Guantánamo Bay files: Obama grapples with fate of last 172 prisoners

This article is more than 8 years old
President promised to close camp by January 2010 but has struggled to put suspects on trial and resettle the innocent
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly confessed to masterminding the 9/11 attacks, remains at Guantánamo Bay awaiting trial. Photograph: EPA

Barack Obama's inability to shut Guantánamo Bay – more than two years after he ordered its closure – has become a symbol to many of the gap between the promise and rhetoric of his early presidency and the brutal realpolitik that quickly engulfed him.

Nearly a decade after the extrajudicial prison camp opened, 172 of its 779 inmates are still marooned there and Obama – who faced 240 captives when he came to office – has admitted it's not likely to close any time soon. The leaked Guantánamo files offer an insight into why.

According to the documents, those still held fall roughly into three groups: the bad, the unprosecutable and the homeless. Some were active terrorists but others merely fought for the Taliban when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11.

The so-called "worst of the worst" are 40 inmates who have been or may yet be prosecuted. They include members of the "Dirty 30" alleged to have been Osama bin Laden's bodyguards, plus those claimed to belong to his inner circle.

At their head is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 51, whose scowling, battered-looking mugshot from his 2003 capture has become a familiar news staple. According to his 15-page prison dossier, "KSM", who grew up in Kuwait, told a fellow plotter that the 11 September 2001 attacks had been his "dream and life's work". He was repeatedly waterboarded in a CIA prison.

Obama has had to abandon his idea of putting "KSM" and four others on trial in New York near the site of Ground Zero. They may face a military tribunal at Guantánamo instead. The five are locked up in Camp 7, a high-security cage. They are among 14 "high-value detainees" extracted from secret CIA prisons in 2006 and flown to Cuba. Two others in the group were also waterboarded, according to admissions.

One was Muhammad al-Nashiri, listed as "one of the highest-ranking, most skilled and dangerous al-Qaida operatives captured to date". The Saudi inmate is accused of more than a dozen terror plots, including attempts to blow up the British embassy in Yemen and UK warships at Gibraltar.

His file says: "He had personally chosen the UK military base in Gibraltar to be the target for the operation … He had seen a news documentary on the base and thought it was a good target." But Moroccan intelligence arrested a local team over the Gibraltar plot in 2002 and Nashiri was subsequently picked up in Dubai and turned over to the CIA for "enhanced interrogation".

In one of its more bizarre passages, his dossier says: "Detainee is so dedicated to jihad that he reportedly received injections to promote impotence and recommended the injections to others so more time could be spent on the jihad."

Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah.

The third waterboarded "high-value" inmate is 40-year-old Palestinian Abu Zubaydah. His lawyer, Brent Mickum, says he "was not, and never had been, a member of either the Taliban or al-Qaida. The CIA determined this after torturing him extensively".

But his file claims he was in Bin Laden's inner circle, alleges he discussed a "dirty bomb" with a Briton, Binyam Mohamed, and provided false passports according to another Briton, Moazzam Begg. An assessment dated November 2008 says: "Detainee has provided a wealth of information … [He] continues to be a valuable source of intelligence for operations still occurring today."

Maad al-Qahtani
Maad al-Qahtani.

The second group of captives consists of 73 inmates whose future remains unresolved. More than half are "too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution" in the words of Daniel Fried, Obama's special envoy on closing Guantánamo. They include those who it is conceded have been tortured to such an extent they cannot be prosecuted under any fair legal process, such as Maad al-Qahtani, the would-be "20th hijacker" of 9/11.

Early moves by the White House to transfer these detainees to a facility in the US while it figured out what to do with them foundered after the Senate voted down a budget for it amid rising public resistance to the idea of allowing potentially dangerous terrorists on to US soil.

Finally there are 59 people who the US claims could be transferred if only other countries were willing to take them, and in some cases supervise them.

The homeless include 27 Yemenis. Yemenis form the largest single group still imprisoned in Guantánamo and cannot return, according to Fried, "because of the deteriorating security environment in that country". The US wanted transferred Yemenis to be "detoxed" at a Saudi-run rehabilitation camp before being released into Yemeni custody, but Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, objected.

Another prisoner awaiting a home is Mahrar Rafat al-Quwari, a Palestinian, no longer assessed as high-risk. He fought with Bin Laden at Tora Bora and was accused of being "non-compliant and sometimes hostile to the guard force". His alleged infractions included "inciting a disturbance", hitting a guard with his elbow and stating "all Americans are liars". In 2009 Switzerland was asked to accept him, but it is unclear whether it has agreed.

The leaked files document increasingly desperate attempts to find inmates alternative homes, particularly 20 Uighurs – Chinese Muslims rounded up from a Taliban camp at Tora Bora in 2002.

The White House has tried to bribe small countries into accepting them. It will not forcibly return the Uighurs to China – ironically, because of fears that they may be imprisoned or tortured.

The US did manage to unload five on Albania, where they are claimed to have settled down well. According to documents: "Three are currently trying to get funding to open up a halal pizza restaurant. All have had cooking classes and two are working at restaurants in Tirana."

Other states have been reluctant to take any Uighurs for fear of Chinese anger. China has protested to every country that accepted any, and privately berated US diplomats for what one Chinese ambassador called a "slap in the face".

As a result, when the US in desperation offered some to Slovenia in 2009, the ambassador cabled home that the Slovenian prime minister had "blanched".

Ahmed Mohammed Yaqub
Ahmed Mohammed Yaqub.

Some Uighurs eventually went to Switzerland and Bermuda. Only five remain in Guantánamo: four footsoldiers who have not been classed as a threat since 2005 and their alleged leader, Ahmed Mohammed Yaqub, who has been downgraded from his 2008 high-risk assessment.

The five refuse to go to the only two tiny island havens on offer, Palau and the Maldives, where they say they have no cultural ties. On 18 April the US supreme court threw out their bid to be allowed into the US instead.