14 years later, detainee tortured by U.S. seeks release, denies that he poses threat
WASHINGTON — After 14 years of detention, Abu Zubaydah, the suspected terrorist brutally tortured after his capture in 2002, appeared for the first time at a Guantánamo Bay hearing on Tuesday morning and said he should be released because he posed no threat.
Through an anonymous soldier who read a summary of his views under convoluted Defense Department rules, Zubaydah declared that he “has no desire or intent to harm the United States or any other country.” He said he would like to be reunited with his family.
Video of the 17-minute open part of the hearing was streamed to a Pentagon conference room where a dozen reporters and human rights advocates were allowed to watch. It was a landmark of a sort: The hearing was the first time that members of the public other than his lawyers had been allowed to see him since his capture after being badly injured in a shootout in Pakistan in March 2002.
Zubaydah, now 45, did not speak during the unclassified part of the hearing, called a Periodic Review Board. He had another opportunity to speak or answer questions during the closed, classified part of the hearing, which followed the open session and was expected to last for several hours.
First major capture
Dressed in a white tunic, Zubaydah, whose mental stability has been questioned by some U.S. officials, listened calmly and attentively but showed no reaction as officials read various statements. He did not wear the patch that in earlier photographs covered his damaged left eye, injured at some point after his capture, but the patch hung from a strap around his neck. He wore one pair of glasses and switched to another pair to read a document.
Born in Saudi Arabia to a family of Palestinian background, Zubaydah became a sort of travel agent, camp administrator and facilitator for militant fighters in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, after the ragtag force of Islamic soldiers known as the mujahedeen forced the Soviet army out of the country.
But when he was shot and taken into U.S. custody six months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he was the first significant suspect captured in an increasingly desperate global CIA manhunt. At the time, U.S. intelligence officials wrongly concluded that he was a top-ranking leader of al-Qaida who might have knowledge of future plots.
He was the first prisoner to be subjected to waterboarding — 83 times, water was poured over a cloth covering his mouth and nose to give him the feeling of drowning, as records later would show. Interrogators were themselves distressed by his suffering and told CIA supervisors that they thought he had no more information to offer, only to be told to continue the rough treatment.
A report described him at one point as “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”
The records also suggest that he may be the only detainee on whom all 10 of the approved socalled enhanced interrogation techniques were used, including confinement in a cramped box, extreme sleep deprivation and exposure to cold.
Officials later acknowledged that the initial description of him as the No. 3 figure in al-Qaida was incorrect.
Disavows violence
In a “profile” posted on the web this week, military authorities gave a muchmodified but still rather vague description of his history. Though his conduct at the Guantánamo prison has been cooperative, he “probably retains an extremist mind-set” and might join former colleagues in planning attacks if released, the profile said.
But Zubaydah told his personal representatives — two members of the military assigned to speak with him — that he had no intention of committing terrorist acts. He “repeatedly said that the Islamic State is out of control and has gone too far,” the personal representatives said in their statement.