Саудовский заключенный Гуантанамо: 20 лет в плену и признания о пытках.

Saudi Arabian Guantanamo detainee

Mohammed Mani Ahmad al Qahtani (محمد ماني احمد القحطاني; sometimes transliterated as al Kahtani; born November 19, 1975) is a Saudi citizen who was detained as an al Qaeda operative for 20 years in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba. Qahtani allegedly tried to enter the United States to take part in the September 11 attacks as the 20th hijacker and was due to be onboard United Airlines Flight 93 along with the four other hijackers. He was refused entry due to suspicions that he was trying to illegally immigrate. He was later captured in Afghanistan in the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001. After military commissions were authorized by Congress, in February 2008, Qahtani was charged on numerous counts. In May, the charges were dropped without prejudice. New charges were filed against him in November 2008 and dropped in January 2009, as evidence had been obtained through torture and was inadmissible in court. This was the first time an official of the Bush administration had admitted any torture of detainees at Guantanamo. In a Washington Post interview in January 2009, Susan Crawford of the Department of Defense said "we tortured Qahtani", saying that the U. S. government had so abused Qahtani through isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity and exposure to cold that he was in a "life threatening condition". On March 6, 2022, Qahtani was airlifted from Guantanamo Bay by the U. S. military and flown back to Saudi Arabia to a mental health treatment facility after 20 years in American custody. His release was announced by the U. S. Department of Defense the next day.

Mohammed al Qahtani was born on 19 November 1975 in Kharj, Saudi Arabia. He is a Saudi national from a large Sunni family. His father served as a police officer for 28 years. His mother remained at home to raise their twelve children. He has seven brothers and four sisters.

On March 3, 2006, Time magazine published the secret log of 49 days of the 20 hour per day interrogation of Qahtani at Guantanamo Bay detention camp from late November 2002 to early January 2003. This had been leaked to the press. The log described Qahtani being forcibly administered intravenous fluids, drugs, and enemas, in order to keep his body functioning well enough for the interrogations to continue. He had told his lawyer that he was forced to falsely confess and name names, in order to get his "enhanced interrogation" to end. Qahtani and the other five were charged on February 11, 2008, with war crimes and murder, and faced the death penalty if convicted.

According to his lawyer, in early April 2008, al Qahtani tried to kill himself after learning that he faced charges that could carry the death penalty. He cut himself at least three times, causing "profuse bleeding" that needed hospital treatment.

On May 11, 2008, the government charges against al Qahtani were dropped. Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that it was possible for the charges to be re instated, at a later date, because they had been dropped "without prejudice".

On November 18, 2008, Chief Prosecutor Lawrence Morris announced that he was filing new charges against Qahtani. When announcing the new charges, Morris stated that the new charges were based on "independent and reliable evidence". He stated: "His conduct is significant enough that he falls into the category of people who ought to be held accountable by being brought to trial."

Susan Crawford, the senior official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions, had the final authority over whether charges were laid. On January 14, 2009, after a change in administrations, Crawford ruled that the prosecution would not proceed against Qahtani because he had been subjected to interrogation techniques in Guantanamo that rose to the level of torture. Bryan Whitman, a DOD spokesman, said that the techniques were legal at the time they were applied, according to Department of Justice legal opinions.

Mohammed al Qahtani's habeas corpus case was reinstated in July 2008 after the Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush, stating that Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus and the right to petition federal courts.

When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, he made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo. He promised the use of torture would cease at the camp. He promised to institute a new review system, convening a task force to review material on detainees that was made up of officials from six agencies, whereas the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. Reporting back a year later, the Joint Review Task Force recommended release and repatriation of 53 detainees. It classified other individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, although there was insufficient evidence to charge them with crimes. On April 9, 2013, that document was made public after a Freedom of Information Act request. Some 71 detainees were determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board assessment, similar to a parole board, to determine if they could be released. Mohammed al Qahtani was one of the 71 individuals deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release. Obama promised that those deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release would start to receive reviews from a Periodic Review Board. Qahtani was recommended for transfer to Saudi Arabia on June 9, 2021.

On 2 September 2014, a judicial panel for the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York stated that pictures and videos of Qahtani, taken while in detention, should remain classified. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented Mohammed al Qahtani for this federal lawsuit, had sought to disclose these audiovisual materials under the Freedom of Information Act. The judges decided that the release of these pictures and videos "could logically and plausibly harm national security because these images are uniquely susceptible to use by anti American extremists as propaganda to incite violence against United States interests domestically and abroad". On March 9, 2015, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in his case.

In a review of the drama film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergen, a national security analyst, compared the character of Ammar and the issue of torture to the treatment of Qahtani in detention. In a controversial passage, Ammar is interrogated under torture in the film and gives up the name of a bin Laden courier. Bergen notes that although Qahtani gave a name under alleged torture, it took another eight years, with US analysts using every form of intelligence gathering from high technology to 'people on the ground,' for the government to locate and kill Osama bin Laden. Other sources later suggested the character of Ammar was based on Ammar al Baluchi. In the television documentary series The Path to 9/11, al Qahtani is portrayed by Elie Gemael, who portrayed 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Zero Hour.