US War on Terror: Who Are the Remaining Prisoners in Guantanamo? (Worthington)

Andy Worthington writes in the first of an eight-part series profiling the 176 detainees still at Guantanamo Bay:

The 20 prisoners listed below were the first group of prisoners seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. They have been identified as the “Dirty Thirty,” because of allegations that they served as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, although these allegations have long been challenged by the prisoners and their attorneys, and by those who have studied the stories in detail, for three reasons: firstly, because the majority of the men had been in Afghanistan for such a short amount of time that it is inconceivable that they would have been trusted with such an important role; secondly, because one source of the allegations is Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was tortured at Guantánamo, and who later withdrew his false allegations; and thirdly, because two other sources of the allegations are Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj and Sanad Yislam Ali al-Kazimi, whose false confessions were recently exposed in a US court, in the habeas corpus petition of Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman.

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