|
Today's
Stories
January 7,
2008
Chris Floyd
There
Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities
January 5 /
6, 2008
Douglas Valentine
Good
Guys in Black Hoods
Kevin Young
The
US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq
Richard Rhames
Saddam
Who?
Saul Landau
Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory
Marc Lynch
Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing
Robert Fantina
Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War
Donna Volatile
Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr.
Jelle Bruinsma
Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands
Bob Sutcliffe
Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist
Harvey Wasserman
Anti-Nuclear Renaissance
Missy Beattie
Why Obama Can't Save Us
David Swanson
Remembering the Separation of Powers
Jacob Hornberger
The Importance of the Padilla Case
Shepherd Bliss
Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms
Ron Jacobs
Bleeding Kansas
Poets' Basement
Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski
Website of the Weekend
Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint
January 4,
2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Good Night in Iowa
Jonathan Cook
War Crimes Airbrushed from History
Paul Craig Roberts
Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime
Stan Goff
Ron Paul's Monkeywrench
Dave Lindorff
Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
To Pindi Station
Allan Nairn
U.S. Elections Over Before They Began
Joshua Frank
The Failures of Sectarianism
Peter Morici
Economy on the Skids
Mary McInnis
Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease
Website of the Day
The Return of Obama Girl
January 3,
2008
Fatima Bhutto
Farewell
to Wadi Bua
Pam Martens
The
Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos
Joanne Mariner
The Presidential Candidates and Torture
Zoltan Grossman
Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the
Web
David Domke
The Echoing Press and Huckabee
Norman Solomon
Edwards Reconsidered
Nikolas Kozloff
Return of the Faux Liberal
Jacob G. Hornberger
The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus
Martha Rosenberg
Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick
Russell Means
This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah
Lands
Website of the Day
WolfQuest
January 2,
2008
Jeff Taylor
The
Left and Ron Paul
M. Shahid Alam
The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy
Gary Leupp
Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan
Paul Craig Roberts
Criminals with Badges
Heather Gray
Georgia's Racist Death Penalty
Fred Gardner
and Shobhit Arora
Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis
David Macaray
Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley
Benjamin Dangl
Fear and Loathing in Bolivia
January 1,
2008
Iain A. Boal
City
of Disappearances
B. R. Gowani
Benazir's Death in Crisistan
Shahid Mahmood
Bhutto and the Press
Linn Washington,
Jr.
Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling
Harvey Wasserman
Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton
Era
John Ross
2008, Already a Year to Forget
Website of the Day
The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys
December 31,
2007
Alexander Cockburn
Goodbye
2007 and Good Riddance!
Tariq Ali
Pakistan, the Aftermath
Liaquat Ali Khan
The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers
Wajahat Ali
After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan?
Robert Fisk
Who Killed Bhutto?
Ajai Sahni
Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark
Future
Marwan Bishara
You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential
Election Campaigns
Uri Avnery
The Beilin Syndrome
Mark T. Harris
Does This Happen in Canada?
Brenda Norrell
Resistance and Censorship
Website of the Day
A People United Will Never Be Defeated
December 29
/ 30, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Options
in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby
Tariq Ali
Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto
Gary Leupp
The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance
China Hand
Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss
Jacob Hornberger
Stop Medddling in Pakistan
John Chuckman
Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics
Missy Beattie
Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard
Ralph Nader
Who Will Take the Next Step?
Fidel Castro
There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something
Robert Fantina
The Sham of Homeland Security
Greg Moses
Beauty from the Heart of Texas
Catherine Lutz
What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing
Kristin Van
Tassel
Seeing in the Dark
Kim Nicolini
Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage
Phyllis Pollack
Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More
Poets' Basement
Landau, Gibbons and Davies
Website of
the Weekend
Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan
December 28,
2007
Farzana Versey
The
Complex Electra
Wajahat Ali
A
Pakistani Requiem
Binoy Kampmark
Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy
Ayesha Ijaz
Khan
Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives
Anthony DiMaggio
Turkey's Bombing of Iraq
Ray McGovern
Creeping
Fascism
Jim Goodman
Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going
Ron Jacobs
Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted
Russell Hoffman
Mini-Nukes by Toshiba
John Murphy
Greens Gone Wild
Website of the Day
Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"
December 27,
2007
Dilip Hiro
A
Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?
Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?
Stephen Soldz
Fallujah,
the Information War and U.S. Propaganda
Bill Quigley
Locked
Outside the Gates
Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up
Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?
Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?
Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim
Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT
Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman
Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink
Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades
Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth
December 26, 2007
Charles Tripp
From
One Saddam to Fifty
Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government
Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War
John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men
Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb
Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within
Website of
the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas
December 25,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
Conscience
and Empire
December 24,
2007
Andrea Peacock
A
Dark Ride on the Border
Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said
Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!
Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot
Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington
Mike Whitney
The Big Fix
Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans
John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders
Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion
Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas
Website of the Day
Back in the USSR
December 22 / 23, 2007
Alexander Cockburn
Mike
Huckabee's Ascending Chariot
Ralph Nader
Politics
and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way
Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons
in Afghanistan
Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan
Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids
Rev. William
E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?
Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq
Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol
Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques
Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law
William Loren
Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake
Okeechobee
Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita
Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters
David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"
Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford
Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa
December 21,
2007
John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico
Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
Dick J. Reavis
A
Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss
Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon
The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes
Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms
Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie
Kerik)
Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution
Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist
David Macaray
Union Aftermath
Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa
Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA
Website of
the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape
December 20,
2007
David Rosen
Mitt
Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer
Alan Farago
The
Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage
Crisis
Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA
Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot
Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates
Website of
the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter
December 19,
2007
Saul Landau
Is
the NIE Bush's Watergate?
Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk
Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck
Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice
Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes
Sen. Russell
Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation
Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine
Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags
Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions
Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?
Website of
the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV
December 18,
2007
R. F. Blader
The
Politics of Teen Pregnancy
George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho
Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?
Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar
David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem
Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays
Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home
Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters
Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print
Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit
Website of
the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America
December 17,
2007
Mike Whitney
Staring
Into the Abyss
Tom Barry
Planning
the War on Immigrants
Uri Avnery
A
Gaza Masada?
Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas
Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder
Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers
Stephen Lendman
Police State America
Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way
Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza
Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game
December 15
/ 16, 2007
Peter Linebaugh
A
People's Penny for the Magna Carta
Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb
Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco
Raymond J.
Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas
Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine
Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists
Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the
Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up
Ahmad Samih
Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct
Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op
Missy Comley
Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins
Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims
James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future
Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten
Website of
the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support
December 14,
2007
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him
John Ross
Iraqi
Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax
Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?
Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes
Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest
Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies
Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?
Dr. Mustafa
Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace
Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"
December 13,
2007
Paul Craig
Roberts
Shrinking
the Dollar from the Inside-Out
Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding
Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy
Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze
Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch
Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia
Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?
Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It
Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land
Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol
Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!
December 12, 2007
Allan
Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian
Phones
Alan
Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young
Ray
McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts
Evan
Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell
Doom for the US Farm Belt
James
Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers
Joel
Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine
Joshua
Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention
Sherry
Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul
Dan
Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard
Website
of the Day
Men Eating Bugs
|
January
7, 2008
Footsoldiers, Missionaries,
Humanitarian Aid Workers
Who
Are the Gitmo Saudis?
By ANDY WORTHINGTON
As 2007 drew to a close, the tally of
detainees released from Guantánamo throughout the year
rose to 122, as another ten Saudis were repatriated, to add to
the 53 sent home between February and November.
With 492 detainees now released
-- and 281 remaining -- the administration's initial claim that
the prison housed the "worst of the worst" grows ever
more hollow. It should be noted, however, that, unlike most of
the other detainees freed last year, the Saudis were not sent
home because they had been cleared by the military review boards
convened to assess whether they still posed a threat to the United
States, but because of successful diplomatic negotiations between
the US and Saudi governments.
After initial doubts, the Americans
seem satisfied that the Saudi government's rehabilitation program,
which involves psychological counseling, religious reeducation,
job training, art therapy and financial support, is proving successful.
Even with this caveat, however,
it appears that none of the Saudis just released was involved
with al-Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. Like many others released
in the last few years, four were Taliban foot soldiers, mostly
recruited through fatwas issued by radical sheikhs in their homeland,
ordering them to aid the Taliban in their inter-Muslim civil
war against the Northern Alliance, which had begun long before
9/11. Four others were missionaries or humanitarian aid workers,
including one, the director of a blacklisted charity, who had
long been regarded by the Americans as a major player in al-Qaeda
and the Taliban. Of the remaining two, the status of one is still
difficult to ascertain, even after six years in US custody, and
the story of the other -- Bandar Ali al-Rumaihi -- is completely
unknown, as his name does not correspond with any of the names
on the Pentagon's lists of detainees.
The Taliban
foot soldiers captured in Afghanistan
Three of the four Taliban foot
soldiers were captured during the surrender of the northern Afghan
city of Kunduz in November 2001, six weeks after the US-led invasion
of Afghanistan began. 21-year old Mishal Saad al-Rashid was typical
of numerous men captured at this time, in his insistence that
he went to Afghanistan, over a year "before any problem
happened in America," to help the Taliban fight General
Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Northern Alliance.
He was confused that the Northern
Alliance had formed a coalition with the United States, as the
only coalition that he knew of was between the Northern Alliance
and Russia. Although this confusion, repeated by several other
detainees, was partly due to the propaganda issued by the pro-Taliban
sheikhs in Saudi Arabia, it also had some basis in fact, at least
in the case of Dostum, who had fought with the Russians during
the Soviet invasion, before switching sides in the early 1990s.
In his tribunal at Guantánamo,
al-Rashid accepted an allegation that he was a member of the
Taliban, and also acknowledged that he had received military
training in Afghanistan. He was one of several hundred Taliban
fighters who surrendered after the fall of Kunduz, believing
that they would be freed after handing over their weapons, but
who discovered, instead, that they were to be imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi,
a fortress run by General Dostum. After lax security enabled
some of the prisoners to stage an uprising against their captors,
the majority were killed during a week-long battle with the Northern
Alliance, backed up by US and British Special Forces, and supported
by American bombing raids.
Responding to an allegation
that he had taken part in the uprising he exclaimed, "What
uprising? We didn't do any uprising. We had given up our weapons,
so how could we be part of an uprising? They [Dostum's troops]
were the ones that had all the weapons. We tried to defend ourselves
but we couldn't because they had the weapons."
Also held in Qala-i-Janghi
was 22-year old Nayif al-Usaymi, a college student, who explained
that, as with several other detainees, he had been inspired to
travel to Afghanistan to receive military training so that he
could fight in Chechnya.
After a facilitator "provided
him with instructions on obtaining a Pakistani visa as well as
a specific route to take," he arrived in Afghanistan in
March 2001, where, after meeting two men who told him the history
of the Taliban, he agreed to be  recruited, and spent eight
months on the front lines at Khawaja Ghar, in northern Afghanistan.
Captured after the fall of Kunduz, he was taken to Qala-i-Janghi,
but reported that he managed to escape from the fort. This was
a rare occurrence, as most who tried to do so were shot and killed,
but he was recaptured six weeks later.
In Guantánamo, he insisted
that he "never saw any fighting because he was stationed
at the rear of the front line," and it was noted that he
was regarded as "being of low intelligence or law enforcement
value to the United States and also as unlikely to pose a threat
to the US or its interests" by a Saudi delegation in 2002.
The third foot soldier, 18-year
old Khalid al-Ghatani, was recruited through a notorious pro-Taliban
fatwa issued by the octogenarian Sheikh Hamoud al-Uqla. After
traveling to Afghanistan in autumn 2000, he spent six months
at a camp named Pakistani Center No. 5, and then moved to the
front lines at Khawaja Ghar, where he "guarded sleeping
quarters/bunkers for Pakistani troops who fought at the front
lines." He was apparently captured after being shot by a
sniper and spending time in a hospital in Kunduz.
After his tribunal, the Presiding
Officer noted that he "did not fire his weapon at any soldiers
or persons," and mention was also made of al-Ghatani's own
statement that he did not go to Afghanistan to fight for the
Taliban, but to receive weapons training and to "stand guard."
He was, however, criticized for his behavior in Guantánamo,
where, apparently, he had been "cited for assault, hostile
activity and harassment of guards on numerous occasions,"
and once for "making a weapon" -- although how this
would have been possible, in the paranoid, security-obsessed
cell blocks of Guantánamo, was not explained.
The Taliban
foot soldier captured in Pakistan
In the Summary of Evidence
against the fourth foot soldier, 25-year old Abdul Hakim al-Mousa,
it was alleged that he traveled to Afghanistan for combat
training and was recruited in Saudi Arabia by someone who "introduced
him to the safe house system." According to this account,
he subsequently spent time at safe houses in Quetta, Khost, and
Kandahar, and was arrested on February 7, 2002 with at least
a dozen other detainees in a safe house -- or a number of safe
houses -- in Karachi, which reportedly belonged to Abdu Ali Sharqawi.
Also known as Riyadh the Facilitator,
Sharqawi is a supposedly "high-value" detainee, described
as "part of the al-Qaeda network responsible for moving
Arabs to and from Afghanistan." Subjected to "extraordinary
rendition" after his capture, he was sent to Jordan, to
be "interrogated" by the Americans' proxy torturers
in the Jordanians' notorious General Intelligence Department
prison in Amman, where, he said, he was tortured continuously.
"I was told that if I
wanted to leave with permanent disability both mental and physical,
that that could be arranged," he explained in a statement
made in April 2006 that was released last month. "They said
they had all the facilities of Jordan to achieve that. I was
told that I had to talk, I had to tell them everything."
In January 2004, he was rendered back to a secret CIA-run facility
in Afghanistan, where he stayed until September 2004, when he
was finally transferred to Guantánamo.
Unlike Sharqawi, the other
men captured in the raid were transferred to Guantánamo
after processing in the US prison at Kandahar airport. Several
of these men, including two Kuwaitis, have already been released,
and there is no evidence that most of the others -- including
al-Mousa -- had anything to do with al-Qaeda.
In Guantánamo, it was
noted that a Saudi delegation had deemed him to be "of low
intelligence or law enforcement value to the United States, and
unlikely to pose a terrorist threat to the US or its interests."
Al-Mousa's own explanation for his presence in Afghanistan was
rather weak -- he said that he traveled "to defend himself
against thieves, defend Saudi Arabia, and learn how to shoot
a weapon for the purpose of hunting" -- although the Americans'
allegations were no better.
Desperate to pin something
on him, they resorted to guilt by association, alleging that
one of the people he was captured with attended al-Farouq and
"was escorted by a senior al-Qaeda member to a meeting where
he presented money to Osama bin Laden," and that another
attended al-Farouq and "was present at a speech given by
Osama bin Laden at the camp."
The missionaries
Two of those released maintained
throughout their imprisonment that they were missionaries. 28-year
old taxi driver Jamil al-Kabi explained that, in 2000, he "sold
his taxi and decided to devote more time to the Dawa, or 'the
call.'" After starting his mission in Mecca, by "going
out and finding young Muslims who were not following the word
of Islam and trying to get them to the mosque," he then
spent six months in Lahore, the home of Jamaat-al-Tablighi, the
vast, worldwide missionary organization whose annual meetings
in Pakistan and Bangladesh attract millions of followers.
Despite the size of the organization
and its avowedly non-political manifesto, the US authorities
have persistently maintained that it was actually "used
as a cover to mask travel and activities of terrorists, including
members of al-Qaeda." In al-Kabi's case, his subsequent
missionary ventures in Indonesia and Malaysia attracted generic
allegations, unrelated to him, that Tablighi "recruits"
from both countries traveled to militant training camps in Pakistan.
Describing the circumstances
of his capture, al-Kabi said that, after traveling to Karachi,
where he stayed at the Tablighi mosque for a month, he met four
men and traveled with them to Kabul. He said that he stayed for
four months at the Wazir Akbar Khan mosque and continued the
Dawa, aided of one of his companions, who "helped him translate
with people who did not speak Arabic."
When Kabul fell to the Northern
Alliance, in November 2001, he said that "word began to
spread" that the Alliance soldiers "were killing all
of the Arabs." He and his companions fled to Jalalabad,
where they stayed for a month before walking through the mountains
to the Pakistani border, where he was captured.
The status of the other purported
missionary, 21-year old Abdul Rahman al-Hataybi, had not been
satisfactorily explained by the time of his release, even after
nearly six years of interrogation. According to the allegations
against him, after failing his military entrance exam he was
"immediately contacted by a recruiter for al-Qaeda",
and was sent to Afghanistan, with all his expenses paid, to train
at al-Farouq, a camp for Arab recruits, established by the Afghan
warlord Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in the early 1990s, but associated
with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11.
Although the US administration
claimed that he had been "identified as a member of al-Qaeda
by a foreign government service," and reported that his
name had been found on various documents recovered in raids on
suspected al-Qaeda safe houses, al-Hataybi's own story was consistently
at odds with the American version.
The authorities acknowledged
that he was a member of Jamaat-al-Tablighi, but largely overlooked
his insistence that he had worked only as a missionary. In a
number of comments listed under factors favoring release or transfer,
al-Hataybi said that he "traveled to Pakistan for the sole
purpose of providing missionary work to those individuals in
need of assistance." He claimed "never to have set
foot in Afghanistan," having conducted all his missionary
work in Karachi and Lahore, and also claimed that "a Pakistani
police intern tortured him, and forced him to say that he was
part of al-Qaeda and that he had traveled to Afghanistan for
the purpose of jihad." He added that he "lied because
he wanted the torture to stop."
The humanitarian
aid workers
Of the three humanitarian aid
workers, the first, 19-year old Ziyad al-Bahuth, was captured
by Pakistani forces after crossing the border in December 2001.
He explained that he took 90,000 riyals (about $24,000) from
Saudi Arabia to help the poor people in Afghanistan, and said
that he gave the money to a man named Mohammed Khan to distribute
via the Taliban, adding that he stayed for approximately a year
to see how the money was distributed.
He admitted attending a Taliban
training camp near Kabul for a week, and also admitted that he
spent time in Kabul with a known member of the Taliban, who,
he believed, facilitated his weapons training in order to encourage
him to join the Taliban, but denied that he either joined the
Taliban or had any relationship with al-Qaeda.
His tribunal was particularly
noteworthy for the following exchange, which, while possibly
demonstrating a healthy scepticism on the part of the US authorities,
could also demonstrate how little they understood about the charitable
obligations of Islam:
Presiding Officer: When you were around 18 years old,
you raised 90,000 Riyals ... to take to a country you had never
been to before to give the money to the needy and the poor people.
Is that right?
Detainee: Yes.
Presiding Officer: That is remarkable.
The second humanitarian aid
worker, 29-year old Abdullah al-Utaybi, said that he left Saudi
Arabia with $30,000 and traveled to Turkey, where he was looking
for a wife. After the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began in
October 2001, he said that he "decided to travel to Pakistan
to offer his assistance and cash to Afghan refugees." He
stated that he flew to Pakistan but was captured at a checkpoint
in Quetta, near the border, where the money was discovered and
he was seized and handed over to US forces.
Al-Utaybi maintained that he
had never set foot in Afghanistan, even though several unnamed
individuals alleged that he had been the director of the Herat
office of al-Wafa, a Saudi charity, based in Kabul, which was
blacklisted by the US authorities in September 2001 for alleged
ties with terrorism.
It has not been possible to
establish whether there was any truth in these allegations, but
one man who would certainly have known is Abdullah al-Matrafi,
the director of al-Wafa in Afghanistan, whose inclusion in the
latest batch of released detainees was genuinely surprising.
The director
of a blacklisted charity
A father of three, Abdullah
al-Matrafi, who was 38 years old at the time of his capture,
had directed a fund-raising committee in Bosnia, and had worked
as an imam in Mecca before establishing al-Wafa. At the time
of his release, he was presumably aware that most of the other
detainees who had worked for al-Wafa had been freed, as their
claims that they were involved in genuine humanitarian aid work
were accepted one by one. He, however, was regarded as a "high-value"
detainee, against whom was stacked an array of allegations of
his deep involvement with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
After the invasion of Afghanistan began, al-Matrafi sent his
family to safety in Pakistan, but stayed on in Kabul, even though
the organization's stores were the targets of bombing raids,
in which seven aid workers were killed. He finally left the capital
when he was seriously injured in a bombing raid, and his family
last heard from him on December 10, 2001, as he was about to
board an Emirates flight from Lahore to Dubai. He never made
it onto the plane. Abducted at the airport by US agents, he was
transferred back to Afghanistan and put on the first flight to
Guantánamo.
Little was heard about him
in Guantánamo, although it was clear that the authorities
regarded him as a major supporter of terrorism, alleging in his
tribunal that he knew Osama bin Laden, that his plan to provide
funds to bin Laden for training caused disagreement within al-Wafa,
that he admitted that al-Wafa purchased weapons and vehicles
for the Taliban, and that he "negotiated a deal that allowed
the Taliban to direct al-Wafa's activities."
In his review boards, further
allegations were added, including claims that he "admitted
he took orders from Osama bin Laden," that he "provided
financial support to al-Qaeda after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan
in October 2001, and that he purchased medical laboratory equipment
for a microbiologist who was "developing anthrax for al-Qaeda."
Set against these allegations,
however, were a number of counter-claims, which, typically, were
ignored when the authorities declared him an "enemy combatant."
On several occasions, al-Matrafi stated that there was no relationship
between al-Wafa and al-Qaeda, "explaining that al-Qaeda
disliked al-Wafa, and both organizations were in disagreement."
It was also noted in the Summary of Evidence for his second review
board that, two months before 9/11, he met with bin Laden at
his house in Kandahar, and stated that the purpose of the meeting
was "to discuss unresolved issues" from a previous
meeting, "concerning disagreements between al-Wafa and al-Qaeda."
A brief survey of al-Matrafi's
statements before his capture is sufficient to explain his refusal
to accept that he was affiliated with terrorists. In October
2001, after al-Wafa was blacklisted, he appeared on the Arabic
news channel al-Jazeera, protesting his innocence and offering
to open up the organization's accounts to public scrutiny.
In addition, two detainees
in Guantánamo who had worked for al-Wafa backed up his
statements. Ayman Batarfi, a Yemeni doctor who tended wounded
soldiers during the battle of Tora Bora, pointed out that, although
al-Wafa had a good working relationship with the Taliban, this
was required to pursue its humanitarian work. Both Batarfi and
another man, Mustafa Hamlili, an Algerian-born Pakistani resident
who has been cleared for release, but is still in Guantánamo,
reinforced al-Matrafi's claim that the organization was regarded
with suspicion by al-Qaeda because of its Saudi links.
Batarfi may, in fact, be the
alleged "al-Qaeda facilitator" mentioned in the Summary
of Evidence from al-Matrafi's first review board, who identified
him as "having problems with Osama bin Laden because [he]
had come to do charity work in Afghanistan and was funded by
the Saudi royal family, who Osama bin Laden rejected and denounced."
This source added, moreover, that al-Matrafi "would take
Saudis from al-Farouq and try to send them back to Saudi Arabia."
What was largely overlooked,
however, was an even more compelling statement on al-Matrafi's
behalf. In May 2006, an audiotape from Osama bin Laden, whose
authenticity was not called into doubt by US intelligence, explicitly
stated that two detainees in Guantánamo -- al-Matrafi
and the al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj -- had no connection
whatsoever with al-Qaeda.
None of this helped him, however,
and what probably counted against him more than anything else
was the discovery, in August 2002, of a store of chemicals in
offices used by al-Wafa in Kabul, which included "36 types
of chemical, explosives, fuses and terrorist guide books."
Whether this had anything to do with him is unknown. His brother,
Mohammed, reiterated that the organization had no links to al-Qaeda.
"My brother and I have repeatedly said we have no terrorist
links, and that any organization, official or non-governmental,
is free to come and investigate our headquarters," he told
the press, adding, "We are only helping the Muslim people
of Afghanistan."
Time alone will tell what the
Saudi government makes of Abdullah al-Matrafi on his return,
but, like the allegations against his workers that disappeared
under scrutiny like a malevolent mirage, it may well be that
those who vouched for him were correct in their appraisal that
he was the head of a charity that was required to work with the
Taliban, but that was otherwise committed to bringing humanitarian
aid to some of the most deprived people on earth.
Andy Worthington (www.andyworthington.co.uk)
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
|
Now Available!
How the Press Led
the US into War
Buy End Times Now!
New From
CounterPunch Books
The Secret
Language
of the Crossroads:
HOW THE IRISH
INVENTED SLANG
By Daniel Cassidy
WINNER
OF THE
AMERICAN BOOK AWARD!
Click Here to Buy!
Cassidy
on Tour
Click Here for Dates & Venues
"The Case Against
Israel"
Michael
Neumann's Devastating Rebuttal of Alan Dershowitz
Click Here to Buy!
Saul Landau's
Bush and Botox World
with a Foreword by Gore Vidal
Click Here to Order!
Grand Theft Pentagon
How They Made a Killing on the War on Terrorism
The Occupation
by Patrick Cockburn
Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont
CITY BEAUTIFUL
By Tennessee Reed
|
