Many Pakistanis with no Qaeda links at Guantanamo

From Khalid Hasan for the Daily Times

WASHINGTON: Dozens of prisoners, including Pakistanis, being held at Guantanamo Bay have "no meaningful connection to Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and were sent to the maximum-security facility over the objections of intelligence officers in Afghanistan who had recommended them for release."

A report in the Los Angeles Times Sunday, quoting military officials with "direct knowledge of the matter", states that at least 59 detainees, nearly 10 percent of those being held, were "deemed to be of no intelligence value after repeated interrogations in Afghanistan." All were placed on "recommended for repatriation' lists well before they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay, a facility intended to hold "the most hardened terrorists and Taliban suspects."

Dozens of the detainees, the report notes, are Afghan and Pakistani nationals described in classified intelligence reports as "farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers and laborers. Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban in the weeks before the collapse of the ruling Afghan regime." None of the 59 met US screening criteria for determining which prisoners should be sent to Guantanamo Bay, military sources said. But all were transferred anyway, sources said, for "reasons that continue to baffle and frustrate intelligence officers nearly a year after the first group of detainees arrived at the facility."

A Pakistani team led by Tariq Farooq Mirza of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was invited to visit Guantanamo Bay this summer but failed to persuade the US administration to release those who had by now been established as being non-al Qaeda. However, barring one 70 year old Pakistani, no one had been released. The team which was allowed to interview a number of Pakistani prisoners reported to the government that there were very few among the 56 or so Pakistanis who would fit the description "al Qaeda fighters of terrorists." Pakistan has not pressed the US government too hard, since it is keen not to risk

Washington's, particularly Pentagon's annoyance.One officer said, "There are a lot of guilty [people] in there, but there's a lot of farmers in there too." The sources' accounts point to a previously undisclosed struggle within the military over the handling of the detainees. Even senior commanders were said to be troubled by the problems. Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey, the operational commander at Guantanamo Bay until October, traveled to Afghanistan in the spring to complain that too many "Mickey Mouse" detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility, sources said.

Another report appearing in the Washington Post Sunday said that a large number of those now being held at Guantanamo were handed over to the American forces by Afghan and Pakistani tribesmen in exchange for money. This should make nonsense of the myth that in that part of the world, honour and tradition demand that someone who has sought refuge is protected at all costs.

One of the reasons the Guantanamo Bay prisoners are not being released and not being allowed direct access to a lawyer is that no one wants to be "the guy who released the 21st hijacker," according to an officer. "While that concern remains a legitimate one, the fact that dozens of the detainees are still in custody a year or more after their capture has become a source of deep concern to military officers engaged in the war on terrorism around the globe. Many fear that detaining innocents, and providing no legal mechanism for appeal, can only breed distrust and animosity toward the US -- not only in the home countries and governments of the prisoners but also among the inmates," the report points out.One military interrogator at Guantanamo is quoted by the Los Angeles Times said, "We're basically condemning these guys to long-term imprisonment," said a military official who was a senior interrogator at Guantanamo Bay. If they weren't terrorists before, they certainly could be now."

The Afghan and Pakistani governments have raised the issue with Washington. A Pakistani embassy official, who declined to be identified told the newspaper that his government is convinced that many of the 58 Pakistanis known to be in custody "probably joined the Taliban but didn't know how to spell Al Qaeda."One prisoner was transferred because he was Arab by birth and had once fought for the Taliban, thereby meeting two key screening criteria. But before the war he had sustained such a massive head injury that he could utter little more than his name and was known by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as "half-head Bob."

The report said, "others were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who collected bounties for prisoners, sources said. One such prisoner was captured at a restaurant near the border where he claimed to have lived and worked for 20 years. 'He had the mental capacity to put flatbread in an oven and that was the extent of his intellect,' the interrogator said. 'He never got trained on a rifle, never got pressed into service. But he was Arab by birth so he was picked up and sent away.'

According to classified Pentagon guidelines, Guantanamo Bay was meant to be a long-term detention facility for Al Qaeda operatives, Taliban leaders, "foreign" fighters and "any others who may pose a threat to US interests, may have intelligence value, or may be of interest for US prosecution." But from the beginning, prisoners who didn't meet those criteria were sent, sources said. In some cases, militarypolice seemed to have more influence over flight lists than intelligence officers, lobbying commanders to ship out troublesome detainees. "Other detainees seemed to get caught up in the military's bureaucratic machinery. In many cases, low-value prisoners caught early in the war were placed at the bottom of prioritized lists. But as planeloads of prisoners were sent to Cuba, names at the bottoms of the lists drifted to the top, and some started showing up on flight manifests," the report added.

Once they appeared on the manifests, sources told the newspaper, removing them proved almost impossible. Doing so required senior intelligence officers in Kuwait or Afghanistan to work through thickets of military red tape. It also required them to trust the judgment of junior intelligence officers, something they were loath to do, given the stakes. Through much of the war, the decisions were made far from the battlefield, by commanders in Kuwait or back in the United States. Intelligence officers in Afghanistan became increasingly dismayed at the number of low-level detainees on the manifests.

To call attention to the problem, some officers began circulating lists of prisoners they believed were being improperly placed on Guantanamo Bay flight manifests. The lists were seen by senior intelligence officers in Afghanistan, Kuwait and the United States. One of the lists covers 49 Afghans and 10 Pakistanis who were being held at Kandahar Air Base until the Afghan facility was shut down in June, prompting their transfer to Guantanamo Bay, sources said. The prisoners ranged in age from 16 to 50, most with little or no education. None was deemed to have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

The report said, "Among the Pakistanis on the list was a 16-year-old who traveled to Afghanistan at the start of the war to help the Taliban, but quickly had second thoughts and was captured by the Northern Alliance while trying to flee. 'He showed no signs of deception,' interrogators noted. 'He never fought for the Taliban.' Another Pakistani, a 33-year-old taxi driver, was captured near Mazar-i-Sharif. 'The fact that the detainee's taxi car broke down was a deciding factor for him to leave home and fight the Jihad,' according to his file. 'Detainee is a low-level fighter with no tactical intelligence. Recommend repatriation.' These detainees would almost certainly have been repatriated had they not been captured early in the war, before screening systems were overhauled to make releasing low-level prisoners easier, sources said."

There was also a confusing command structure that hampered information sharing. Guantanamo Bay was controlled by the US Southern Command, whose territory includes South America, even though the war on Al Qaeda was principally the purview of the US Central Command.In the last nine months, only five prisoners have been released from a population that totals about 625 and represents 43 nations. The first prisoner released, in April, was so mentally unstable he was known by interrogators as Wild Bill. Four others were released at the end of October, including three Afghans and one Pakistani. Among them were one low-level Taliban conscript and two men who appeared to be in their 70s and said they had never served the Taliban.

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