America’s longest-held prisoner in war against terror and the first to be waterboarded by the C.I.A at a black site launches new campaign to be released from Guantánamo Bay
The longest-held detainee at Guantanamo Bay has made a new attempt to secure his release. He is trying to win his freedom through several courts and points out that he has never been charged.
Abu Zubaydah, now 52, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 during a raid by American and Pakistani security forces.
Born in Saudi Arabia, he was the first person to be held in the US secret prison network known as the Black Sites, and the first to be waterboarded by the CIA
U.S. intelligence concluded that he was a militant in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s but never joined Al Qaeda and had no ties to the September 11 attacks.
He is believed to have acted as an assistant to the fighters in Afghanistan, as a camp administrator and facilitator. The US has vaguely accused him of knowledge of several terrorist attacks, although there is no evidence he was directly involved.
Yet this summer he was declared too dangerous to ever be released. He is one of three prisoners held in indefinite detention who are neither charged by the tribunal nor recommended for release.
Abu Zubaydah, 52, was captured on March 28, 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was the first to be taken to CIA “black sites” and waterboarded.
The Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba at one point housed 780 prisoners. Now only 30 remain
Abu Zubaydah was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006, and his lawyers argue he should be released. New York Times reported.
“He is a human being and clearly deserves a chance at freedom,” said Lt. Col. Chantell M. Higgins, a U.S. Marine Corps attorney who represented Abu Zubaydah for six years.
She said she was working “to assist the U.S. government in releasing Mr. Abu Zubaydah and finding a safe and suitable country to resettle him peacefully and productively.”
The new effort began in September, with a lawsuit filed in Spokane, Washington, against two psychologists who waterboarded him at a black site in Thailand five months after his arrest in August 2002.
He was tortured on the spot, with sleep deprivation, confinement in a coffin and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
One of the psychologists, John Bruce Jessen, lives in the federal jurisdiction of Spokane County.
Jessen has previously faced legal action over his techniques: in 2017, a settlement was reached with two former inmates and the family of a third who died.
Solomon Shinerock, a former federal prosecutor and prosecutor in New York who is leading Abu Zubaydah’s defense in the Spokane case, said he was used as a “guinea pig to test the limits of human tolerance.”
CIA psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen. Jessen lives in the Spokane area and was sued last month by Abu Zubaydah’s attorneys for his involvement in the waterboarding scheme
Abu Zubaydah is depicted in a photo of his detention. He has been held in Guantanamo since 2006
Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah have previously filed cases in Britain, accusing the British government of complicity in his torture, and in Poland, where he was held in a secret CIA prison after Thailand.
Another new case was filed in Washington DC on Friday, The New York Times reported.
They are asking a judge to rule that the CIA robbed him when it destroyed videotapes of his interrogations in Thailand, arguing that the tapes would have helped secure his freedom.
“Ninety tapes, possibly covering hundreds of hours of interrogations, have been destroyed,” said the 33-page petition, obtained by the newspaper.
“The tapes were relevant to terrorism investigations, criminal investigations and the petitioner’s deprivation of liberty.”
And later this month, a different angle will be tried: the United Nations Human Rights Committee will hold a hearing on his case in Geneva.
They cannot order his release, but they can approve it and recommend that the United States pay him reparations and issue a formal apology.
Since 2002, approximately 780 prisoners have been held at Guantanamo Bay.
Now only 30 remain.
One of the thirty has been convicted: ten are awaiting trial.
Sixteen have been recommended for transfer to another country.
Abu Zubaydah and two others remain in limbo, without charges or recommendation for release.