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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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January 25th,
2010 - Two Algerian Torture Victims Freed from Guantanamo |
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Two Algerian Torture Victims
Freed from Guantanamo By Andy Worthington The Public Record Jan 25, 2010 On Friday, perhaps as a sop
to critics - myself included - who have been complaining about President
Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo by his self-imposed deadline of January
22, 2010, the Justice Department announced in a press release that two
Algerian prisoners had been released. Releasing prisoners to
Algeria has always been a dubious business, akin to Russian roulette, as I
explained when two men were released by the Bush administration in July 2008,
because there appears to be no way of knowing whether these men will be
released on their return or imprisoned and subjected to trials that fail to
meet internationally recognized standards of fairness and objectivity. As a result, frustratingly
little is known about the eight Algerians repatriated from Guantánamo between
July 2008 and January 2009, although one indication of how the Algerian
justice system deals with returned Guantánamo prisoners was provided in
November 2009, when the BBC reported that, 15 months after two of these men
were repatriated, they had been acquitted after a trial in which the
prosecutor had called for prison sentences of 20 years. The stories of the two men
released last week deserve to be heard, because, as so often with Guantánamo,
they reveal how shockingly misplaced is the still prevalent rhetoric
regarding Guantánamo’s role as a repository for the “worst of the worst”
terrorists. Just as disturbingly, their stories also reveal how two men, who
were unconnected to terrorism, were nevertheless tortured in an attempt to make
them admit that they were. Ahcene Zemiri: wrong place, wrong time (in Canada and Afghanistan) The first of the men
released last week, Ahcene Zemiri (identified on his release as Hasan
Zemiri), was born in Algiers on September 8, 1967, the youngest of ten
children. At the age of 20, having completed his two years of mandatory
military service, and finding no prospects for work in Algeria, he moved to
France, where, for several years, he and his brother made money exporting electrical
goods to Algeria. In 1994, he moved to Canada,
settling in Montreal, where he met his future wife, Karina. The couple
married in May 1996, but life was difficult for Zemiri. Unable to find work,
he hung out with other Algerian expatriates, including one man, Ahmed Ressam,
whose future activities were to have a profound effect on Zemiri’s life. In
December 1999, Ressam was seized as he arrived in the United States, and was
charged with planning a terrorist attack on Los Angeles International Airport
(the so-called “Millennium Plot.”). After a trial in 2005, he received a
22-year prison sentence. Neither Zemiri nor the rest
of his friends had any idea about the plot, but after his conviction, and
before he was sentenced, when he was apparently exploited to make confessions
in exchange for a sentence less than the 130 years that was proposed to him,
Ressam claimed that Zemiri had lent him $3,500 and a camera in connection
with the plot. Ressam recanted this claim in December 2006, sending a letter
to the judge who had sentenced him, explaining that Zemiri had “no relation
or connection to the operation I was about to carry out” and that he “didn’t
know anything about it and he did not assist me in anything.” As Zemiri’s
attorneys added, he also declared that his statements “had been misconstrued
and were made under the severe psychological duress of an FBI interrogation
and in the face of a lengthy prison sentence.” Nevertheless, the false claims
were to haunt Zemiri for the next nine years. First, Zemiri and his
compatriots were repeatedly questioned by Canadian intelligence agents and
the police. Zemiri himself was never arrested, but some of his friends were,
and a few later fled the country. In early 2001, after being questioned about
whether it would be safe for President Bush to visit Canada, Zemiri became
convinced that he would be deported to Algeria, and that, if returned, his
decade of globe-trotting in the West would not play well with Islamist groups
in his homeland. As a result, having been sold
a rosy picture of Afghanistan by a friend, he decided to travel there with
Karina, intending to establish himself and raise a family. Arriving in
Jalalabad in August 2001, they lived in a house owned by an Algerian/Swedish
family who had returned to Sweden, in an Algerian neighborhood that was
relatively clean and safe. The house had electricity, water, and a walled
compound, and although many Taliban lived in the area, it was also home to
Europeans, Australians, Uzbeks and Chechens, and the offices of the UN,
Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam were also nearby. Nevertheless, the decision
to relocate to Afghanistan was clearly a foolish dream. Zemiri “disliked
Afghanistan,” as his attorneys stated in a court submission in October 2007.
His wife explained that he had become used to Western society, and the
poverty was too much for him. She “thought that he would make it a year, at
most, before deciding that they should move elsewhere.” The US-led invasion in
October 2001 changed everything, of course, although the couple stayed put
until the cities in northern Afghanistan fell, and the country was no longer
safe for Arabs and other foreigners. Splitting up, for reasons of safety,
Karina escaped to Pakistan, and then to Canada, where she gave birth to their
son, Karim, on June 17, 2002, but her husband was less fortunate. After hooking up with a
group of around 200 mostly Arab men, who were seeking to leave the country,
Zemiri - wearing the Hugo Boss suit that he had brought with him - found
himself caught up on the fringes of the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in
Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, who were preparing for a final showdown
with the US military’s proxy Afghan army, until two Afghan guides showed up,
offering, for a price, to lead the men to safety in Pakistan. Around 60 of the group
accepted, but as they made their way through a valley, they were spotted by a
US plane, and targeted in a bombing raid. One of the men, Ghanim al-Harbi, a
Saudi, later explained that “40 of the Arabs with me were killed and 20 were
injured,” and many of the survivors, including Zemiri, ended up in
Guantánamo. With a broken arm, Zemiri
made it to an Afghan village after the raid, but was sold to Northern
Alliance troops just a few days later. Soon after, he was sold to US forces,
and, according to the court submission, was held in Kabul - possibly, for a
brief spell, in the CIA’s notorious “Dark Prison” - and Kandahar before being
flown to Guantánamo in April or May 2002. In statements to his attorneys, he
explained that, while in custody in Afghanistan, he was “subjected to brutal
physical abuse,” stating that he was “repeatedly beaten by guards,” and that
he “lost a tooth as a result of one such beating.” In Guantánamo, despite
maintaining his story (as he did throughout his detention), Zemiri came under
suspicion because of Ahmed Ressam’s allegation. and was subjected to the
“enhanced interrogation techniques” introduced by defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, which, though nominally intended for use on Mohammed al-Qahtani
(allegedly the 20th 9/11 hijacker), were actually applied to over a hundred
prisoners. As his attorneys explained,
he was “tortured and/or subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,
including temperature manipulation, sleep deprivation, sound bombardment, and
strobe lighting.” As they also explained, he was “splashed with fake
menstrual blood, short-shackled, and forced to maintain a stress position for
long periods of time.” Despite this, Zemiri refused
to accept that he was involved with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and also
refused to accept Ahmed Ressam’s allegations, but it was not until Ressam
wrote his letter, and another witness came forward, that, effectively, any
case against him collapsed. This second witness, Mokhtar
Haouari, who was also convicted for playing a part in the “Millennium Plot,”
wrote a letter from a prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he is serving
a 24-year sentence, which first came to light during a military review board
at Guantánamo in 2005, when it was submitted by Zemiri’s attorneys. In it,
Haouari, stated, “As for these allegations leveled against Mr. Zemiri by
Ressam, well I know they are false. Mr. Zemiri and I were close friends,
unlike Ressam, who was not either of our friend. I never, in 5 yrs of knowing
Mr. Zemiri, heard him speak of jihad, anti-American feelings or so-called
terrorist activities … He’s never been a threat to America or any other
country. Ressam is trying to use Mr. Zemiri like he used myself and others to
decrease his prison term. The government doesn’t care if his accusations are
true or false as long as it brings about a conviction.” Adil al-Jazeeri: a child of the mujahideen The second man released last
week, Adil Hadi al-Jazairi Bin Hamlili (also identified in Guantánamo as Adil
al-Jazeeri), was 27 years old when he was seized outside a restaurant in
Peshawar on June 17, 2003 with five other men who were later released.
Although almost everything about his story is confusing, it is clear is that
he arrived in Pakistan with several family members in 1985, during the
mujahideen resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, when he was
just nine years old, and spent many years in Afghanistan, before relocating
to Pakistan sometime in the 1990s, where he was married and had four children. No explanation has ever been
publicly provided for his capture, but it may be related to the interrogation
of his distant cousin, Mustafa Hamlili (also transferred to Guantánamo, but
released in July 2008), who was seized in a village near Peshawar in May
2002. In Guantánamo, al-Jazeeri claimed that the Pakistanis had told him that
the FBI had ordered his capture, but he may have been seized because he was a
convenient target for the Pakistanis to sell to US forces. Certainly, it is noticeable
that the younger Hamlili was an irritant to the Pakistani authorities, if his
own words in Guantánamo are to be believed. At a military review board
hearing in 2005, in response to an allegation that he had stolen a car with
three Pakistani friends, had been imprisoned for a year and a half, and had
then been expelled to Afghanistan, he explained that he had actually been
expelled “because I did not have the legal papers.” Whatever the truth was
regarding his capture, it was obvious that allegations against him were taken
seriously at some level in the US government, because, after a month in
Pakistani custody, he was rendered to Afghanistan on July 13, 2003, and held
for some time in a secret CIA prison near Kabul (either the “Dark Prison” or
the “Salt Pit”), before being moved to Bagram. He was also one of ten supposedly
significant prisoners - including the British resident Binyam Mohamed - who
were flown to Guantánamo on September 20, 2004, after being held as
“high-value detainees,” and then, it appears, being downgraded to
“medium-value detainees.” According to a news report
published in 2006, the Pakistani authorities believed that he had “served as
a contact between al-Qaeda and the Taliban and also as an aide to the former
Afghan foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil in Kabul,” and although there
may be something in this latter claim, as al-Jazeeri admitted in a review
board that he had found a job with the Taliban working in their media and
translation department, he refused to admit that he had any connection to
al-Qaeda. Despite being presented with a barrage of allegations in his
tribunal and review boards - including claims that he was involved with
Algerian and Tunisian terrorist groups, and that he moved al-Qaeda fighters
from Afghanistan to Pakistan - he refuted them all, saying that most were
false statements that had been obtained under duress in Guantánamo, Bagram or
Kabul. Noticeably, however, he also
pointed out that a few allegations were made prisoners who had some
involvement with al-Qaeda. “All al-Qaeda members they lie,” he said, “and
most of them they really apologized to me in Camp 5. [One] asked for my
forgiveness because he had had to do so. He had to say something like this
because he was under pressure.’” Interviewed in 2006, his
wife also denied the allegations. Speaking from “a crowded mud-brick house in
the village of Regi,” near Peshawar, she insisted that her husband was
innocent. “My husband had no links with al-Qaeda and if he had any links with
al-Qaeda then al-Qaeda people would take care of us because we are living
very miserable lives,” she said. Presumably, the President’s
Guantánamo Review Task Force would not have released al-Jazeeri had they too
not concluded that somewhere along the line his story had been overblown.
Certainly, he gave the authorities no cause for alarm during his five years
in Guantánamo, when he was apparently a thoroughly cooperative prisoner
throughout his imprisonment. It seems, therefore, as with Ahcene Zemiri,
that, despite the promise of terrorist related activities - and the use of
torture in an attempt to prove it - neither man, in the end, proved anything
beyond Guantánamo’s most enduring truth: that when you round people up in a
random manner, or on the basis of untested intelligence, and then fly them
halfway around the world to an experimental prison intended to be outside the
law, you end up with nothing. I suppose, however, that
both these men should count themselves fortunate that they don’t fit into a
category of prisoner embraced by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task
Force, and, it seems, by the President himself: those regarded as too
dangerous to release, even though the supposed evidence against them would
not stand up to any kind of independent scrutiny. These men - 47 in total, as
the Task Force announced on Friday - will continue to be held indefinitely
without charge or trial. Compared to that, the
Russian roulette of Algerian justice may not be so bad after all. This report was originally
published on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation. External link: http://pubrecord.org/torture/6711/algerian-torture-victims-freed/ |