GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – The United States has released the longest-serving military prisoner in the war on terror, a 75-year-old businessman who has been detained for nearly Two decades as alleged al Qaeda sympathizerbut he has never been charged with any crime.
Saifullah Paracha, a former legal resident of New York City, was one of Guantanamo’s most unusual and famous “forever prisoners”.
Military prosecutors never tried to bring him to trial, but the review boards took him into consideration Too dangerous to release it until last year.
His transfer, on a secret military mission announced on Saturday by the Pakistani government, capped months of negotiations to organize his return.
The Pentagon declined to comment.
It is not known whether Biden administration officials have imposed security restrictions on Paracha, but a lawyer quickly posted a photo of the former prisoner sitting on a McDonald’s in Karachi, Pakistan.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said Saturday in a statement that it had “completed an extensive interactivity process to facilitate the repatriation of Paracha ”and that he was“ happy that a Pakistani citizen detained abroad has finally reunited with his family ”.
Paracha arrived in Guantánamo in the early days of the detention operations, when hundreds of young people captured abroad filled the cells of the beachfront complex.
Shortly before he left, the 21st commander of prison operations, a general in the Michigan National Guard, had taken over and the inmate population had dwindled to three dozen.
Of these, 21 were approved for transfer to the custody of another country with security provisions to the satisfaction of the Secretary of Defense;
For example, participation in a rehabilitation program.
In Guantanamo, Paracha stood out among predominantly younger Muslim men, most of whom were captured in their teens and twenties by Afghan or Pakistani militias and handed over to the United States as alleged soldiers Infantrymen of Al Qaeda or Taliban.
He was caught in July 2003 at the age of 56 in an FBI undercover operation in Thailand.
Businessmen posing as Kmart representatives lured him from his Karachi, Pakistan home to Bangkok to discuss what turned out to be a bogus marketing deal.
Instead, secret service agents captured him, hooded and handcuffed him and took him to Afghanistan.
Paracha was first detained in a US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, where he suffered an a heart attack, their lawyers said.
Instead of sending him into the network of CIA-run secret prisons where prisoners were tortured, the Bush administration moved him to Guantánamo for his 14th month of detention in the United States.
It became a prime example of the challenge of holding elderly and sick prisoners at the remote US Navy base, which carries US military medical specialists.
“Saifullah should never have been in Guantanamo,” said Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer who has been visiting him in prison since 2005.
“Since I was the oldest person there, I constantly feared that I would have my fourth heart attack and die there. So I’m so happy it’s finally there go home”.
He had long suffered from diabetes, coronary artery disease and high blood pressure, but would not undergo heart surgery in Guantanamo, which he sends US residents for heart care.
History
In his early years of detention, the prison flew a mobile cardiac catheterization lab to the base for the procedure, but said through his lawyers that he wanted the operation to take place in a specialized hospital in cardiology in the United States or Pakistan.
In April 2019, a photograph emerged of him reading an article in the New York Times inside a communal cell about a US military effort to modernize detention facilities for prisoners of war who are expected to die in Guantanamo.
In its file, US intelligence agencies claimed to have helped Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, accused the mind of the 9/11 attacks of “facilitating financial transactions and propaganda” after the attacks, and said he had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan before the attacks as part of a delegation of Pakistani dignitaries.
For his part, Paracha claimed in an unsuccessful petition before federal court for his release that he did not know Mohammed’s true identity or his role in the 9/11 plot.
He said he had money for himself and allowed Mohammed’s grandson to use an editing studio in Karachi out of a sense of Muslim kinship, not ideology, and denounced the violence and denied affiliation with Al Qaeda.
Months before his capture, federal agents arrested Paracha’s eldest son, Uzair, in New York, where he lived.
He was tried and sentenced to 30 years in prison for providing material support to terrorism.
But Uzair Parach’s pressure was overruled in 2018.
Then, in 2020, prosecutors dismissed the case against him.
It was returned to Pakistan after accepting leave your status as a permanent resident of the United States.
Elder Paracha, who is fluent in English, lived in Queens in the 1970s, obtained a green card in 1980, and worked in Pakistan and the New York metropolitan region, including travel agencies, a real estate company and a multimedia production company.
In Guantánamo, inmates and some guards called him “chacha”, a term of endearment that means uncle in Urdu.
When permitted by the prison management, he tutored younger inmates in English and finance.
Sometimes he brought complaints from the cell block to the guards.
Shortly after his move to Guantanamo in 2004, Paracha appeared before a jury of US military officials who endorsed his status as an “enemy combatant,” a form of prisoner of war.
denied Having ties to al Qaeda, he described himself as a businessman with a Jewish partner and questioned the idea that the United States could declare the world a battleground against the terrorist group.
“Is your executive order applicable worldwide?” he asked the incumbent US military officer, according to a Pentagon transcript.
“It is a global war on terrorism,” the officer explained.
Paraca replied:
“I know, sir, but you are not the master of the earth, sir.”
His wife, whom he met and married in the United States, divorced him while he was in custody.
She was to live with her youngest son, Mustafa, who said in an interview last year that the first agenda would be family reunification, followed by full medical care.
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
Salman Masood contributed reports from Islamabad, Pakistan.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
