Guantanamo Bay detainee, waterboarded 83 times by the CIA, makes case for release

Service members at Guantanamo Bay.
(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

For the first time in 14 years, Abu Zubaydah was seen on Tuesday by members of the public who are not part of his legal team.

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Zubaydah, 45, was captured in Pakistan in 2002, and has been at Guantanamo Bay ever since. Born in Saudi Arabia to a family of Palestinian heritage, he was in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, serving as a facilitator for militants. When he was first taken into American custody, intelligence officers wrongly concluded he was one of the top leaders of al Qaeda. The FBI was able to get information from him about one of the Sept. 11 planners and other al Qaeda members, but because the CIA believed he was high up in the terrorist organization, they thought he was withholding information. Despite objections from the FBI, he was waterboarded 83 times (Zubaydah was the first detainee to undergo waterboarding). He was also sleep deprived, thrown against a wall, and confined to a small cramped box, The New York Times reports.

On Tuesday, Zubaydah appeared via satellite at a hearing before the Periodic Review Board, a group of representatives from six security agencies who decide if a prisoner is too dangerous to be released. He is one of a few dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees being held without charges but deemed a risk to the public. In a statement read for him by a representative, he said he should be freed because he has "no desire or intent to harm the United States or any other country." He said he wants to be back with his family and has "some seed money that could be used to start a business." The Defense Department asserts that Zubaydah "probably retains an extremist mindset." The board will announce in about a month if Zubaydah will stay imprisoned or be transferred to another country. His lawyer, Joseph Margulies, told the Times Zubaydah was never in al Qaeda, but is the "poster child for the torture program, and that's why they never want him to be heard from again."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.