The Darunta training camp ''(also transliterated as Derunta)'' was one of the most well-known of many military training camps that have been alleged to have been affiliated with al Qaeda.

Training with poisons

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

published a story in which they claimed to have acquired videotapes showing al Qaeda experiments poisoning dogs with

chemical weapon A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...

s, at Darunta.Disturbing scenes of death show capability with chemical gas
, ''

'', August 19, 2002

Location

The camp is reported to have been near

Jalalabad Jalalabad (; Dari/ ps, جلال‌آباد, ) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jala ...

. According to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', it was 15 miles from

, just north of the village of Darunta across the dam.Al-Qaeda's trail of terror
''

'', November 18, 2001 According to a paper by Hekmat Karzai, published by the Pentagon the camp was really a complex of four camps, eight miles from Jalalabad. Karzai wrote that the four camps were: The

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

provided intelligence, pinpointing Osama bin Laden's presence, that enabled

Northern Alliance The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( prs, جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان ''Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barāyi Nijāt ...

allies to bombard him in at the Darunta camp in 1999.Flawed Ally Was Hunt's Best Hope: Afghan Guerrilla, U.S. Shared Enemy
''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', February 23, 2004 The documents from some

Guantanamo captive The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

s, such as

Abbas Habid Rumi Al Naely There were initially 16 Iraqi detainees in Guantanamo. In 2005, nine Iraqi citizens were held in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Eight of them have been repatriated, four as late as 2009. Among them Abdul Hadi al I ...

, state that the

Khalden training camp The Khalden training camp (also transliterated ''Khaldan'') was one of the oldest and best-known military training camps in Afghanistan. It was located in the mountains of eastern Paktia Province, near to Tora Bora. While some reporters repeat ...

was also located in Darunta.Summary of Evidence memo (.pdf)
prepared for

's ''

Combatant Status Review Tribunal The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were estab ...

'' - October 25, 2004 - page 65

Administration

Some sources claim the director of the camp was

Midhat Mursi Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar ( ar, مدحت مرسي السيد عمر), also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri ( ar, أبو خباب المصري) (29 April 1953, Egypt – 28 July 2008, Pakistan) was a chemist and alleged top bomb maker for al-Qaeda an ...

.WANTED: Midhat Mursi al-Sayid 'Umar - Up to $5 Million Reward
. ''

Rewards for Justice The Rewards for Justice Program (RFJ) is the counterterrorism and counterintelligence platform administered by the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service agency. The Rewards For Justice program is seeking information leading to the ...

Dispute over whether Darunta was an al Qaeda camp

During his

Administrative Review Board The Administrative Review Board is a United States military body that conducts an annual review of the detainees held by the United States in Camp Delta in the United States Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The purpose of the Board is to re ...

Abdul Bin Mohammed Bin Abess Ourgy The United States Department of Defense acknowledges holding Tunisian detainees in Guantanamo. A total of 779 detainees have been held in extrajudicial detention in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba since the camps opened on January 1 ...

acknowledged attending the Darunta camp, but he disputed that it was affiliated with al-Qaeda. Summarized transcripts (.pdf) from

's ''

'' - pages 34-42

Factors for and against the continued detention (.pdf) Factor, a Latin word meaning "who/which acts", may refer to: Commerce * Factor (agent), a person who acts for, notably a mercantile and colonial agent * Factor (Scotland), a person or firm managing a Scottish estate * Factors of production, suc ...

'', May 2, 2005 - page 48 He asserted that the Derunta camp was a non-al Qaeda camp, that dated back to the

Soviet occupation of Afghanistan The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, that it was originally run by the

Hezbi Islami Hezb-e-Islami (also ''Hezb-e Islami'', ''Hezb-i-Islami'', ''Hezbi-Islami'', ''Hezbi Islami''), lit. Islamic Party, was an Islamist organization that was commonly known for fighting the Communist Government of Afghanistan and their close ally ...

, and that after his attendance there the Derunta camp was one of the many non-al Qaeda camps that the Taliban shut down at al Qaeda's request. Other Guantanamo captives have reported that the similarly well-known

was not an al-Qaeda camp, and was shut down in 2000, at Osama bin Laden's request.

Alleged attendees

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Darunta Training Camp History of Nangarhar Province Al-Qaeda facilities