Guantanamo Justice?

The Kuwaitis' families had no hint of their fate until January, when a list was published on AlNeda.com, a Web site often identified with Al Qaeda. It named most of the Kohat detainees, including the five Kuwaitis. "We were so happy to hear [he was alive]," says Mansour Kamel, brother of Abdullah. "But we were so upset by the source." The same Web site has been used as a platform for Osama bin Laden's "spokesman," another Kuwaiti named Suleiman Abu Ghaith. And on top of the apparent guilt by association, there was another problem. The list of Kohat detainees gave their home phone numbers. "We got calls from all over the world," says Mansour Kamel. "Some of them were trying to rip us off. One Syrian called and told me he wanted to get my brother some underwear. I said 'How much?' He said, '$2,000.' I said, 'What kind of underwear is that?' "

In February, four of the five were flown to Guantanamo and the makeshift cages at Camp X-Ray. In May, the fifth arrived, by which time detainees had been moved to a more permanent facility at the new "Camp Delta." One of the five Kuwaitis, Abdulaziz Sayer al Shammari, had joined a hunger strike in March. In a letter dated the 23rd of that month, but received through the Red Cross in Kuwait only on the 23rd of June, al Shammari told his father he had not eaten for 27 days and not taken water for four days. "I cannot stand life in this place," reads the letter. "Some persons in America want to achieve electoral gains on our account." He asked his father to take care of his children and to "take this message to the Kuwaiti press so that they know the reality as it is."

What is the reality? Khaled Al-Odah, a former fighter pilot who is the father of detainee Fawzi Al-Odah, has organized the families of all the Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo--the five who crossed White Mountain and seven others--to fight for their freedom. The Washington law firm of Shearman & Sterling has been retained, and a public-relations consultant has been contracted. One of the "messages" in the consultant's "media relation plan" is that all the Kuwaitis being detained "are good people, as far we know." In fact, Kuwaiti detainee Adil Zamil Al Zamil, born in 1963, was part of a radical Islamic gang in Kuwait that stalked, videotaped and savagely beat "adulterers." He was sentenced to a year in prison in 2000 for attacking a Kuwaiti coed in her car.

According to other Kuwaiti sources, however, the only detailed U.S. inquiry about any of the 12 has concerned Omar Rajab, who worked with a charitable organization in the Bosnian town of Zenica during the war there. His family said they welcome such inquiries. Indeed, most of the relatives said they would like the detainees investigated thoroughly, hoping that will establish their alibis. But, again, the Pentagon says that's not the purpose of Guantanamo. "We're quite comfortable at least for the moment that everyone we've got [at Guantanamo] is appropriately there," a senior Defense Department official told NEWSWEEK. "It may be over time that our views will become more defined. [But for now] we view these people as dangerous people who are combatants in the war." Why not conduct investigations in the home countries of the detainees to determine the truth? "Your question suggests that there is something akin to a criminal investigation at work. That is not what we're doing."

But this evident lack of investigation outside Guantanamo isn't just a problem when it comes to establishing alibis. The lack of detailed background dossiers also makes it harder to extract useful intelligence. That's partly why, according to several sources in the intelligence community, prisoners from the very top echelons of Al Qaeda never make it to the southern coast of Cuba. They are turned over (or "rendered," in counterterrorism parlance) to interrogators in Egypt or Pakistan, even Syria, where they can be questioned by local intelligence officers who have thick background files and use whatever methods are necessary to help get the job done.

Only recently have representatives of some foreign services been allowed into Guantanamo to interrogate their nationals. Kuwaiti authorities have asked to visit, but without success. (They want to be able to bring home those they presume innocent as well as to help grill the ones they think are dangerous.) "I don't blame anybody," says Mansour Kamel, the American-educated brother of detainee Abdullah Kamel. Mansour has lived most of the last seven years in Louisiana and says he loves the United States. He was there on September 11, and he says he understands the way people felt about Arabs and Muslims. "We have a saying: if you've been bitten by a snake you'll be afraid of a rope. But it's time to get some sense. We always saw the United States as a great example. But the Statue of Liberty now, instead of holding a torch, is holding a sword." The longer the war on Al Qaeda lasts, the more critical it will become to find the proper balance between the torch and the sword.

RON MOREAU IN ISLAMABAD

© 2002