http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/innocents-and-foot-soldie_b_72286.htmlWhether through a desire to impress the Supreme Court with its sense of justice prior to next month's showdown over the detainees' rights, or, as is more probable, through a placatory deal with the Saudi government following the death of a third Saudi detainee in Guantánamo in May this year, the US administration released another 14 Saudi detainees on Saturday. Whichever way you look at it, however, the administration loses. Of the 136 Saudi detainees originally held as the "worst of the worst," 107 have now been released (45 in the last four months alone). Removing from these figures the three men who died, this means that just 26 Saudi detainees remain in Guantánamo.
Drawing on the research I conducted for my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison - and additional information released by the Pentagon just two months ago - I can reveal exclusively that the stories of these men do nothing to bolster the administration's claims, first voiced nearly six years ago, that those detained in the "War on Terror" were so uniquely dangerous that it was worth breaking domestic and international law, shredding the Constitution, abandoning the Geneva Conventions and introducing torture as official US policy to hold them without charge or trial - potentially forever - in conditions that are worse than those endured by the most hardened convicted criminals on the US mainland.
Of the 14 men, seven - five humanitarian aid workers and two missionaries - had no connection whatsoever with any kind of militancy. The first of the missionaries, 24-year old Khalid al-Bawardi, who pompously lectured his tribunal about the finer details of Sunni Islamic practice, explained that he had traveled around Pakistan and Afghanistan hectoring his fellow Muslims for their failings - mainly to do with raised graves and good luck charms -and had been handed over to US forces by opportunistic border guards, after crossing into Pakistan after the US-led invasion began.
The second, 26-year old Sultan al-Uwaydah, did not take part in any of the tribunals or review boards in which, though deprived of legal representation and subject to secret evidence obtained through torture, coercion or bribery, the detainees were at least allowed to present their stories. Looking at the "evidence" presented by the administration, however, his explanation for being in Afghanistan - that he traveled to "teach the Koran to poor and disadvantaged Muslims," and that he duly taught the Koran to children in various locations, before hooking up with his uncle in Khost and escaping to Pakistan, where he was arrested - was severely at odds with the authorities' version.
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Of the five humanitarian aid workers, the most complete story was told by 28-year old Mohammed al-Harbi, whose release was clearly long overdue. A successful grocer in Saudi Arabia, al-Harbi batted away an allegation that he was a mujahideen fighter in Kandahar, insisting that he had never been to Afghanistan, and explaining that he traveled to Pakistan in November 2001 to deliver nearly $12,000 to those in need of humanitarian aid. Adding that he was only planning to stay for a few weeks at most, because his wife was pregnant at the time, he proceeded to explain that "The Pakistani police sold me for money to the Americans," even though "I had a return ticket home and it was clear I wasn't planning to stay or ever cross into Afghanistan." He added that, although the Saudi authorities intervened to help him while he was in custody in Pakistan, the ISI (the Pakistani intelligence services) deliberately hid his passport, presumably to protect the reward money they were receiving from the Americans, who were paying an average of $5,000 a head for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects.
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