Hundreds of lawyers have flocked to serve the cause of detainees held at Gitmo. They often present themselves as merely concerned citizens fighting against a government (the Bush administration) that was seeking to destroy the U.S. Constitution by imprisoning terrorists and suspected terrorists indefinitely. For this, they have been applauded by the global left. But their clients are not always grateful. The Associated Press reports, for example, that a Yemeni detainee recently slit his wrists and then “hurled” blood at his own attorney during a meeting.
Latif’s lawyer portrays the incident, according to the AP, “as a suicide attempt by a psychologically troubled man who should be returned home immediately for treatment.” Perhaps it was. Then again, the incident is not all that surprising. As one memo produced by the U.S. government for Latif’s case in 2005 notes:
This, of course, does not sound too good. But Latif’s lawyer would like us to believe that this is merely the work of a man wrongly imprisoned and deprived of psychological treatment. There is another side to the story. There is evidence, according to U.S. intelligence, that Latif is a committed jihadist who served on Osama bin Laden’s security detail. Some of the evidence against Latif comes from captured computer files. In a February 2007 memo, U.S. intelligence noted:
Such files are regularly relied upon by the government. Al Qaeda recruits frequently turn in their paperwork, accept a new identity, and save their earnings in a trust fund managed by al Qaeda. Should they perish in the jihad, their savings can be transferred to family members. All of this, of course, requires paperwork. But there is a downside to maintaining a terrorist bureaucracy. When al Qaeda’s computer files are recovered, the contents of these files can provide a roadmap for how the terrorist organization’s and its recruits’ finances are managed.Thus, Adnan Latif’s name (and/or one of his aliases) was found on al Qaeda’s lists. This is a piece of hard data, but Latif disputes it, claiming that he is the victim of mistaken identity. Other detainees have made the same argument, saying that their names have either been mistranslated or al Qaeda aliases misapplied to them. During his Gitmo hearings, Latif also denied any connection to al Qaeda, implausibly arguing that he traveled from Yemen to Jordan and then to Pakistan and Afghanistan simply for medical treatment. Latif says that he made this trip with the help of a man he didn’t know and that he wasn’t even sure what organization employed the man. When asked about his al Qaeda ties, Latif said he was unaware of any town named al Qaeda: “I told you I lived in Orday [Yemen]. I am not from al Qaeda.” But U.S. intelligence does not buy his story. The man who assisted Latif’s travels, the government’s files note, is a suspected al Qaeda recruiter. And the intelligence officials who reviewed Latif’s case believe he traveled to Afghanistan to train at al Qaeda’s infamous al Farouq camp and then went to fight on the frontlines with the Taliban. Eventually, he reportedly became a member of Osama bin Laden’s security detail before being captured and sent to Gitmo. Adnan Latif is one of the approximately 100 Yemeni detainees held at Gitmo whose fate will be decided by the Obama administration. Where will Latif end up? Can he be rehabilitated from his jihadist ways in the Saudi program, or at home in Yemen? Don’t bet on it.
