 2001. Although 
dozens of juveniles have been held at Guantánamo, 
the US administration (as one of only two nations 
that has refused to ratify the UN Convention on 
the Rights of the Child) has, with only a few 
exceptions, pointedly refused to recognize that 
all juveniles -- even "child soldiers" -- should 
be treated differently from adults, and al-Shehri 
was not one of the exceptions. Held throughout 
his detention as an adult, and treated as a 
dangerous terrorist rather than a child, his 
suffering became particularly pronounced when he 
took part in a prison-wide hunger strike, which 
involved at least 200 detainees, in the summer of 
2005. In July 2005, and again in January 2006, 
his weight, which had been 141 pounds when he 
arrived at Guantánamo in February 2002, dropped 
to just 97 pounds, and his lawyers, who visited 
him in October 2005, said that he was "emaciated 
and had lost a disturbing amount of weight," 
adding that he was "visibly weak and frail" and 
"had difficulty speaking because of lesions in 
his throat that were a result of the involuntary 
force-feeding" to which he had been subjected.

Murtadha Makram, who was 25 years old when he was 
captured, was an even more committed long-term 
hunger striker. A Taliban recruit who spent 16 
months in Afghanistan, "was identified as having 
fought at Tora Bora," and was seized after 
crossing into Pakistan, Makram was force-fed at 
least once a week from October 2005 onwards, and 
daily from December 17, 2005 to January 27, 2006, 
when his weight, which had been 142 pounds when 
he arrived in Guantánamo, fell at one point to 
just 87 pounds. After resuming his hunger strike 
later in the year, he was then force-fed on a 
daily basis from November 16, 2006 until the 
records ended on December 10. In March 2007, when 
detailed notes about the ongoing hunger strikes 
-- compiled by the imprisoned al-Jazeera 
cameraman Sami al-Haj -- were declassified, 
al-Haj explained that Makram "has tried to kill 
himself many times. He last tried to do this on 
May 18, 2006. Now he is on a hunger strike to try 
to kill himself. He has been without food for 
three months and is being force-fed." Though no 
one in the administration has admitted it, it's 
plausible that Makram was released in this latest 
batch of detainees because of fears that his 
desire to kill himself was close to becoming another PR-damaging reality.

In conclusion, though many readers may have no 
sympathy for the suffering of Taliban recruits 
(whether on hunger strike or not), the 
unpalatable truth is that force-feeding competent 
prisoners against their will is widely considered 
illegal, and is only being undertaken because 
otherwise Guantánamo would be filled with 
emaciated corpses. The reason for these men's 
despair (which is such that many have sought to 
end their lives, even though Islam prohibits 
suicide) is, quite simply, the intolerable burden 
of indefinite detention without charge or trial, 
which is unique to Guantánamo and the administration's secret prisons.

In the cases of the innocent men described above, 
this is clearly a moral outrage and a colossal 
miscarriage of justice, but even in the cases of 
the Taliban foot soldiers, who, lest we forget, 
traveled to Afghanistan before 9/11 to take part 
in an inter-Muslim civil war, it has yet to be 
demonstrated that the administration's flight 
from domestic and international law has been 
justified. After depriving these men of the 
protections of the Geneva Conventions, refusing 
to allow them to challenge the basis of their 
detention and interrogating them for nearly six 
years, the administration's decision to release 
them, though clearly affected by diplomacy, also 
suggests that, in the end, their knowledge of 
al-Qaeda and 9/11 was, effectively, non-existent.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the 
author of 
'<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (to be 
published by Pluto Press in October 2007). Visit 
his website at: <http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/>www.andyworthington.co.uk

He can be reached at: 
<mailto:andy at andyworthington.co.uk>andy at andyworthington.co.uk




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