oops. "innocent" gitmo detainee released, goes on to kill british soldiers

[Eric P]

From The Times
March 12, 2009
Taleban chief released from Guantanamo to target British troops
Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Abdul Ghulam Rasoul was held in Guantanamo for six years before his release, in December 2007
Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent, Michael Evans, Defence Editor, and Tom Coghlan in Kabul

The Taleban commander responsible for increasingly sophisticated bomb attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan is a former detainee of Guantánamo Bay released from prison in Kabul last year by Hamid Karzai’s Government, The Times has learnt.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul was held in Guantánamo for six years before being released to Afghan authorities in December 2007, after a US military review board decided unanimously that he was no longer a threat.

British and Taleban officials have told The Times that Rasoul has since resurfaced as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, the Taleban’s new operations chief in Helmand and the architect of a new offensive against British troops.

Since he took over, the “asymmetric” threat from the Taleban has risen dramatically, with greater numbers of more sophisticated and powerful roadside bombs used against British troops. “He is a serious player,” one Whitehall official said.

Although Rasoul was released from Guantánamo after convincing interrogators that he had never held military command, Taleban officials told The Times that he had been a high-ranking commander close to the Taleban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar.

The disclosure will complicate further President Obama’s efforts to persuade countries to take in Guantánamo detainees and allow him to close the camp within a year as promised.

Rasoul was captured in the chaos of the Taleban surrender at Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, in December 2001. He was in the lead car of a convoy of senior Taleban leaders, carrying a Kalashnikov and two Casio watches later identified as key components of home-made bombs. Rasoul denied that the watches were his, but it now appears likely that they were evidence of his expertise in bombmaking.

British officials believe that he is the mastermind behind the deadly surge in roadside bombings in Helmand since spring 2008, when he was released from Pul-e-Charkhi prison, Kabul.

Forty-four British troops have been killed in roadside bombings since 2008 and 18 in direct exchanges of fire. In 2007 15 Service personnel were killed by bombs and 15 in direct fire.British officials and Taleban sources said that Rasoul was believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan. “He is back in Helmand since his release,” a Taleban commander told The Times. “He is in the border area now, sometimes in Pakistan and sometimes in Afghanistan. He is a very big commander.”

Rasoul, known as Detainee 008 in Guantánamo, is the latest in a line of former inmates and released Taleban prisoners to return to the fight in Afghanistan, including Maulavi Ghulam Dastagir, who was released on the personal orders of President Karzai.

Rasoul was one of 13 Afghan prisoners flown home to Kabul on December 12, 2007. On his return, he was placed in Block D of the Pul-e-Charkhi maximum security prison, renovated by the Americans for the detention of prisoners transferred from jails at Bagram and Guantánamo.

He was released early in 2008, soon after President Karzai appointed a high-level commission to rule on the detainees’ fate. The circumstances of his release remain unclear.

Taleban sources told The Times that even if the Americans had not discovered Rasoul’s identity his Afghan interrogators should have done. “In the time of the Taleban government he was the commander of Taleban forces in Takhar province,” a Taleban official told The Times. “He was one of Mullah Omar’s deputies.”

Before September 11, 2001, Takhar was the front line between Taleban forces and the Northern Alliance.

Rasoul was caught in nearby Kunduz in December 2001 from a car that he claimed to be driving for another Taleban leader, “Mohammed” — an apparent reference to Mullah Mohammed Fakil, his commander, who was attempting to surrender to the Northern Alliance.

Fakil, the Taleban’s deputy defence minister, accused of some of the regime’s worst atrocities, remains in Guantánamo, classified as too dangerous to release.

Sixteen pages of documents detailing Rasoul’s detention and interrogation at Guantánamo Bay offer tantalising clues into his personality.

He did not confess to being a senior military commander, although the details sometimes wavered. Some of his denials were astonishingly brazen: that the Kalashnikov was forced on him; that he was carrying the watches for a commander who had no pockets; that he had never heard of Osama bin Laden and did not know that the Americans were bombing Afghanistan; that he came to Kabul in 1997, when the Taleban seized power, merely “to see the city”.

As the years of incarceration dragged on, he grew wearier, more sullen, and palpably annoyed with being asked the same questions. “I don’t want to talk about the Kalashnikov,” he barked at one hearing of the board reviewing his status.

During one hearing in 2005, the interrogator noted that he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, by then only worn by non-compliant inmates involved in a disciplinary process. Rasoul said that he had argued with guards “because they disrespected my Koran”. The guards’ allegedly deliberate mistreatment of the Muslim holy book sparked hunger strikes in Guantánamo, in which Rasoul appeared to have participated: records of Detainee 008’s weight show that it plummeted in September 2005, at the height of the hunger strikes.

Another dispute was over cleanliness. “I was trying to get permission to take a shower daily,” he complained. “Right now I am taking one within every three days.”

He claimed that he relished the punitive solitary confinement. “I don’t want anyone to talk to me, I am happy here.”

He did admit to having joined the Taleban twice in the course of seven years — once, under duress, in 1995, and the second time in 1997, to get proper medical treatment for injuries sustained in a bombing.

The full text of the decision to release him has not been declassified, but documents show that the decision was unanimous. Factors favouring his release included his professed ignorance of Osama bin Laden, his assertion that he had been conscripted into the Taleban and had never been to a training camp and his promise that he intended to return to a peaceful life in Afghanistan.

“I want to go back home and join my family and work in my land and help my family,” he said.

[Bloodwake]

I guarantee it's because he got pissed at the world because he was innocent and being detained.

[ToxicAdam]

I'm disappointed we didn't insert trackers into these people before we released them.

I thought Cheney was an evil genius?

[Eel O'Brian]

Havent actually read the article

the motto of internet political debate

[BlueTsunami]

Not sure how you go about releasing legitimately bad detainees, such as Rasoul. Its not like they can be rehabilitated (lol US Prisons). The light of Jesus won't work... you would have to keep them detained for the rest of their life.

[Dickie Dee]

I guarantee it's because he got pissed at the world because he was innocent and being detained.

"Although Rasoul was released from Guantánamo after convincing interrogators that he had never held military command, Taleban officials told The Times that he had been a high-ranking commander close to the Taleban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar."

Was that before or after he was detained? 

Does that sound weird to anyone else? Either they're saying in a "haha dumb infidels" way, in which case I'm not sure it should be believed

or

It was said in sense of "Yes, in the purposes of full disclosure as a completely open organization, we can confirm this man is a 2nd in command."

[brawndolicious]

Obviously, he was always a bad guy but it kind of makes you wonder what kind of intelligence and evidence they had to catch him in the first place.

[Joe Molotov]

I guarantee it's because he got pissed at the world because he was innocent and being detained.

He's from Afghanistan though; a military prison in Cuba is probably an upgrade.

[drozmight]

so?

[Joe Molotov]

Allow me to clarify:

He's from Afghanistan though; a military prison in Cuba is probably an upgrade.

[drozmight]

I'm just figuring things like a 9/11 or this episode every once in a while are a small price to pay for the preservation of liberty.

Really, they only scenario in which I can see justification for places like Gitmo is if the terrorist threat involves the use of face-huggers.  Then it's like, "US GOVERNMENT STRIP SEARCH ME AND TEAR APART MY HOME... JUST DO WHAT YOU NEED TO, OMG!"

[Eric P]

S you either go all the way or you don't even attempt to, because this way you're only creating vengeful psychos.

Let me tell you a little bit about american history  America is a wonderful experiment, a factory really, where we don't make representative democracy for all people (eventually), where our biggest export isn't justice, or democracy, or even mcdonald's restaurants serving the same thing just off every highway across the entire world, it's not even bombs.

We export crazy so that people can make vengeful psychos in their own countries.  Look at south america.  Vengeful psychos because we exported CIA training camps to fight people who wanted to live their lives differently.  look at africa, where with the help of the british, the french, the dutch and the africans, we export a really special kind of crazy and fill the countries up with weapons, drugs we deem unsafe to sell to our own citizens, misinformation about fighting disease, and after we fucked up some africans for a hundred years, we send them back to africa to import the american dream back to africa.  how's liberia looking now?  look at the philipines.  look at the middle east, though we can thank england for priming your holes for us.

everything we touch turns to crazy, eventually which is why what happened to marks in antarctica came as no surprise to me.  if america makes moon colonies, expect the same shit there.  what's worse is that our crazy mutates before you can find ways to inoculate against it.  that's why we're number one and everyone else is so far below us that they don't even get numbers.