Terror suspect at Gitmo hearing:

America

Zubaydah

The first high-profile al-Qaeda terror suspect captured after the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 appeared Tuesday at a US government hearing called to determine whether he should remain in detention at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian not seen publicly since his capture by the CIA in 2002, sat expressionless during the brief hearing. Zubaydah was also the first to vanish into the CIA’s secret “black site” prison network and was subjected to “enhanced interrogation.”

The review panel issued no immediate ruling on his status. He has been held at Guantanamo Bay since September 2006.

The US contended that Zubaydah, 45, was one of the most senior figures in alQaeda when he was captured in Pakistan. It has since dropped that claim. Zubaydah’s lawyers deny he was a member of al-Qaeda.

Following his capture, the CIA under president George W. Bush initiated an interrogation program, now widely viewed as torture. Under this once-secret program, Zubaydah was subjected to what the Bush administration called “enhanced interrogation” in the belief that he was withholding information about al-Qaeda. A Senate report released in 2014 said that belief was false.

Zubaydah was subjected to the torment of waterboarding 83 times in August 2003. Straining under a waterlogged cloth clamped over his face, Zubaydah became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth,” according to CIA emails cited in the Senate report. He was body-slammed by his captors. He was hooded, then unmasked and ominously shown a coffin-like box.

In a statement prepared for the review and provided to The Associated Press on Tuesday, a lawyer for Zubaydah asserted that he poses no danger to the US.

“Abu Zubaydah is not now and never has been an enemy of the United States and has been involved in no terroristic acts,” the lawyer, Mark P. Denbeaux, said in the statement.

Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall Law School, maintains the government has grossly exaggerated its claims against Zubaydah. He pointed to a 2014 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that accused the CIA of offering a misleading version of what it was doing with its “black site” captives and deceiving the nation about the effectiveness of its