Jamal Udeen Al-Harith
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Jamal Udeen Al-Harith is a British citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention as a suspected terrorist in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba for two and a half years.[1] Al-Harith's Guantanamo detainee ID number was 490. The Department of Defense reports he was born on November 20, 1966, in Manchester, United Kingdom.
Al-Harith paid a truck driver to take him from Pakistan to Iran. The truck was stopped when he passed near the Afghan border. Taliban guards, seeing his British passport, arrested him as a British spy.
His family tell of a happy phone call, while under the Red Cross in a compound after being released from jail where he was a prisoner under the Taliban. He told them that he would be allowed to fly home soon. The Red Cross had arranged with the British embassy to fly him out from the American Airbase to Kabul to meet the British representative but he wasn't allowed to go free. The Americans prevented him from flying out because they were suspicious. Al-Harith spent the next two and a half years in Cuba.
[edit] Al-Harith and other former Taliban prisoners
Al-Harith was one of nine former Taliban prisoners the Associated Press pointed out had gone from Taliban custody to American custody.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
- ^ Paul Haven. "From Taliban jail to Gitmo – hard-luck prisoners tell of unending ordeal", San Diego Union Tribune, June 30, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-01.
[edit] External links
- Five of nine Britons released from Guantanamo Bay, BBC, March 9, 2004
- The most hapless tourist in the world: It's no holiday when the Taliban deem you a spy and the US labels you a terrorist, The Age, March 13, 2004
- Statement of Jamal al-Harith at blink.org.uk, January 6, 2005
- Vikram Dodd, Tania Branigan. "Health fears for 'torture victims'", The Guardian, Wednesday January 12, 2005.
