The longest-held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay has launched a new attempt to secure his release. He is trying to obtain his freedom in several courts and points out that no charges have ever been brought against him.
Abu Zubaydah, now 52, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 during a raid by American and Pakistani security services.
Born in Saudi Arabia, he was the first person held in the U.S. black sites secret prison network and the first person waterboarded by the CIA
U.S. intelligence concluded that he was a fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s but never joined al-Qaeda and had no connection to the Sept. 11 attacks.
He is believed to have served as an assistant to fighters in Afghanistan and worked as a camp manager and mediator. The US has vaguely accused him of having knowledge of several terrorist attacks, although there is no evidence that he was directly involved.
But this summer he was declared too dangerous to ever be released and is one of three indefinitely detained under martial law who are facing charges and have not yet been recommended for release.
Abu Zubaydah, 52, was captured on March 28, 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. He was the first to be taken to CIA “intelligence offices” and waterboarded
The Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba temporarily housed 780 prisoners. Now there are 30 left
Abu Zubaydah was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 and his lawyers argue he should be released, The New York Times reported.
“He is human and clearly deserves a chance at freedom,” said Lt. Col. Chantell M. Higgins, a U.S. Marine Corps lawyer who has represented Abu Zubaydah for six years.
She said she was working to “assist the U.S. government in releasing Mr. Abu Zubaydah and finding a safe and suitable country to peacefully and productively relocate him.”
The new effort began in September with a lawsuit filed in Spokane, Washington, against two psychologists who waterboarded him five months after his August 2002 arrest at a black site in Thailand.
He was tortured on site with sleep deprivation, confinement in a box and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
One of the psychologists, John Bruce Jessen, lives in Spokane County.
Jessen has already been brought to trial for his techniques: in 2017, a settlement was reached with two former prisoners and the family of a third deceased.
Solomon Shinerock, a former federal and New York prosecutor who is leading Abu Zubaydah’s defense in the Spokane case, said he was used as a “guinea pig to test the limits of human tolerance.”
CIA psychologists James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen. Jessen lives in the Spokane area and was sued last month by Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers over his involvement in the waterboarding program
Abu Zubaydah is pictured in a photo from his detention. He has been held in Guantanamo since 2006
Lawyers for Abu Zubaydah have previously filed lawsuits in Britain accusing the British government of complicity in his torture, as well as in Poland, where he was held in a secret CIA prison after Thailand.
Another new case was filed in Washington DC on Friday, The New York Times reported.
They are asking a judge to rule that the CIA destroyed video recordings of his interrogations in Thailand, arguing that the recordings helped secure his freedom.
“Ninety tapes, potentially covering hundreds of hours of interrogation, were destroyed,” says the 33-page petition, obtained by the newspaper.
“The tapes were relevant to terrorism investigations, criminal investigations and the petitioner’s deprivation of liberty.”
And later this month a different angle will be tried: the United Nations Human Rights Committee will hold a meeting in Geneva on his case.
They cannot order his release, but they can advocate for it and recommend that the United States pay him reparations and formally apologize.
Since 2002, around 780 detainees have been held at Guantanamo Bay.
Now there are 30 left.
One of the 30 has been convicted and ten are awaiting trial.
Sixteen were recommended for transfer to another country.
Abu Zubaydah and two others remain in limbo, with no charges or recommendation for release.