US releases dead detainees, and keeps them alive

   Guantanamo Alive and Dead Detainee

 By Nasser Arrabyee, 20/12:2012

 The 14-year old Ezzuddin has never ever seen his father. But on Sunday  morning of December 16, 2012 he was pushed by  his uncles and other family members to go to the neighboring  mosque to have the first and last look at his father's remains.

 One day earlier, a special American military plane brought the remains in a box  to the Yemeni Air Base, Al Dailami, in the  capital Sanaa, that is more than three months after the 36-year old Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif ambiguously  died in his Guantanamo detention, where he  suffered more than 11 years.

 Abdul Latif had been seriously injured in a car accident here in Yemen and was in search of free medical treatment in Afghanistan when he was captured and sold to Americans after the terrorist attacks on Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

  "You told me in your last letter, you're coming to me, and you will never leave me again, father," Said Ezzuddin while looking to the box of his father's remains  ,and  crying loudly in the Shawlak mosque in the middle of the city of Taiz where hundreds of people came to pray for Abdul  Latfi, noon of Sunday.

 In the last letter earlier this year, Abdul Latif said  to  his only son and the 12-member extensive family that  the American ordered his release and he would come back soon.

  With the letter, he sent a picture of him smiling and holding the official order for his release. However, instead of receiving him alive, Ezzuddin and the  whole  family received the death news. Abdul Latif died in September 8, 2012.

 He had been cleared for transfer back to his homeland Yemen four times by both Bush and Obama administrations. The possibility that he might join Al Qaeda and go fight America anywhere was always behind recantation.

 After receiving his father's death news, Ezzuddin, currently in grade 9 in normal school in addition to Quran school, started to hate any news or cameras or journalists talking about his father.

 In the funeral I attended, tens of cars carrying the mourners drove down to cemetery of " Revolution's Martyrs"  Kalaba  area in the southern part of the city, where Abdul Latif's remains we're buried.  "He is a martyr, like any one of those martyred in our revolution," Said ,Abdul Latif's brother, Mohammed who was a leading protester against Saleh's regime in 2011.

   " My brother was detained alive and dead by the State of terrorism, America, so his martyrdom degree should be higher in the eye of Allah," Said Mohammed who was following up his  brother's case over the 11 years with American and Yemeni lawyers and journalists.

 The mother of Abdul Latif, in her 60s, did not come to see her son in the mosque or in the cemetery although she was insisting to bring the remains to Taiz, refusing strongly a suggestion from some family members to bury him in Sanaa.

  " After I saw the remains in the hospital in Sanaa,  I told my mother over phone that she will not bear to see him," Said Mohammed. " Now that we are here in Taiz she is completely broken down in the bed, she can not see anything." Unlike the mother, father, in his 70s, seemed in  high moral, speaking to mourners over the grave about America's crimes.

 "We are patient, and we are waiting for Allah's justice and punishments for America's crimes," said the father, Farhan Abdul Latif, who is living in a small house with his left 5 sons and their wives in Azzahra neighborhood. When  I asked him what's the family's demands now he said,"We demand now fair and just compensation."

  His son Mohammed had said he would never accept the remains without Yemeni autopsy report. But after a meeting with the minister of interior Abdul Qader Qahtan  and an autopsy doctor and a representative from the US embassy, he seemed to have changed his mind about this matter.

 The meeting was held in the ministers's house about 4 hours before the remains arrived. Minister of Interior is originally  from the same  distinct where Abdul Latif is Sharab.


  "The doctor told me, it is too late now to do autopsy, and that they do not have technology that helps them to check remains months after the death like this," Said Mohammed Abdul Latif after he got from Police Hospital in Sanaa where the autopsy doctor saw the remains.


   In a letter sent to his American lawyer David Remes on May 28,2012, Abdul Latif said, " I am being pushed toward death every moment." Some reports mentioned he had an overdoes of psychiatric medication And according to his lawyer Remes, he had attempted suicide several times.

  Abdul Latif is the second Yemeni who returned dead of about the 20 Yemenis who were released over a period of 7 years. The first Yemeni detainee was released in 2005, Waleed Al Qadasi.


 When I was allowed to see him with an American lawyer in the intelligence prison of Taiz, Al Qadasi told us, the Yemeni intelligence was skeptical about him, why he was released. "  They were doubting I was sent to spy for Americans.

 They were just asking me why the Americans released you in particular," He said.  About 80 Yemenis  are still languishing in the ill-reputed detention of Guantanamo, and this number is more than half of the whole number. The American President Barack Obama did not keep his promises to close the detention and send the detainees home.  

The majority of Saudi detainees were released although the second man in the Yemen-based Al Qaeda branch, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP) is Saudi national, Saeed Al Shihri. The US trusts the abilities of Saudi authorities to control all those who were released, about 200.


 But the Yemeni government failed in controlling even those few who were released.  One of the Yemeni releasees blued himself up in a suicide bombing against the American-trained counter-terrorism forces in 2009.

 According to an ex-jihadist in Afghanistan  who attended the funeral of Abdul Latif, more than 10 of those  released are now fighting with Al Qaeda in Abyan, Shabwah and Mareb.


 The American-supported government of Yemen is now in a war with Al Qaeda that exploited the unrest of 2011 to recruit and expand in the war and poverty stricken country.  So, the reason why US has not released the Yemenis who are not in trials, is very clear.


  They will go and fight with Al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda now is returning to the southern province of Abyan after they were driven out earlier this year by troops and tribesmen loyal to the government.

  The top leader of AQAP Nasser Al Wahaishy was seen last week with about 130 fighters in the mountainous area of Al Mahfad between Abyan and Shabwah.  Al Qaeda in Yemen is exploited  in the political conflicts, and Al Qaeda itself is exploiting the political conflict.


 The ex-jihadist and tribal leader Tarik Al Fadhli, originally from Abyan said this week that Al Qaeda had something to do with all senior officials of the State and political parties.

  " I was one of those who founded Al Qaeda in Yemen, and I would confirm that all senior officials of the State and of the political parties linked with Al Qaeda in a way or another," said the controversial tribal leader who is now living under house arrest in the southern coastal city of Aden.


 The tribal leaders of Abiedah and Ashraf of Mareb signed a document condemning the terrorist and sabotage acts on Tuesday December 18, 2012 after the battle  between Al Qaeda-linked  tribesmen and troops was intensified in the eastern province of Mareb.