From 2002, nine detainees who were previously Taliban prisoners were being held by the United States as enemy combatants in its

Guantanamo Bay detainment camp 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 at its Navy base in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

, as part of its

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

. The

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...

in Afghanistan had jailed each of the 9 based on opposition or suspicion of spying. The United States suspected them of being allied with the Taliban or al-Qaeda and took them into custody, treating them as enemy combatants. On March 9, 2004, the first of these men had been repatriated and released without being charged with any terror related crime. Private lawyers and public interest groups are working on behalf of remaining detainees to have their cases fully reviewed.

Background

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan and severely suppressed the opposition, as well as providing refuge for militant Muslims, including Osama bin Laden. The Taiban jailed many of their suspects in

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population of about 614,118. It is the c ...

prison, including five of the nine men listed below. In some accounts, they became known as the Kandahar Five. After the

9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...

in 2001, the United States, with the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

and allied forces, including the

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 ...

, invaded Afghanistan in effort to overthrow the Taliban. The Northern Alliance liberated Kandahar prison in December 2001, freeing its 1,500 men. The press visited and met some of the men later taken into custody by the Americans and transported to Guantánamo. "Several of the men have testified that they were "sold" to the Americans by Northern Alliance troops." The Americans captured many men in Afghanistan; they suspected them of being allied with the Taliban or al-Qaeda and transported them to a detention camp set up at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station for interrogation, in effort to penetrate terrorist networks and prevent future attacks. Among these were at least nine men who had previously been jailed by the Taliban. Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of Reprieve, "a London-based human rights group representing 39 Guantanamo detainees", struggled to describe the situation, describing it as "

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typi ...

esque" or " Alice in Wonderland". Subsequently, stated, "It's frankly more than bizarre. It's horrifying." According to the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...

, in June 2007 Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...

spokesman, defended the Army's decision to continue to detain some of the men, although by then several had been released without charges:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:American Prisoners Who Were Previously Taliban Prisoners Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States