Abu Zubaydah ( ; ; born March 12, 1971, as Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn) is a Palestinian captive born in Saudi Arabia currently held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He is held under the authority of Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF). The United States government has never officially charged him with any crime.
Believed to be a high-ranking Al-Qaeda member, Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and has been in United States custody ever since, including years in the secret prison network of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was transferred among prisons in various countries, including a year in Poland, as part of a United States extraordinary rendition program. In 2004, media coverage of Abu Zubaydah began referring to him as a "disappeared" prisoner, stating he had no access to the International Red Cross. During his time in CIA custody, Abu Zubaydah was extensively interrogated; he was waterboarded 83 times and subjected to numerous other torture techniques including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, confinement in small dark boxes, deprivation of solid food, stress positions, and physical assaults. Videotapes of Abu Zubaydah's interrogations are among those destroyed by the CIA in 2005.
In February 2005, the CIA was reported as uncomfortable keeping Abu Zubaydah in indefinite custody, and in September 2006, Abu Zubaydah and thirteen other "high-value detainees" were transferred from CIA custody to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Since his transfer, the CIA has denied access to Abu Zubaydah. In 2008, the Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice, complained that it was prevented from seeing him conducting a study of the US treatment of its detainees. He and other former CIA detainees are held in Camp 7, where conditions are the most isolating.
On July 24, 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Polish government to pay Abu Zubaydah damages. Abu Zubaydah stated through his U.S. lawyer that he would be donating the awarded funds to victims of torture.
Biography and early activities
According to his younger brother Hesham, they had eight siblings. Hesham remembers his older brother "as a happy-go-lucky guy, and something of a womanizer". Born in Saudi Arabia, Zubaydah is reported to have studied computer science in Mysore, India, prior to his travel to Afghanistan/Pakistan at the age of 20 in 1991. In 1991 he joined the mujahideen and fought against Afghan Communist Government forces during the Afghan Civil War, perhaps serving under Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi. In 1992, Zubaydah was injured in an Afghan mortar attack, which left shrapnel in his head, damaged his left eye and caused severe memory loss, as well as the loss of the ability to speak for over one year.
Zubaydah eventually became involved in the training camp known as the Khalden training camp, where he oversaw the flow of recruits and obtained passports and paperwork for men transferring out of Khalden. He may also have worked as an instructor there. Although originally described as an al-Qaeda training camp, this alleged connection, which has been used as justification for holding Zubaydah and others as enemy combatants, has come under scrutiny from multiple sources,Khalid Sulaymanjaydh Al Hubayshi Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal Transcript, pp. 65–73, Department of Defense Noor Uthamn Muhammed Unclassified Verbatim Combatant Status Review Tribunal , p. 15, Department of Defense9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States , July 22, 2006 and the camp may have shut its doors in 2001 in response to an ideological division with al-Qaeda.
By 1999, the United States government was attempting to surveil Zubaydah."Pak leadership under Sharif offered to try to capture Osama", The Press Trust of India Ltd. Through Asia Pulse, March 28, 2004 By March 2000, United States officials were reporting that Zubaydah was a "senior bin Laden official", the "former head of Egypt-based Islamic Jihad", a "trusted aide" to bin Laden with "growing power", who had "played a key role in the East Africa embassy attacks". Zubaydah was convicted in absentia in Jordan and sentenced to death"Six Muslim militants sentenced to death for plotting to attack tourists in Jordan" , The Independent, September 19, 2000 by a Jordanian court for his role in plots to bomb U.S. and Israeli targets there. A senior Middle East security official said Zubaydah had directed the Jordanian cell and was part of "bin Laden's inner circle"."Trainees in Terror", The Seattle Times, Sunday, March 5, 2000
In August 2001, the classified FBI report "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US" said that the foiled millennium bomber, Ahmed Ressam, had confessed that Zubaydah had encouraged him to blow up the Los Angeles airport and facilitated his mission. The report said that Zubaydah was also planning his own attack on the U.S. However, when Ressam was tried in December 2001, federal prosecutors did not try to connect him to Zubaydah or refer to any of this supposed evidence in its case. After the trial, Ressam recanted his confession, saying he had been coerced into giving it.
According to a psychological evaluation conducted upon his capture, Zubaydah allegedly served as Osama bin Laden's senior lieutenant and counter-intelligence officer (i.e. third or fourth highest-ranking member of al Qaeda), managed a network of training camps, was involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by al Qaeda (including the planning of 9/11), and was engaged in planning future terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. These statements were widely echoed by members of the George W. Bush administration and other U.S. officials.George W. Bush's Remarks at the Virginia Military Institute, April 17, 2002"Terrorism Notebook. More attacks have been prevented, officials say". The Seattle Times, January 11, 2003 Zubaydah's perceived "value" as a detainee would later be used by George W. Bush to justify the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and Zubaydah's detention in secret CIA prisons around the world. However, Zubaydah's connection to al Qaeda is now often said to have beenaccording to Rebecca Gordon in "The al Qaeda Leader Who Wasn't"a fictitious charge. Others have said instead that it is merely overstated,"Transcript of Representative John Conyers Jr. Hearing on C.I.A.'s Destruction of Tapes", Political/Congressional Transcript Wire, December 20, 2007 and in response to his habeas corpus petition, the U.S. Government stated in 2009 that it did not contend Zubaydah had any involvement with the 9/11 attacks, or that he had even been a member of al Qaeda, simply because they did not have to: "In simple terms, the issue in this habeas corpus action is Petitioner's conduct", rather than membership or inclination: "Petitioner's personal philosophy is not relevant except to the extent that it is reflected in his actions".
Capture On March 28, 2002, CIA and FBI agents, in conjunction with Pakistani intelligence, raided several safe houses in Pakistan searching for Zubaydah. Zubaydah was apprehended from one of the targeted safe houses in Faisalabad, Pakistan. The Pakistani intelligence service had paid a small amount for a tip on his whereabouts. The United States paid far more to Pakistan for its assistance; a CIA source later said: "We paid $10 million for Zubaydah."
During the raid, Zubaydah was shot in the thigh, the testicle, and the stomach with rounds from a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Not recognized at first, he was piled into a pickup truck along with other prisoners by the Pakistani forces until senior CIA officer John Kiriakou identified him. He was taken by the Pakistanis to a Pakistani hospital nearby and treated for his wounds. The attending doctor told the CIA lead officer of the group which apprehended Zubaydah, John Kiriakou, that he had never before seen a patient survive such severe wounds. The CIA flew in a doctor from Johns Hopkins University to ensure Zubaydah would survive during transit out of Pakistan.
His pocket litter supposedly contained two bank cards, which showed that he had access to Saudi and Kuwaiti bank accounts; most al-Qaeda members used the preferred, untraceable hawala banking.Risen, James. State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, 2006 According to James Risen: "It is not clear whether an investigation of the cards simply fell through the cracks, or whether they were ignored because no one wanted to know the answers about connections between al Qaeda and important figures in the Middle East—particularly in Saudi Arabia." One of Risen's sources chalks up the failure to investigate the cards to incompetence rather than foul play: "The cards were sent back to Washington and were never fully exploited. I think nobody ever looked at them because of incompetence."
When Americans investigated the cards, Risen wrote that they worked with a Muslim financier with a questionable past, and with connections to the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, and Saudi intelligence. ... Saudi intelligence officials had seized all of the records related to the card from the Saudi financial institution in question; the records then disappeared. There was no longer any way to trace the money that had gone into the account.
Zubaydah was handed to the CIA.Dan Froomkin, "Bush's Exhibit A for Torture", The Washington Post, December 18, 2007Dana Priest, "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons", The Washington Post, November 2, 2005 Reports later stated that he was transferred to secret CIA-operated prisons, known as black sites, in Pakistan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland, Northern Africa, and Diego Garcia."Lawmakers to examine claims Indian Ocean island used in secret prison network", International Herald Tribune, October 19, 2007Dick Marty, "Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: Second report", Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, June 7, 2007Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, "EXCLUSIVE: Sources Tell ABC News Top Al Qaeda Figures Held in Secret CIA Prisons", ABC News, December 5, 2005"CIA Shuffled Prisoners Out of Poland" , Global Pulse, December 5, 2005Jason Burke, "Secret World of U.S. Jails", The Observer, June 13, 2004"Enforced Disappearance, Illegal Interstate Transfer, and Other Human Rights Abuses Involving the UK Overseas Territories: Executive Summary" , Reprieve Historically, renditions of prisoners to countries which commit torture have been illegal. A memo written by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee of the Office of the Legal Counsel, DOJ, days before Zubaydah's capture, provided a legal opinion providing for CIA renditions of detainees to places such as Thailand.Jay Bybee, "Rendition Memo", Department of Justice, March 13, 2002 In March 2009, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee launched a year-long study on how the CIA operated the secret prisons, or black sites, around the world.James Rowley , Bloomberg Report, March 5, 2009
Interrogation and torture
Top U.S. officials approved torture techniques