The U.S. transferred Abdul Latif Nasir from Guantánamo to his home country of Morocco. Nasir allegedly led forces during the 2001 Battle of Tora Bora and was a member of an al Qaeda training subcommittee.
In the ninth episode of the Islamic Spring video series, Ayman al Zawahiri says Uighur jihadists, who are from the Xinjiang region of China, have shown the ummah what mujahideen unity means in the face of international enemies. Zawahiri praises the deceased founder of the Turkistan Islamic Party, Hasan Mahsum, and his jihadist followers.
A Guantanamo detainee who was transferred to Kuwait in 2006 had quickly returned to the battlefield. He killed 13 Iraqi soldiers in a suicide truck bomb at a combat outpost in Mosul, Iraq in 2008.
Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Regional Integration said in a statement that it has accepted two Guantanamo detainees who “have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities, and are being released.” But that is not true. Neither one of the detainees was “cleared” by President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force. One of the two was previously deemed a “high risk” by Joint Task Force – Guantanamo.
AQAP has released a biography commemorating former Guantanamo detainee Hani Abdo Shaalan. In the video, AQAP claims that Shaalan was killed in an American airstrike in December 2009. Previously, the Yemeni government claimed that Shaalan was killed during a shootout with government forces.
The DC Circuit Court affirmed a district court’s decision to deny Guantanamo detainee Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Esmail was trained at a notorious al Qaeda camp, studied at an al Qaeda-run school for martyrs, and fought at Tora Bora.
A three-judge DC Circuit Court panel overturned a lower court’s ruling that would have granted freedom to Guantanamo detainee Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman.
An Italian court convicted a former Guantanamo detainee named Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri of terrorsm-related charges on Monday. At Gitmo, Nasri was identified as “one of the most dangerous Tunisian operatives,” as well as the emir of the Tunisian Combat Group, a known al Qaeda affiliate.
An ex-Gitmo detainee named Jabir Jubran al Fayfi has reportedly turned himself in to Saudi authorities. Al Fayfi was arrested in Yemen in September and his “surrender” was likely coordinated by the Saudi and Yemeni governments.
The US Treasury Department and the UN have designated Abdul Haq as a terrorist with ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban. The designation may complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to relocate seventeen Uighur detainees currently held at Gitmo. Some of the Uighur detainees have openly admitted their ties to Abdul Haq.
A DC district court has ruled that detainee Hedi Hammamy was properly held at Guantanamo. Hammamy is alleged to have fought at Tora Bora, and worked for a network of al Qaeda cells in Europe that plotted against the 1998 World Cup tournament in France.
The US Justice Department has agreed to release a Yemeni detainee from Guantanamo. The detainee, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, is a well-educated orthopedic surgeon who allegedly worked for al Qaeda and assisted the organization’s chief anthrax scientist.
A profile of Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi, who is accused of being one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards.