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4B – Daily News – Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Documents reveal details of interrogations of key detainees WASHINGTON — U.S. military intelligence assessing the threat of nearly 800 men held at Guantanamo in many cases used information from a small group of captives whose accounts now appear to be ques- tionable, according to a McClatchy Newspapers analysis of a trove of secret documents from the facility made public by WikiLeaks. The allegations and observations of just eight detainees were used to help build cases against some 255 men at Guan- tanamo — roughly a third of all who passed through the prison. Yet the testimony of some of the eight was later ques- tioned by Guantanamo analysts themselves, and the others were subjected to interrogation tactics that defense attorneys say amounted to torture and compromised the veraci- ty of their information. Concerns about the quality of the "facts" from the eight men goes to the heart of Guan- tanamo's "mosaic" approach of piecing together detainees' involvement with insur- gent or terrorist groups that usually did not depend on one slam-dunk piece of evidence. Rather, intelligence ana- lysts combined an array of details such as the items in detainees' pants pockets at capture and whether they had con- fessed to interrogators — American or otherwise. More than two-thirds of the men and boys at Guantanamo were not captured by U.S. forces. So analysts were often left to weave together the stories told by detainees, the context of where and how they were initially scooped up, the informa- tion passed on by inter- rogators at other U.S. detention sites and, cru- cially, the testimony of fellow detainees at Guan- tanamo. At Guantanamo, the captives were aware that some prisoners were pro- viding a pipeline of information to interroga- tors — either to justify their continued detention or for use in potential prosecutions before mili- tary commissions. "I heard there was another detainee talking about me," former Briton detainee Feroz Abassi said in a recent interview with McClatchy Newspa- pers. "I thought, let them talk. They're only going to corroborate my story." After being held at Guantanamo for more than three years, Abassi was released in a diplo- matic deal in January 2005 at age 25. He now works as a caseworker at the London-based detainee activist group Cageprisoners. Abassi said it later became apparent that some informants were "straying away from the truth, trying to save themselves. They crack and they think it helps them to point fingers. But they only dig a hole for themselves." That appears to have been the case for Mohammed Basardah, a self-described one-time jihadist whose informa- tion was used in assess- ments for at least 131 detainees. In some instances, he accused fel- low detainees of training at militant camps or tak- ing part in the fighting in Afghanistan against the United States and its allies in late 2001. Other times, intelli- gence analysts simply inserted a sliver of a quote from Basardah about the guilt of every- one caught at Tora Bora — the rugged mountain region where Osama bin Laden and members of his inner circle fled fol- lowing the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — as a sort of blanket truism. The Yemeni's testimo- ny was included despite worries highlighted in a 2008 Guantanamo intel- ligence assessment that his "firsthand knowledge in reporting remains in question" and a remark that many of fellow prison camp captives seemed "willing to reveal self-incriminating infor- mation to him." At the Pentagon, Army Lt. Col. Tanya Bradsher said the mili- tary would not be com- menting on McClatchy Newspapers' findings because "the documents disclosed by Wikileaks are the stolen property of the U.S. government. The documents are classified and do not become declassified due to an unauthorized disclosure." Among the other informants, who were used in the assessments to both make direct alle- gations against detainees and explain more general issues such as the rela- tionship between various militant groups: • A Syrian detainee known as Abdul Rahim Razak al Janko, whose own file said that "there are so many variations and deviations in his reporting, as a result of detainee trying to please his interrogators, that it is difficult to determine what is factual." He was quoted or cited in records for 20 detainees. • Muhammad al Qah- tani, a Saudi man whose interrogations reportedly included 20-hour ses- sions and being led around by a leash, appeared as a source in at least 31 cases. A Guan- tanamo analyst note about Qahtani acknowl- edged that "starting in winter 2002/2003, (Qah- tani) began retracting statements," though it argued that based on cor- roborating information "it is believed that (his) initial admissions were the truth." At the Center for Con- stitutional Rights in New York, the firm that has championed Qahtani's unlawful detention law- suit, senior attorney Shane Kadidal said that "the information that was given in the first place (by Qahtani) was not reli- able." As a condition of his security clearance, Kadidal said, he couldn't discuss the specifics of the WikiLeaks docu- ments. • Ibn al Shaykh al Libi, a Libyan, told CIA de-briefers in 2004 that he had earlier exaggerat- ed his status in al Qaida because he thought that's what American inter- rogators wanted to hear. He also said that he fabri- cated connections between Iraq and al- Qaida to avoid mistreat- ment or torture by Egypt- ian interrogators. Infor- mation from al Libi was cited in at least 38 of the Guantanamo files. • Mohammed Hashim, an Afghan whose report- ing was described in one analyst's note as "of an undetermined reliability and is considered only partially truthful," showed up in assess- ments for 21 detainees. • Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn, a Saudi-born Palestinian who is known more widely as Abu Zubaydah, was cited in about 127 detainee files. His inter- rogations are reported to have included at least 83 instances of water board- ing, and his attorney, Brent Mickum, recently told McClatchy Newspa- pers that "he provided tremendous amounts of information that was worthless." • Fawaz Naman Hamoud Abdullah Mahdi was used in only six cases. But given a 2004 Guantanamo assessment of the Yemeni, it seems surprising that the fruit of his interrogations would be used as evidence against anyone: His "severe psychological disorder and deteriorat- ing attention span" meant "the reliability and accu- racy of the information provided by (Mahdi) will forever remain question- able," according to the assessment. On Sunday, the Department of Defense released a statement say- ing the Obama adminis- tration's current Guan- tanamo Review Task Force has in some cases come to the same conclu- sions as the 2002-2009 assessments, and "in other instances the review task force came to different conclusions, based on updated or other available information." Any lingering doubts about the eight men and the quality of their state- ments were rarely listed when their information appeared in the case files of other detainees. Guan- tanamo officials were so pleased with Basardah's work, for example, that his identifying a fellow detainee was used as an example in a guide to "threat indicators." But in a 2009 opinion ordering the Pentagon to release Guantanamo detainee Saeed Mohammed Saleh Hatim, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina pointed out that Basardah's alle- gations about Hatim were collected several years after Guantanamo inter- rogators knew there were problems. While the government maintained that Basardah provided interrogators with "accurate, reliable information," Urbina said that Basardah had been flagged as early as May 2002 by a Guan- tanamo interrogator who did not recommend using him for further intelli- gence gathering "due in part to mental and emo- tional problems (and) limited knowledgeabili- ty." The interrogation in which Basardah fingered Hatim for operating heavy weapons on the front lines in Afghanistan happened in January 2006. For Human Rights 1/ www.rollinghillscasino.com 2 off Furniture DEPOT *Limited to stock on hand Thru April 30th, 2011 www.thefurnituredepot.net HOURS: MONDAY-FRIDAY 9:00-6:00 SATURDAY 9:00-5:00 • SUNDAY 11:00-5:00 235 S Main St., Red Bluff • 530 527-1657 Watch senior counterter- ror counsel Andrea Pra- sow, who earlier in her career defended several Guantanamo captives, the military's heavy reliance on such prison camp snitches vindicates the role of federal judges in analyzing the Penta- gon's patchwork of cases. "But for habeas," she said Monday, "we'd never have known that Basardah was a liar." U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler took a similar view of Basardah in the unlawful detention lawsuit of Guantanamo detainee Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed. Kessler referred to Basardah as having "shown himself to be an unreliable source whose statements have little evi- dentiary value." Kessler also wrote of the U.S. government's case against Ahmed and other Guantanamo detainees that "the mosa- ic theory is only as per- suasive as the tiles which compose it ... if the indi- vidual pieces of a mosaic are inherently flawed or do not fit together, then the mosaic will split apart." Basardah was not named publicly in either case, but his identity is clear after comparing the new Guantanamo files and the court cases. In both cases, the judges ruled that the detainees should be freed. Education Calendar April, 2011 Wed. April 26, 6:30 – 8:30, Grief A 2-part series, call 528.4207 Grief Support Meets every Thursday 3 – 5 pm in the Coyne Center on the St. Elizabeth Campus call 528.4207 St. Elizabeth Community Hospital A member of CHW www.redbluff.mercy.org/sports redbluff.mercy.org Select Items*