President George W. Bush described Zubaida in 2002 as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations” but USA officials later assessed that he was a Pakistan-based “fixer”, not a formal member of the group, who helped aspiring jihadists make their way to training camps in Afghanistan.
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It us up to the Periodic Review Board to decide whether a prisoner would pose a danger if released. An eye patch he has used to cover the left eye he lost during his 2002 capture was apparently dangling from his neck.
Hearings at the Periodic Review Board have been held more often recently as the Obama administration is trying to stand by the president’s pledge to close Guantanamo by the end of this presidential term.
The hearing is part of the Periodic Review Board, which the Department of Defense describes as “an interagency process created to review whether continued detention of Guantanamo detainees is necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States”.
Declassified documents from a Senate investigation and Zubaydah’s own testimony from 2007 reveal that during his time in a Central Intelligence Agency black site in Thailand, Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, confined in boxes the size of a coffin or smaller, slammed into a wall, deprived of sleep and lost his left eye.
Zubaydah was subjected to the torment of waterboarding 83 times in August 2003.
It was later determined that US intelligence overstated Zubaydah’s role in al-Qaeda.
“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.
The report said that after one session, Zubaida became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth”.
At the hearing, the government’s “detainee profile” of Zubaydah, dated March 31, 2016, was read aloud.
The government opposes Abu Zubaydah’s release, and an unnamed official reading his detainee profile at the review alleged his participation in or knowledge of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the USS Cole bombing in 2000, and involvement in Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s plans to attack U.S. and Coalition forces after 9/11, among other plots. At Tuesday’s hearing he wore wire-rimmed glasses.
Officials later acknowledged that the initial description of him as the No. 3 figure in al-Qaida was incorrect. The government says he “probably retains an extremist mindset”.
Both his representative and the government official emphasized Zubaydah’s good behavior in the prison as well as his condemnation of the Islamic State (ISIS).
Jessen and Mitchell wrote that they “used facial slaps, abdominal slaps and facial grabs” on Zubaydah in connection with asking him for information about terrorist operations planned against the United States.
A Saudi-born Palestinian, Zubaydah is one of three men that the Central Intelligence Agency has admitted to have waterboarded at an unknown prison in Thailand.
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A statement read at Tuesday’s hearing by a US military officer acting as Zubaydah’s personal representative said he wants to reunite with his family and “begin the process of recovering from injuries he sustained during his capture”. Zubaydah stated he wanted to be re-united with his family and had “no desire or intent to harm the United States or any other country”. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
