After 13 Years in Gitmo, Pentagon Says Detainee Is Case of ‘Mistaken Identity’

Mustafa Abd-al-Qawi Abd-al-Aziz al-Shamiri was captured in 2002 and believed then to be a major al Qaeda facilitator or courier, or maybe a trainer, according to the Department of Defense.

He was interrogated “vigorously” and when he did not admit to those activities and did not supply detailed, high level information on al Qaeda, was thrown away, without charge, into America’s offshore penal colony at Guantanamo Bay.

For 13 years.

Now, desiring after 13 years to reduce the prison population at Gitmo, the Department of Defense says al-Shamiri’s imprisonment was all a simply mistake of confused identity. In the Kafkaesque world America created post-9/11, al-Shamiri could not answer his torturers because he had no knowledge of what they were demanding from him. His silence was taken as insolence, and he was punished accordingly.

For 13 years.

Al-Shamiri is now age 37. He spent about one third of his entire life in Gitmo because of a mistake. And if somehow you are not human enough to be moved by that alone, perhaps you can care about the $2.7 million per prisoner per year it costs the U.S. to keep a person in Guantanamo.

For 13 years, the cost was $35 million (+ a life.)

“We now judge that these activities [first attributed to al-Shamiri] were carried out by other known extremists” with similar names or aliases, the Department of Defense stated as part of its plan to finally release al-Shamiri.

“Fragmentary reporting” did link the al-Shamiri to fighting in Bosnia in 1995. He also told interrogators that he fought in Afghanistan with the Taliban from 2000 to 2001. He was at worst one of tens of thousands of foot soldiers, never a mastermind or significant threat. He did not belong in the high-security confines of Gitmo. But he was left there.

For 13 years.

With more than a little irony, al-Shamiri will not be returned to his native Yemen. Following a U.S.-led change of government there, and years of American anti-terror actions in the country, civil war broke out. American aid to Saudi Arabia enabled a bombing campaign against civilian targets. Iranian proxy fighters moving into the power vacuum completed the transition of Yemen into a fully-failed state.

Al-Shamiri’s representative stated “He wants to make a life for himself. He is aware that Yemen is not an option and he is willing to go to any country that will accept him.”

There have been no plans announced to offer any form of restitution to al-Shamiri to help him restart his life.

After 13 years. Shame, shame on us.

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent. Reprinted from the his blog with permission.