[Ppnews] Guantánamo's "Mickey Mouse" Prisoners

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington12232009.html
December 23, 2009


Guantánamo's "Mickey Mouse" Prisoners


The Afghan Four

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

Over the weekend, 12 prisoners were released from 
Guantánamo, as the Justice Department announced 
in 
<http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/December/09-ag-1369.html>a 
press release on December 20. I have previously 
reported the stories of 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/12/21/the-stories-of-the-two-somalis-freed-from-guantanamo/>the 
two Somalis who were released -- emphasizing how 
nothing about their cases demonstrated that they 
were “the worst of the worst” -- and will soon be 
reporting the stories of the six Yemenis 
transferred to the custody of the Yemeni government.

For now, however, I’d like to turn to the four 
Afghans transferred to the custody of the Afghan 
government, because, in contrast to the 
fearmongering of opportunistic Republicans, who 
continue to claim that Guantánamo is full of 
terrorists, the stories of these four men 
demonstrate instead the incompetence of senior 
officials in the Bush administration, revealing 
how, instead of detaining men who had any 
connection to al-Qaeda, or those responsible for 
the 9/11 attacks, they filled Guantánamo with 
what Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the commander of 
Guantánamo in 2002, 
<http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gitmo22dec22,0,5995685.story>described 
as “Mickey Mouse” prisoners.

Sharifullah, the US ally who had guarded Hamid Karzai

The first of the four Afghans, Sharifullah, who 
was 22 years old at the time of his capture, was 
seized by U.S. forces from an Afghan military 
compound with another man, Amir Jan Ghorzang 
(identified by the Pentagon as Said Amir Jan), 
who was 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files-website-extras-12-the-last-of-the-afghans-part-two/>released 
from Guantánamo in September 2007. Both men were 
accused of hoarding explosives for the Taliban 
and being involved in various plots, but insisted 
that they were loyal government soldiers. In 
Guantánamo, Sharifullah explained that he was one 
of the first recruits in the new Afghan army, 
trained by British officers, and added that he 
had then spent seven months as part of a group 
that was responsible for guarding President 
Karzai. When he was unable to get a promotion, 
however, he returned to Jalalabad, where he had 
just taken up a new position as an officer when he was seized.

Amir Jan Ghorzang was the more vociferous of the 
two in Guantánamo, lamenting the fact that the 
U.S. soldiers who had seized them had been duped 
by traitors who were taking money from both the 
U.S. military and al-Qaeda, and were passing off 
innocent men as members of al-Qaeda and the 
Taliban. “I’m here because somebody got paid some 
dollars,” he explained, adding that he had been 
imprisoned by the Taliban for five years, because 
of his opposition to them, and had also worked 
for Haji Qadir, a commander who fought with the 
Americans during the battle of Tora Bora, a 
showdown between al-Qaeda and U.S.-backed Afghan forces in December 2001.

The cases of both men -- as with many other men 
who had been working for the Karzai government, 
but had been betrayed by rivals -- revealed how 
little the U.S. authorities were concerned with 
establishing the truth about their allegations, 
as it would have been easy to track down 
witnesses in Afghanistan who could have verified 
their stories (as reporters for McClatchy 
Newspapers did in 2008, when 
<http://services.mcclatchyinteractive.com/detainees/70>they 
interviewed Ghorzang). Nevertheless, he was, in 
the end, more fortunate than Sharifullah, whose 
continued presence in Guantánamo for two years 
and three months after his release was, frankly, 
inexplicable. As Ghorzang explained in the 
following exchange in Sharifullah’s tribunal, when he was called as a witness:

Sharifullah: Do you know that I was involved to 
work in the new government? Was I honestly 
working and working for the new government?

Ghorzang: You were working with the new 
government and he was involved with the Karzai 
government, in support of the Karzai government.

Mohammed Hashim: the fantasist put forward for a trial by Military Commission

The story of the second man, Mohammed Hashim, 
remains as bewildering now as it was when he was 
put forward for a trial by Military Commission at 
Guantánamo in May 2008, and I wrote an article 
entitled, 
“<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/06/04/afghan-fantasist-to-face-trial-at-guantanamo/>Afghan 
fantasist to face trial at Guantánamo,” in which 
I stated that it “appear[ed] to plumb new depths 
of misapplied zeal.” Hashim, who was about 26 
years old at the time of his capture, was first 
seized by Afghan forces after he was found taking 
measurements near the home of Mullah Omar, the 
Taliban’s reclusive leader, and asking locals 
about security arrangements. Subsequently 
released, he was then seized again and handed over (or sold) to U.S. forces.

If there was something about the circumstances of 
his initial capture that should have set alarm 
bells ringing, regarding his mental health, these 
were ignored when the U.S. authorities decided to 
charge him with “conducting reconnaissance 
missions against U.S. and coalition forces,” and 
“participating in a rocket attack venture on at 
least one occasion against U.S. forces for 
al-Qaeda,” and ignored the fact that, at his 
tribunal, his testimony revealed that he was (as 
I described it) “either one of the most 
fantastically well-connected terrorists in the 
very small pool of well-connected terrorists at 
Guantánamo, or, conversely, that he [was] a 
deranged fantasist. From the resounding silence 
that greeted his comments at his tribunal, I can 
only conclude that the tribunal members, like me, 
concluded that the latter interpretation was the more probable.”

After explaining that he had spent five years 
with the Taliban, because he needed the money, Hashim proceeded to claim that:

he knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, 
because a man that he knew, Mohammad Khan, “used 
to tell me all these stories and all the details 
about how they were going to fly airplanes into 
buildings. He didn’t tell me the details, that it 
was New York, but he said they had 20 pilots and 
they were going to orchestrate the act.” What 
rather detracted from the shock value of this 
comment was Hashim’s absolutely inexplicable 
claim that his friend Khan, who had told him 
about the 9/11 plan, was with the Northern 
Alliance, the Taliban’s opponents, who were also 
implacably opposed to al-Qaeda.

Hashim also claimed that he and another man had 
been responsible for facilitating Osama bin 
Laden’s escape from Afghanistan, and that, 
afterwards, he had worked as a spy, and had heard 
about how the Syrian government had been sending 
weapons to Saddam Hussein, which had then been 
sent to Afghanistan via Iran. As I explained at 
the time, the cumulative effect of Hashim’s 
statements was that it was “impossible not to 
conclude that [his] story was, if not the 
testimony of a fantasist, then a shrewd attempt 
to avoid brutal interrogations by providing his 
interrogators with whatever he thought they wanted to hear.”

A darker truth, of course, may be that his 
rambling statement actually revealed the themes 
pursued relentlessly by the interrogators at 
Guantánamo: not only “what do you know about the 
9/11 attacks?” and “when did you last see bin 
Laden?” but also, at 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington04292009.html>the 
insistence of Vice President Dick Cheney, “what 
was the connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam 
Hussein?” As we know from the interrogations of 
the CIA’s most famous “ghost prisoner” 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/06/18/world-exclusive-new-revelations-about-the-torture-of-ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi/>Ibn 
al-Shaykh al-Libi, who 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/05/10/ibn-al-shaykh-al-libi-has-died-in-a-libyan-prison/>confessed 
under torture in Egypt that there were 
connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, 
which was later used as part of the justification 
for the invasion of Iraq, securing this sort of 
information was regarded as critical in the 
run-up to the invasion, even though the 
administration claimed that its embrace of 
torture (or, rather, the euphemistically named 
“enhanced interrogation techniques”) was designed 
to prevent further terrorist attacks.

Abdul Hafiz: the wrong man with a satellite phone

The third man, Abdul Hafiz, who was 42 years old 
when he was seized in 2003 from his village near 
Kandahar, was accused in his tribunal of working 
for a Taliban militia group and of being involved 
in two killings in Kabul. It was also alleged 
that he was captured with a satellite phone 
linked to one of the killings, and that he 
“attempted to call an al-Qaeda member who is 
linked to the murder of an ICRC [International 
Committee of the Red Cross] worker.”

In response, Hafiz, who described himself as 
“handicapped” and who repeatedly stated that he 
has problems with his memory, claimed that his 
name was Abdul Qawi, and that he had been 
confused with Abdul Hafiz, because Hafiz, for 
whom he had been working, had given him the phone 
at a checkpoint. As he stated, “He told me that 
he did not have any documents to have the phone 
with him. So he said, ‘You can have my phone 
because you are handicapped and I don’t think 
they will search you.’” He added that he did not 
even know how to use the phone.

Describing Hafiz as someone who supported the new 
government of Hamid Karzai and was “preaching in 
the village to bring the peace,” he said, “I was 
working for him to bring peace 
 He gave me the 
telephone in the morning and told me to keep it 
in my pocket. He told me to work and preach to 
the people not to fight. That war is not good. 
This is the reason that I lost my leg. Fighting 
is not good. War does not have good consequences.”

He also explained, “I was just in my home when 
they captured me and brought me here. I didn’t do 
anything,” and expressed frustration at not being 
able to see classified documents containing 
evidence against him, saying, “In our culture, if 
someone is accused of something, they are shown 
the evidence.” At his review in 2005, he 
presented the board with letters from his family 
-- all addressed to Abdul Qari, not Abdul Hafiz 
-- including one from his brother, which read, 
“My respectful brother, you didn’t have any 
relationship with any political people. We were 
hoping that you would get released very, very 
soon. We do not understand why you’re still 
detained there without a crime.” He was clearly 
so desperate to be freed from Guantánamo and not 
to be “amongst these beasts and these people” (as 
he described his fellow prisoners at one point), 
that he even offered to present the board with a 
letter from his wife, even though “It is a big 
shame in our culture to read my wife’s letter to 
you, but now I am in a very tough situation.”

Mohamed Rahim: a spectacular case of mistaken identity

If Abdul Qari’s continued imprisonment appeared 
to be inexplicable, there was, on the surface at 
least, more of a case against Mohamed Rahim, the 
fourth prisoner released at the weekend, but this 
too collapses spectacularly under scrutiny. A 
resident of a village near Ghazni, Rahim was 
accused, in his tribunal, of being the chief of 
logistics for a company providing support 
directly to the Taliban government, of working 
for the Taliban Intelligence Office, and of 
controlling a large weapons cache for the 
Taliban. In response, he explained that he had 
been forced to work for the Taliban, and that, 
because he “was sick” and unable to fight, he was 
made to work in an administrative post. He denied 
the allegation that he worked for the Taliban 
Intelligence Office, calling it an “outrageous” 
accusation, and also denied controlling a weapons 
cache. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I was 
captured in my house. I have no information on these weapons.”

By the time of his next review, in 2005, numerous 
other allegations had been added, including a 
claim that he was “identifiable as a former 
companion of bin Laden during the jihad against 
the Russians,” and another that he “was among a 
group protecting bin Laden at his last meeting at 
Tora Bora.” It was also suggested that he “was 
entrusted by bin Laden to exfiltrate his guard 
forces from Afghanistan back to their countries 
of origin,” and that “bin Laden and his 
companions spent the night in a house belonging 
to an Afghan acquaintance of the Detainee.”

There was more in this vein, including a claim 
that he “attempted to export gems from 
Afghanistan to Germany in order to raise revenue 
to finance al-Qaeda,” but what was completely 
overlooked by his review board -- and presumably, 
by those who were supposed to be capable of 
analyzing the intelligence relating to the 
Guantánamo prisoners -- is that when he stated, 
“I am a sick poor farmer with enemies,” he was 
telling the truth for one particularly glaring 
reason, which only emerged in passing in his 
review, when his Designated Military Officer (a 
soldier assigned to him in place of a lawyer) pointed out that he was Hazara.

One of four main population groups in Afghanistan 
-- the others being Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks 
-- the Hazara, Shia Muslims who are at least 
partly of Mongol origin, were despised by the 
Sunni Taliban, who slaughtered them in their 
thousands. As a result, it is not only 
appropriate to conclude that the allegations 
against Rahim were invented by his enemies, but 
also to conclude that his enemies in Guantánamo 
came up with the outrageous claims that he was 
intimately associated with Osama bin Laden.

Release or imprisonment in Afghanistan?

With the exception of 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/01/14/former-guantanamo-prosecutor-condemns-chaotic-trials-in-case-of-teenage-torture-victim/>Mohamed 
Jawad, who was 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/09/02/reflections-on-mohamed-jawads-release-from-guantanamo/>released 
in August after he 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington07312009.html>won 
his habeas corpus petition, these men are the 
first Afghans released since January 2009, when 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/01/26/refuting-cheneys-lies-the-stories-of-six-prisoners-released-from-guantanamo/>Haji 
Bismullah, who worked for the government of Hamid 
Karzai as the chief of transportation in a region 
of Helmand province, was released. Of the 219 
Afghans once held at Guantánamo, there are now 
just 21 remaining in the prison, but it is 
uncertain whether the four men just released will 
regain their freedom, or whether, in common with 
all the Afghan releases since August 2007 (except 
Jawad, whose case attracted international 
scrutiny), they will be 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington05092008.html>imprisoned 
on arrival in Kabul, in a wing of the main 
prison, Pol-i-Charki, which was refurbished by 
the U.S. military, and which, although nominally 
under Afghan control, is reportedly overseen by Americans.

After all this time, and with such scandalous 
stories of ineptitude on the part of the United 
States, I would say that the least these men 
deserve is to be freed outright, and allowed to 
be reunited with their families.

Andy Worthington is a British journalist and 
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' (published 
by Pluto Press). 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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