Long-time Guantanamo inmate in case of mistaken identity

Pentagon says the 37-year-old is not responsible for some of his supposed offences

US officials have acknowledged that a Yemeni man held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 is not entirely the person they thought he was.

In what it concedes is at least a partial case of mistaken identity, the Pentagon said the 37-year-old inmate is not responsible for some of his supposed offences — after a mixup over his name.

The embarrassing admission comes as Barack Obama struggles to close the prison before the clock ticks down on his presidency. Opened in the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks, 107 inmates remain in the controversial facility. Their fate remains unclear.

The detainee in question is Mustafa Abd Al Qawi Abd Al Aziz Al Shamiri — referred to in legal documents by his detainee number YM-434.

Though the military maintains he fought in “jihadist theatres,” officials acknowledge Al Shamiri was not an Al Qaida facilitator or trainer, as they had long asserted.

“We now judge that these activities were carried out by other known extremists with names or aliases similar to YM-434’s,” an unclassified military document released Monday read. It goes on to state that “fragmentary reporting” linked the detainee to fighting in Bosnia in 1995, and says he told investigators he fought in Yemen’s civil war in 1996, as well as for the Taliban in Afghanistan from 2000 to 2001.

He also “may” have stayed in a safe house with people who plotted the USS Cole bombing in 2000, but there are no indications Al Shamiri was involved in the attack, the statement adds. Obama pledged to shut the facility — reviled by critics as a stain on America’s moral character that helped fuel anti-US extremist propaganda — when he took office in 2009, but his efforts have failed.

Inmates are kept without recourse to regular US legal processes and some likely will die in prison without ever being convicted of a crime.

A statement from Al Shami-ri’s unnamed representative said he’d been compliant throughout his 13 years in Guantanamo, on the southeastern tip of Cuba.

“During the last feast, Mustafa generously took the time to prepare over 30 plates of pastries for his fellow detainees,” the statement reads.

It adds Al Shamiri had remorse “for choosing the wrong path early in life.”

“While he cannot change the past, he would definitely have chosen a different path,” the statement reads. “He wants to make a life for himself.”

Obama has faced numerous roadblocks to closing the prison, mainly from a reluctant Congress.