Captured in Afghanistan, Mohammed al-Qahtani was one of the first prisoners sent to the prison in early 2002 and remained there for two decades.
The Pentagon has decided to release from Guantanamo prison an inmate who has become insane from torture and treatment during his detention and to repatriate him to Saudi Arabia, where he will be treated. According to the American authorities, the man “no longer constitutes a danger to national security”, and can therefore be released.
The story of Mohammed al-Qahtani adds another piece to the horrors of the detention center on the island of Cuba, set up after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington to guard the terrorists captured in Afghanistan and Iraq. Al-Qahtani was suspected of being the 20th al-Qaeda-designated hijacker: he flew to Orlando, Florida on August 4, 2001, but was denied entry to the United States and sent back to Dubai. Later captured in Afghanistan, he was one of the first prisoners sent to Guantanamo in early 2002, and remained there for two decades.
During the first years of his detention he was repeatedly tortured and subjected to prolonged isolation, sexual humiliation, deprivation of identity and other abuses. The treatment he suffered has been widely documented thanks to the requests of international groups that fight for the defense of human rights and have long requested the closure of Guantanamo, promised by President Obama and never realized. Susan Crawford, a senior official of the Bush administration, admitted to the Washington Post in 2009 the torture of which Al-Qahtani was the victim. Already in 2008, due to the worsening of mental conditions and the abuses suffered in prison, the American administration had decided to dismiss the proceedings against him, but another 14 years had to pass before his release.
On February 4, the committee that is reviewing the positions of the 30 detainees remaining in Guantanamo one by one said that al-Qahtani was “fit for transfer” and recommended that the man be repatriated to Saudi Arabia where he will receive assistance. adequate health and will in any case be enrolled in a rehabilitation center for extremists.
In January, the United States released five more detainees. Many of those who remained in Guantanamo are still awaiting the trial, which is continually postponed due to problems linked to security and the difficulties faced by lawyers in having constant and fruitful contact with their clients, locked up in a prison in another country. Many of the released detainees who have suffered mistreatment and torture in secret CIA prisons around the world have sued and obtained considerable compensation: for example, the Lithuanian government paid 100,000 euros to Abu Zubaydah, who remained in Guantanamo for almost twenty years and tortured. in a center near Vilnius. The British government paid £ 20 million to 17 former Guantanamo detainees who were illegally kidnapped and tortured before being released in 2017. Only two prisoners are detained because they have been sentenced by a court, but all the appeals of humanitarian associations for democracies to defend themselves from terrorism while maintaining moral supremacy, and without adopting its methods, have so far fallen on deaf ears.
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