Above photo: A suitably ghost-like photo of Ridah Al-Yazidi (ISN 038), the Tunisian prisoner at Guantánamo who has just been repatriated, after nearly 23 years at Guantánamo, and 15 years since he was approved for release. The only known photo of Al-Yazidi, it is a US military photocopy of a US military photo of him, taken sometime after his arrival at Guantánamo, which was included in his classified military file, released by WikiLeaks in April 2011.
Ridah Al-Yazidi, Never Charged, Held Since Day One, And Approved For Release 15 Years Ago.
In welcome news, the Pentagon has announced that it has repatriated from Guantánamo Ridah Al-Yazidi, 59, a Tunisian prisoner held without charge or trial since the very first day of the prison’s operations nearly 23 years ago, on January 11, 2002.
Although almost completely unknown to the outside world, because of the mainstream media’s persistent lack of interest in investigating the mundane lawlessness of so much of the prison’s operations, Al-Yazidi’s case is one of the most outstanding cases of casual injustice at Guantánamo.
Along with two other men who are still held, he was approved for release 15 years ago, through the deliberations of the high-profile Guantánamo Review Task Force, comprising officials drawn from various government departments and the intelligence agencies, who met once a week throughout 2009 to administratively decide the fate of the 240 prisoners that President Obama had inherited from George W. Bush.
156 of those men were recommended for release when the Task Force’s report was published on January 22, 2010, but, although Obama eventually released 153 of them during his eight years in office, al-Yazidi, and the two other men still held — Toffiq Al-Bihani, a Yemeni, and Muieen Abd Al-Sattar, an even more mysterious prisoner, who is a seemingly stateless Rohingya Muslim — were left behind.
Although little is known about Al-Yazidi, it seems evident, from intelligence assessments at Guantánamo, that he had left Tunisia for Italy in 1986, when he would have been 21 years old, where he undertook various menial jobs and was arrested twice on drug charges. In 1999, after being briefly imprisoned, he made his way to Afghanistan, where he evidently ended up as a low-level foot soldier for the Taliban in their inter-Muslim civil war with the Northern Alliance, like so many of the men held at Guantánamo.
The only words that he has ever uttered that have been reported to the outside world came after the Bush administration introduced cursory reviews of the men’s cases in 2004 — the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), fundamentally lawless review processes that relied on classified evidence that was not disclosed to the prisoners, and in which they were not allowed legal representation.
In his hearing, as I explained in an article about him and the other two long-term “forever prisoners” approved for release in February this year, “it was alleged that he ‘traveled to Afghanistan from Italy in 1999, that he attended the Khaldan training camp [an independent camp unaffiliated with Al-Qaeda], and that he fought on the Taliban front lines in 2001.’ In response, he ‘stated that he did not engage in any significant combat during the entire time he was on the front lines,’ but, like most of the men whose cases were reviewed, he was found to have been an ‘enemy combatant’ who could continue to be held indefinitely.”
As I also explained, “His classified military file, dating from June 2007 and released by WikiLeaks in 2011, recommended him for ongoing imprisonment, but as I discovered for an article in June 2012, a subsequent Bush-era review process, the Administrative Review Boards (ARBs), a successor to the CSRTs, recommended him for release on November 19, 2007. When Obama took office, however, all of the outstanding recommendations for release under George W. Bush, relating to at least 40 men, were discarded, to be replaced by the recommendations of the Guantánamo Review Task Force.”
Al-Yazidi’s long imprisonment ever since he was approved for release can be explained — but not justified — by difficulties within both the Obama and Biden administrations regarding negotiations with his home government, but also through his own refusal to deal with the authorities at Guantánamo, for which no mechanism to prevent prisoners disappearing into a legal or even an existential “black hole” has ever existed.
When the Supreme Court ruled, in June 2004, that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights, finally allowing attorneys to begin representing them, Brent Rushforth was assigned to represent him, but in 2015, when Carol Rosenberg, then at the Miami Herald, wrote an article about the men on the first flight into Guantánamo, and spoke to Rushforth, he told her that he “met Al-Yazidi only once in 2008,” and since that time he had “refused calls and invitations to other meetings.”
In December 2016, as I explained here, Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported that officials had told him that the Obama administration was “reluctant to repatriate” Al-Yazidi, and two other men, “for reasons having to do with their home countries,” but all efforts to find a third country for his resettlement were thwarted because of his refusal to engage with anyone.
Reporting on his eventual release, Carol Rosenberg, now at the New York Times, spoke to Ian Moss, who “spent a decade at the State Department arranging prisoner and detainee transfers,” and who confirmed that he “did not leave earlier because Tunisia was deemed too dangerous or uninterested in taking him,” and he “was unwilling to meet with other countries that might have resettled him.”
As Moss also explained, “He could have been gone a while ago but for Tunisian foot-dragging.”
What was not known until his release is that the Biden administration had been negotiating his repatriation for some time. The Pentagon’s press release reveals that the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, “notified Congress of his intent to support this repatriation” almost a year ago, on January 31, 2024, fulfilling an irritating requirement in US law, introduced by Republicans, requiring Congress to be notified 30 days before any Guantánamo prisoner is released.
The Pentagon also explained that, “in consultation with our partner in Tunisia, we completed the requirements for responsible transfer” prior to his release, although, as is always the case with releases from Guantánamo, the details of arrangements with home governments — or host governments in the cases of men who cannot, for various reasons, be repatriated, and who are resettled in third countries — are classified, and do not contain any evident mechanism for securing humane treatment from the receiving governments. Because so much of Al-Yazidi’s story is shrouded in mystery, it is not even known publicly whether he has surviving family members in Tunisia who will be able to help him rebuild his life after his long ordeal.
With Al-Yazidi’s release, 26 men are still held at Guantánamo, 14 of whom have been approved for release — 12 between October 2020 and September 2022, plus Al-Yazidi’s two fellow long-term “forever prisoners.” Of these two men, Toffiq Al-Bihani’s long imprisonment remains inexplicable, as he was meant to be put on a flight to Saudi Arabia with other prisoners approved for release in April 2016, but was held from boarding the plane at the last minute, for which no explanation has ever been provided.
For Muieen Abd Al-Sattar, his ghost-like status is, however, even more pronounced than that of Ridah Al-Yazidi, as, not only is his nationality uncertain, but he has never even been represented by an attorney.
With just 20 days to go until Donald Trump slouches into the White House once more, I cannot even begin to express how important it is for the Biden administration to have put in place arrangements for the release of these 14 men, most of whom need resettling in third countries, because they are largely Yemenis, and Republicans have, for many years, persistently included provisions in the annual defense spending bill, prohibiting the repatriation of prisoners to certain proscribed countries, including Yemen.
Will Muieen Abd Al-Sattar be freed, or will he remain, as Ridah Al-Yazidi was until yesterday, as a “ghost” whose presence demonstrates, all too compellingly, how, along with all its other crimes, Guantánamo is, and always has been capable of disappearing people entirely, like the dank corners of some appalling medieval dungeon?