WikiLeaks reveals details about Guantanamo detainees
By Tim Lister, CNN
April 25, 2011 -- Updated 0644 GMT (1444 HKT)
The documents obtained by WikiLeaks provide details on almost all of the 779
detainees held at Gitmo since 2002.
The documents obtained by WikiLeaks provide details on almost all of the 779
detainees held at Gitmo since 2002.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* The documents paint a portrait of how al Qaeda prepared for the 9/11
attacks
* They also provide insights into bin Laden's thinking after the attacks
* The detainees accounts were cross-checked against each other, the papers
say
* Documents: Operatives travel through Iran to get into Afghanistan
(CNN) -- Nearly 800 classified U.S. military documents obtained by WikiLeaks
reveal extraordinary details about the alleged terrorist activities of al Qaeda
operatives captured and housed at the U.S. Navy's detention facility in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The secret documents have been made available to several news organizations,
including the New York Times and the Washington Post - and some have been
published by WikiLeaks, an organization that facilitates the anonymous leaking
of secret information.
CNN was not among the news organizations granted early access to the latest
files.
101: WikiLeaks revealed Video
The documents shed light on the way detainees behaved while at Guantanamo, and
on how they were assessed in terms of their danger to the United States. They
are intelligence assessments of nearly every one of the 779 individuals who
have been held at Guantanamo since 2002, according to the Post.
The classified files described some of the detainees as being compliant while
others threatened violence against guards. One stated he would fly planes into
houses.
WikiLeaks releases trove of diplomatic messages
They also paint in great detail a portrait of al Qaeda as it grew stronger in
Afghanistan in the 1990s, prepared for the 9/11 attacks and scattered in their
aftermath.
Among the files already published by WikiLeaks and examined by CNN is that of
Ahmed Khalfan Gailani, recently convicted by a New York court of taking part in
the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Tanzania in 1998. The file, from 2006 when
Gailani was transferred to Guantanamo, includes details of his time as a
bodyguard and cook to Osama bin Laden shortly before the 9/11 attacks. Gailani
is cited as telling interrogators that the al Qaeda leader had a "normal diet"
and usually ate with about 15 bodyguards.
The document says that Gailani later became one of al Qaeda's few forgers of
travel documents. He also opted for training in using explosives to avoid
front-line combat.
A document from July 2008 profiles another bodyguard for bin Laden, Sanad
Yislam al Kazimi, who stated that he "would have been willing to die for UBL"
(the shorthand used for the al Qaeda leader.) It says that al Kazimi may have
had knowledge of al Qaeda's nuclear and chemical programs.
Al Kazimi escaped from Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and
returned to Yemen, where he continued to train for terrorist attacks, according
to the document.
He was arrested in 2002 after being lured to Dubai while planning an attack on
Port Rashid in the United Arab Emirates. It adds that while at Guantanamo, al
Kazimi made "numerous threats against U.S. personnel including the President."
Al Kazimi reportedly said "he would like to tell his friends in Iraq to find
the interrogator, slice him up, and make a shwarma (a type of sandwich) out of
him, with the interrogator's head sticking out of the end of the shwarma."
Another Yemeni, Abdu Ali Sharqawi, is described as a "senior al Qaeda
facilitator" with links to the 9/11 plotters.
He was allegedly responsible for arranging the travel of Yemeni jihadists to
Afghanistan in the 1990s, and when he also moved to Afghanistan he became a
confidant of bin Laden.
The 11-page document about his activities says that "on occasion detainee hiked
mountain trails with UBL, who hiked them on a daily basis."
Sharqawi told his interrogators that bin Laden had been in good health, even
though he had one kidney. The document suggests al Qaeda had plenty of money in
the aftermath of 9/11, asserting that "detainee received and passed on over
$500,000" while helping jihadists to escape Afghanistan.
According to the Washington Post, the documents provide detailed insight into
Osama bin Laden's thinking and movements immediately after 9/11.
"Among other previously unknown meetings, the documents describe a major
gathering of some of al Qaeda's most senior operatives in early December 2001
in Zormat, a mountainous region of Afghanistan between Kabul and Khost," the
newspaper reports. "There, the operatives began to plan new attacks, a process
that would consume them, according to the assessments, until they were finally
captured."
The documents show that detainees' accounts were extensively cross-checked
against each other, with at least four detainees confirming that al Kazimi was
a bodyguard to bin Laden.
Among the more remarkable statements is one from a detainee who claimed bin
Laden had written to Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, before the 9/11
attacks - requesting the release of al Kazimi (who'd been detained in 1995) and
another man from jail. A short time later they were freed and went to
Afghanistan.
The documents include substantial detail about the travel of the detainees.
In one instance, a Spanish jihadist by the name of Ahmad Abd Al Rahman Ahmad --
after spending time in Britain and France -- is instructed to travel to
Afghanistan via Iran. The document notes: "Travel through Iran is a known modus
operandi for al Qaeda operatives to get into Afghanistan via a chain of
safe-houses and operatives."
According to the New York Times, the documents show that most of the 172
prisoners still held at Guantanamo have been rated as a "high risk" of posing a
threat to the United States and its allies if released without adequate
rehabilitation. But they also show that many others who have been released or
transferred to other countries were also designated "high risk," the newspaper
says.
Detainees are assessed "high," "medium" or "low" in terms of their intelligence
value, the threat they pose while in detention and the continued threat they
might pose to the United States if released.
The newspaper says the documents include details about detainees' illnesses and
behavior at Guantanamo -- including "punching guards, tearing apart shower
shoes, shouting across cell blocks." But the documents appear to shed little
light on interrogation tactics at Guantanamo, which have drawn widespread
criticism.
The New York Times says that the documents lay bare "the patchwork and
contradictory evidence that in many cases would never have stood up in criminal
court or a military tribunal."
Pentagon: WikiLeaks has damaged operations
The British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, also reports that the documents
suggest much of the evidence used to detain jihadist suspects was flimsy. It
says that "people wearing a certain model of Casio watch from the 1980s were
seized by American forces in Afghanistan on suspicion of being terrorists,
because the watches were used as timers by al Qaeda." Most were subsequently
released for lack of evidence.
Others, according to the New York Times, were not so fortunate despite a lack
of evidence.
One man detained in May 2003 insisted he was a shepherd and according to his
debriefers at Guantanamo Bay knew nothing of "simple military and political
concepts." Yet a military tribunal declared him an "enemy combatant" anyway,
and he was not sent home until 2006, the Times reports.
The U.S. Defense Department condemned the release of the documents, known as
DABs.
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell and Ambassador Daniel Fried, the Obama
administration's special envoy on detainee issues, said in a statement: "The
Guantanamo Review Task Force, established in January 2009, considered the DABs
during its review of detainee information. In some cases, the Task Force came
to the same conclusions as the DABs. In other instances the Review Task Force
came to different conclusions, based on updated or other available information."
WikiLeaks gained international prominence after leaking thousands of papers
about the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Earlier this year it released a huge
cache of secret American diplomatic papers.
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