Ackerman writes: "The foundations of the guilt of the remaining 113, whom US
politicians often refer to as the 'worst of the worst' terrorists, involves
a degree of faith in the Pakistani and Afghan spies, warlords and security
services who initially captured 98 of the remaining Guantanamo population."
The three remaining Guantánamo detainees caught by US forces are Pakistani
Saifullah Paracha and Afghans Abdul Zahir and Obaidullah. (photo: Jim
Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
Only Three of 116 Guantánamo Detainees Were Captured by US Forces
By Spencer Ackerman, Guardian UK
25 August 15
Bulk of remaining detainees who US politicians refer to as worst of the
worst were rounded up by Pakistani and Afghan spies, warlords and
security services
Onlly three of the 116 men still detained at Guantánamo Bay were apprehended
by US forces, a Guardian review of military documents has uncovered.
The foundations of the guilt of the remaining 113, whom US politicians often
refer to as the worst of the worst terrorists, involves a degree of faith
in the Pakistani and Afghan spies, warlords and security services who
initially captured 98 of the remaining Guantánamo population.
According to an analysis of long-neglected US military capture information,
68 of the residual Guantánamo detainees were captured by Pakistani security
forces or apparent informants. Another 30 were sent to the notorious wartime
facility by forces from Afghanistan mostly warlords and affiliates of
early US efforts to topple the Taliban after 9/11.
No US official nor human rights critic believes all 116 detainees are
innocent of all terrorism charges. Yet the reality that nearly 85% of
detentions at Guantánamo stem from foreign partners with their own interests
in round-ups overwhelmingly of Arab men in south Asian countries rarely
factors into the heated rhetoric from conservative politicians who warn of
dire consequences should Barack Obama finally close the facility.
Senator Kelly Ayotte said in March that most of the remaining Guantánamo
detainees are the worst of the worst terrorists, in a typical sentiment
echoed this week by her Republican colleagues.
Knowledgable US officials, including former Guantánamo prosecutors, consider
that assessment overblown, particularly for the 52 men approved in 2010 by a
multi-agency US assessment for transfer out of the facility. Those detainees
they consider actually worrisome at Guantánamo are low-level fighters in
minor operational roles, said one official who insisted on anonymity,
calling them Pfc al-Qaida at best to indicate their low rank.
At least 17 of the Pakistan-led captures are explicitly listed in 2008-era
military documents as coming from Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence,
which incubated and sponsored the Afghan Taliban and is rumoured to have
helped shelter or turned a blind eye to Osama bin Ladens years of hiding in
Abbottabad.
Ayotte, a leading opponent of Obamas plan to close Guantánamo, has
questioned Pakistans trustworthiness in the past, asking after the 2011 Bin
Laden raid if the Pakistanis were incompetent or were they, obviously,
aware of the compound and not providing us that information.
After Pakistan, forces from Afghanistan provided the largest cohort of
Guantánamos current population, according to the Guardians review.
At least seven of the 30 men proffered by the Afghans came from forces loyal
to Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is accused of stuffing hundreds of prisoners
into shipping containers, suffocating them to death. Dostum is now
vice-president of the US-backed Afghan government.
Over 60 of the detainees captured by Afghans and Pakistanis are said in the
documents to have spent some time in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan
where an inconclusive battle between US and al-Qaida forces occurred in
December 2001. A 2009 US Senate report validated longstanding accounts that
US special forces paid locals for their aid, something human-rights critics
have said gave an incentive for Pashtuns to capture people and claim
al-Qaida affiliation to credulous Americans.
There is great reason to disbelieve claims that detainees at Guantánamo are
the worst of the worst, including the fact that many were sold to the US
for a bounty, not based on any real quality intelligence the US had
gathered, said Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch.
The three remaining Guantánamo detainees caught by US forces are Pakistani
Saifullah Paracha and Afghans Abdul Zahir and Obaidullah.
Other countries that provided detainees to the US who are currently held at
Guantánamo include Georgia, Turkey, Mauritania, the United Arab Emirates,
Egypt, Thailand, Somalia and Kenya. Even Iran, the USs major adversary in
the Middle East, arrested a Yemeni man, Tawfiq Nassar al-Bihani, who ended
up at Guantánamo via Afghanistan.
Numerous US officials over the years have stated that Americas
understanding of the membership networks of al-Qaida and the Taliban were
limited during the first few years after 9/11, the period when the vast
majority of remaining Guantánamo detainees were captured. Regional allies
with experience fighting extremist Islamism, including Libyas Muammar
Gaddafi, Syrias Bashar al-Assad and Pakistans Pervez, became increasingly
important, even as those dictators pursued their own agendas.
But some of the foreign captures were more collaborative than the documents
portray.
Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan around the time of the
Tora Bora battle, said that the Pakistanis would round up and detain mostly
Arab terror suspects on the basis of US-provided information.
For the most part, these were not people who were known specifically and by
name, said Grenier, who went on to helm the CIAs Counterterrorist Center.
Grenier cited three high-profile exceptions: prominent al-Qaida members Abu
Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. All are currently
detained at Guantánamo Bay after years in brutal CIA incommunicado
detention.
Still, officials at Guantánamo knew practically nothing about the men they
detained.
Retired Army Colonel Stuart Herrington, a renowned former military
interrogator, travelled to Guantánamo in March 2002 to review intelligence
operations shortly after the detention facility opened. He recalled to the
Guardian in February that US interrogators lacked even basic information
about most of their new charges: Of the 300 [initial detainees], they were
sure they had the correct identification, name and biometric data of about
30% of them.
Retired air force colonel Morris Davis arrived at Guantánamo Bay in
September 2005 as the chief military commissions prosecutor believing that
the facility really did house the worst of the worst. By the time he
resigned in 2007, he came to believe the designation was misapplied from the
start.
It didnt take long to realize that for every detainee that was arguably a
KSM-type [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] there were dozens and dozens more that
were of the knucklehead variety like David Hicks or the low-level dupe
variety like Salim Hamdan, Davis told the Guardian.
Though nominal US allies over the 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, both
Pakistan and Afghanistan have frequently vexed US policymakers, intelligence
officers and troops.
In addition to Pakistans incubation of the Taliban, a US investigation in
2012 found that Pakistani forces opened fire on US troops and shut down
Natos ground shipping routes to resupply the Afghanistan war. But, Grenier
said, none of these complications apply to foreign fighters affiliated with
al-Qaida an issue on which he considered US and Pakistani interests
aligned.
Afghan soldiers launched deadly green on blue attacks, wounding and
killing their US mentors. Their former US-financed president, Hamid Karzai,
would frequently denounce US conduct in Afghanistan and refused to sign a
long-term basing deal with the Americans that his successor endorsed.
Obamas plan to hold a rump of non-transferrable Guantánamo detainees
indefinitely at military or federal jails in the US is arousing increased
anger in the weeks leading up to a formal unveiling. But the prominent
politicians rejecting the plan rarely address the initial Pakistani and
Afghan apprehensions that provide the underpinning for most remaining
Guantánamo detentions.
Tim Scott and Pat Roberts, Republican senators who represent US navy
facilities in South Carolina and Kansas two potential destinations for
current Guantánamo residents called the plan preposterous in a Wall
Street Journal op-ed this week.
Transferring these prisoners to the mainland puts the well-being of states
in danger, posing security risks to the public and wasting taxpayer
dollars, the senators wrote.
Gitmo terrorists are worst of the worst, Scott wrote to his Twitter
followers on Sunday, and should stay at Guantánamo.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
The three remaining Guantánamo detainees caught by US forces are Pakistani
Saifullah Paracha and Afghans Abdul Zahir and Obaidullah. (photo: Jim
Watson/AFP/Getty Images)
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/guantanamo-detainees-captured
-pakistan-afghanistanhttp://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/guantana
mo-detainees-captured-pakistan-afghanistan
Only Three of 116 Guantánamo Detainees Were Captured by US Forces
By Spencer Ackerman, Guardian UK
25 August 15
Bulk of remaining detainees who US politicians refer to as worst of the
worst were rounded up by Pakistani and Afghan spies, warlords and
security services
nly three of the 116 men still detained at Guantánamo Bay were apprehended
by US forces, a Guardian review of military documents has uncovered.
The foundations of the guilt of the remaining 113, whom US politicians often
refer to as the worst of the worst terrorists, involves a degree of faith
in the Pakistani and Afghan spies, warlords and security services who
initially captured 98 of the remaining Guantánamo population.
According to an analysis of long-neglected US military capture information,
68 of the residual Guantánamo detainees were captured by Pakistani security
forces or apparent informants. Another 30 were sent to the notorious wartime
facility by forces from Afghanistan mostly warlords and affiliates of
early US efforts to topple the Taliban after 9/11.
No US official nor human rights critic believes all 116 detainees are
innocent of all terrorism charges. Yet the reality that nearly 85% of
detentions at Guantánamo stem from foreign partners with their own interests
in round-ups overwhelmingly of Arab men in south Asian countries rarely
factors into the heated rhetoric from conservative politicians who warn of
dire consequences should Barack Obama finally close the facility.
Senator Kelly Ayotte said in March that most of the remaining Guantánamo
detainees are the worst of the worst terrorists, in a typical sentiment
echoed this week by her Republican colleagues.
Knowledgable US officials, including former Guantánamo prosecutors, consider
that assessment overblown, particularly for the 52 men approved in 2010 by a
multi-agency US assessment for transfer out of the facility. Those detainees
they consider actually worrisome at Guantánamo are low-level fighters in
minor operational roles, said one official who insisted on anonymity,
calling them Pfc al-Qaida at best to indicate their low rank.
At least 17 of the Pakistan-led captures are explicitly listed in 2008-era
military documents as coming from Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence,
which incubated and sponsored the Afghan Taliban and is rumoured to have
helped shelter or turned a blind eye to Osama bin Ladens years of hiding in
Abbottabad.
Ayotte, a leading opponent of Obamas plan to close Guantánamo, has
questioned Pakistans trustworthiness in the past, asking after the 2011 Bin
Laden raid if the Pakistanis were incompetent or were they, obviously,
aware of the compound and not providing us that information.
After Pakistan, forces from Afghanistan provided the largest cohort of
Guantánamos current population, according to the Guardians review.
At least seven of the 30 men proffered by the Afghans came from forces loyal
to Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is accused of stuffing hundreds of prisoners
into shipping containers, suffocating them to death. Dostum is now
vice-president of the US-backed Afghan government.
Over 60 of the detainees captured by Afghans and Pakistanis are said in the
documents to have spent some time in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan
where an inconclusive battle between US and al-Qaida forces occurred in
December 2001. A 2009 US Senate report validated longstanding accounts that
US special forces paid locals for their aid, something human-rights critics
have said gave an incentive for Pashtuns to capture people and claim
al-Qaida affiliation to credulous Americans.
There is great reason to disbelieve claims that detainees at Guantánamo are
the worst of the worst, including the fact that many were sold to the US
for a bounty, not based on any real quality intelligence the US had
gathered, said Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch.
The three remaining Guantánamo detainees caught by US forces are Pakistani
Saifullah Paracha and Afghans Abdul Zahir and Obaidullah.
Other countries that provided detainees to the US who are currently held at
Guantánamo include Georgia, Turkey, Mauritania, the United Arab Emirates,
Egypt, Thailand, Somalia and Kenya. Even Iran, the USs major adversary in
the Middle East, arrested a Yemeni man, Tawfiq Nassar al-Bihani, who ended
up at Guantánamo via Afghanistan.
Numerous US officials over the years have stated that Americas
understanding of the membership networks of al-Qaida and the Taliban were
limited during the first few years after 9/11, the period when the vast
majority of remaining Guantánamo detainees were captured. Regional allies
with experience fighting extremist Islamism, including Libyas Muammar
Gaddafi, Syrias Bashar al-Assad and Pakistans Pervez, became increasingly
important, even as those dictators pursued their own agendas.
But some of the foreign captures were more collaborative than the documents
portray.
Robert Grenier, the CIA station chief in Pakistan around the time of the
Tora Bora battle, said that the Pakistanis would round up and detain mostly
Arab terror suspects on the basis of US-provided information.
For the most part, these were not people who were known specifically and by
name, said Grenier, who went on to helm the CIAs Counterterrorist Center.
Grenier cited three high-profile exceptions: prominent al-Qaida members Abu
Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. All are currently
detained at Guantánamo Bay after years in brutal CIA incommunicado
detention.
Still, officials at Guantánamo knew practically nothing about the men they
detained.
Retired Army Colonel Stuart Herrington, a renowned former military
interrogator, travelled to Guantánamo in March 2002 to review intelligence
operations shortly after the detention facility opened. He recalled to the
Guardian in February that US interrogators lacked even basic information
about most of their new charges: Of the 300 [initial detainees], they were
sure they had the correct identification, name and biometric data of about
30% of them.
Retired air force colonel Morris Davis arrived at Guantánamo Bay in
September 2005 as the chief military commissions prosecutor believing that
the facility really did house the worst of the worst. By the time he
resigned in 2007, he came to believe the designation was misapplied from the
start.
It didnt take long to realize that for every detainee that was arguably a
KSM-type [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] there were dozens and dozens more that
were of the knucklehead variety like David Hicks or the low-level dupe
variety like Salim Hamdan, Davis told the Guardian.
Though nominal US allies over the 14 years since the 9/11 attacks, both
Pakistan and Afghanistan have frequently vexed US policymakers, intelligence
officers and troops.
In addition to Pakistans incubation of the Taliban, a US investigation in
2012 found that Pakistani forces opened fire on US troops and shut down
Natos ground shipping routes to resupply the Afghanistan war. But, Grenier
said, none of these complications apply to foreign fighters affiliated with
al-Qaida an issue on which he considered US and Pakistani interests
aligned.
Afghan soldiers launched deadly green on blue attacks, wounding and
killing their US mentors. Their former US-financed president, Hamid Karzai,
would frequently denounce US conduct in Afghanistan and refused to sign a
long-term basing deal with the Americans that his successor endorsed.
Obamas plan to hold a rump of non-transferrable Guantánamo detainees
indefinitely at military or federal jails in the US is arousing increased
anger in the weeks leading up to a formal unveiling. But the prominent
politicians rejecting the plan rarely address the initial Pakistani and
Afghan apprehensions that provide the underpinning for most remaining
Guantánamo detentions.
Tim Scott and Pat Roberts, Republican senators who represent US navy
facilities in South Carolina and Kansas two potential destinations for
current Guantánamo residents called the plan preposterous in a Wall
Street Journal op-ed this week.
Transferring these prisoners to the mainland puts the well-being of states
in danger, posing security risks to the public and wasting taxpayer
dollars, the senators wrote.
Gitmo terrorists are worst of the worst, Scott wrote to his Twitter
followers on Sunday, and should stay at Guantánamo.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
