Away from the Desk: Guantanamo Coverage Continues into Year 22+

"Negotiations are underway for Guantanamo's "Forever Prisoner" from Gaza to be released"

Away from the desk: Guantanamo

This week I ventured back into my reporting on the Guantanamo beat, where the news comes very, very slowly. I attended — yet another — hearing to review the detention of Abu Zubaydah, who has been held by U.S. intelligence and military agencies without any charges against him since 2002. The story was published at The Intercept here.

Abu Zubaydah (his name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Husayn) and his attorney appeared on video from a courtroom on the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo. Observers watched from a room in Crystal City, Virginia, near the Pentagon. The review board members attended from an unknown location.

The detainee under review is one of only 30 men left in the detention center, where about 780 men have been held since 2002. Once labeled as the possible “number 3” under Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda command, he is now seen as a possible “facilitator” in the network of Islamic militants in 1990s Afghanistan and Pakistan. The sketch above (from a public review board filing here) is his own drawing of the “enhanced interrogation technique” called waterboarding, which he endured 83 times while in the custody of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

These hearings revolve not around what he has done (remember: there are still no charges), but the question of whether he continues to be a threat to the national security of the United States.

Media observers can watch a half hour or so of unclassified proceedings. The detainee does not speak; his attorney speaks for him. After we leave, the review board questions him in the classified portion. We don’t ever see what happens there. At some point, there will be a decision by the board: keep him in Guantanamo indefinitely or release him to another country’s supervision? Where will that be?

In Abu Zubaydah’s case, the matter is complicated by his nationality. He is Palestinian, identified as from Gaza, although he was born in Saudi Arabia. He is stateless.

I watched, listened and took notes in an old-time reporters’ notebook: no phones or laptops are permitted in the room where the video is playing.

It’s an understatement that I’ve done a bit of research on the Guantanamo detainees. I’ve described that here and research lingers in the database here. I’m thinking about a post to come on how to do research when the information is top secret, classified, and difficult — also an understatement — to pursue. You really have to like a challenge.