(Tlaxcala)

The narrative reads like a formulaic melodrama: two Iranians, one a naturalized US citizen, purportedly approached someone they thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel – according to the indictment [.pdf], it was a “sophisticated” drug cartel, not the plebeian sort – and proposed paying him $1.5 million to murder Adel al Jubeir, the Kingdom’s ambassador in Washington – oh, and by the way, the Iranians supposedly said, “Are you guys any good with explosives?”

“For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’”

The Americans are already backing away from the assertion that the Iranian government is directly responsible for the actions of these two individuals, averring that top Iranian officials didn’t “necessarily” know what was going on. As the details of this case become known, Holder’s story is going to start unraveling like a substandard sweater – and you can read all about that unraveling right here, at Antiwar.com…

Anwar al-Awlaki (AP)

We used to be afraid that President George W. Bush, pushed by his nefarious warmongering VP and a Department of Justice that justified medieval tortures, was going to expand executive branch powers to such levels as to threaten the very balance and foundation of our democracy.

That’s why so many of us voted for Barack Obama — because we wanted somebody who was anti-war, who would close Guantanamo; somebody who knew and understood the Constitution not as some sacred sentimental Old Testament but as a covenant of fairness, with inviolable safeguards, between the governed and the government.

One of those safeguards has always been due process — the idea that individuals are protected by a process of law from arbitrary action by the state. In other words, that the government must follow its own laws. In the U.S. Constitution, it’s so important that it’s stated twice, in the 5th and 14th amendments.

Today, however, the media tells us that the president of the United States in the person of Barack Obama has now extended the power of his office to order the assassination of fellow citizens without a shred of due process.

Anwar al-Awlaki, whose death has been announced by media all over the world, was born in New Mexico and lived for years in the U.S. Sabir Khan, a second U.S. citizen, was also killed in the attack aimed at al-Awlaki.

But for all the talk about al-Awlaki being Al Qaeda’s English-language propaganda mastermind, he was never actually indicted on anything. Yes, he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who tried charged to blow up a Detroit-bound plane.

But there were no charges. Zero. Nada.

Instead of closing Guantanamo — the black hole of justice that has allowed the U.S. government to skirt its own Constitution by arguing that, because it’s in a foreign country, the base is not subject to U.S. law — President Obama has actually broadened the mandate that allowed it in the first place.

According to the Washington Post, “he has embraced the notion that the most effective way to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates is to work closely with foreign partners, including those that have feeble democracies, shoddy human rights records and weak accountability over the vast sums of money Washington is giving them to win their continued participation in these efforts.”

Since taking office, Obama has actually defended — in court! — Bush-era warrantless wiretapping and the torture and rendition of CIA prisoners.

Now this precedent — the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen without a single charge against him. The targeted killing of a U.S. citizen simply because the president of the United States has determined that the man is dangerous.

Now imagine that power in the hands of a future President Perry, or President Bachman…

In an address remarkable for its brevity, President Barack Obama essentially announced success, lectured Afghanistan on its responsibilities to secure its territory, and noted upcoming troop withdrawals.

Anyone who has lived through past U.S. wars abroad has heard similar statements before, but I doubt they’ve heard what Obama said before: that the U.S. is “not an empire.”

That’s surely news to dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which have had their leaders chosen, armed or replaced on American whims.

This is not the end, but it is the beginning of the end.

And it ends not that differently from that of the former Soviet occupation, albeit slower, for both empires were drained of wealth and will.

In the wake of the earth shaking economic fall of late 2008, the U.S. was left with limited resources. Also, recent polls have shown that support has been dwindling for the continuing war effort.

With an election coming, among dramatically high unemployment levels, military draw downs might re energize disaffected Democratic voters.

The President suggested Al Qaeda’s crippling and the Taliban’s humbling the latter being brought to the bargaining table.

But the Taliban is far from humbled. For just a month ago they hit one of Afghanistan’s largest cities, immobilized it for 30 hours, and attacked important military and governmental targets with ease.

Using suicide bombers and small arms, several dozen men hit the governor’s palace, police headquarters, the transportation police headquarters and several military buildings.

One observer of the strike in Kandahar said shell casings hit the streets like “hail after a storm.”

Kandahar is more than a big city: it’s the biggest in southern Afghanistan and a major NATO base.

One Kandaharian asked, “How are they able to occupy nearby buildings and stage themselves so they can shoot on the governor’s office and N.D.S. department? (NDS is the Afghan intelligence agency – its CIA) Answering  his own question, Kandahar’s Mohammed Umar Sathi suggested, “Either the security forces are incompetent, or they have no coordination among each other.”*

The Taliban are itching for the hour of American withdrawal, at which time will come a reckoning.

Empires, like individuals, can tire.

It was not for naught that Afghanistan has been called, “the graveyard of empires.”

div>By Omar Barghouti

That’s because despite political and U.S. press claims to the contrary, the killing has done nothing to weaken al Qaeda. In fact, according to one counter-terrorism insider, al Qaeda is stronger today than it was 10 years ago, before the strikes of 9/11.

Leah Farrell, a former Senior Counter terrorism Intelligence Analyst for the Australian federal police, reported in the latest Foreign Affairs just this fact.

She writes:

…[S]ince fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas in late 2001, al Qaeda has founded a regional branch in the Arabian Peninsula and acquired franchises in Iraq and the Maghreb.

Today, it has more members, greater geographic reach, and a level of sophistication and influence it lacked ten years ago.*

As for Osama, he hasn’t had operational or command and control power for years now. Thus, his loss will have minimal impact on the organizations’s actions or plans.

It’s important to keep in mind that we are discussing a war between one of the most powerful and resourceful states in history, and a group. Seriously, who’s at a disadvantage?

U.S. Special Forces could’ve knocked off Osama the week after Sept. 11th. Why didn’t they?

Because if they did there would’ve been no pretext to invade Iraq. The public, its great thirst slaked by vengeance, would never have supported it — and the neo cons in the White House wanted in –desperately.

So Osama, like Mubarak, Like Ben-Ali, and like Quaddafy, have outlived their usefulness to the empire.

Remember then Gen. Colin Powell’s quip (during the 1st Iraq war)? “We’re running out of boogey-men!”

The media and political establishment like to raise up demons to unsettle American comfort.

Osama fulfilled that function for ten years.

They don’t need him anymore.

[col. writ. 5/2/11] (c) ’11 Mumia Abu-Jamal

A few hours after accomplishing that mission in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, home to the most prestigious military academy of that country as well as important combat units, the White House offered the world’s public opinion a carefully drafted version about the death of Osama Bin Laden, the chief of Al Qaeda.

Of course, the world and the international media focused their attention on the issue, thus pushing all other public news into the background.

The US TV networks broadcast the President’s carefully drafted speech and showed images of the public’s reaction.

It was obvious that the world realized how sensitive the matter was. Pakistan is a country of 171 841 000 inhabitants –where the US and NATO have been carrying out a devastating war for ten years now- that has nuclear weapons and is a traditional ally of the United States.

There is no doubt that this Muslim country can not agree with the bloody war that the United States and its allies are waging against Afghanistan, another Muslim country with which it shares the troublesome and mountainous border traced by the British colonial empire. Common tribes live on both sides of the demarcation line.

The American press itself understood that the President was concealing almost the entire information.

The western news agencies –ANSA, AFP, AP, REUTERS and EFE- the press and important websites have published interesting reports about the incident.

The New York Times asserts that facts differed greatly from the official version announced on Tuesday by the White House and top intelligence officials, according to which Bin Laden’s death –who they finally recognized was unarmed, although they said he ‘resisted’- had occurred in the middle of an intense gun battle.

But, according to the New York daily, “the raid, though chaotic and bloody, was extremely one-sided, with a force of more than 20 Navy SEAL members quickly dispatching the handful of men protecting Bin Laden.”

The New York Times states that “the only shots fired by those in the compound came at the beginning of the operation, exactly when Bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, opened fire from behind the door of the guesthouse adjacent to the house where Bin Laden was hiding.”

“After the SEAL members shot and killed Mr. Kuwaiti and a woman in the guesthouse, the Americans were never fired upon again”, the newspaper states based on reports from said sources, whose identity was not revealed….

On Tuesday, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, in an account of events, had asserted that in the early hours of Monday morning, the US commando “were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation.”

Leon E. Panetta, the director of the C.I.A., said, “there were some firefights that were going on” as these US elite military were clearing the upper floors of the residential compound where Bin Laden was hiding.

However, the newspaper asserts that, although Bin Laden had not raised any weapon when he was gunned down, the commandos that found him in one of the rooms “saw Osama bin Laden with an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in arm’s reach.”

Today, May 6, news continue to pour in.

From Washington, one of the agencies reports that a sole gunman had shot against the US forces. It continues to report that, on Sunday evening, “several helicopters ferry 79 commandos towards Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, north of Islamabad, flying low to avoid detection by radar, as Pakistan has not been told of the raid in advance.

“Two helicopters deliver more than 20 US Navy SEALs to the residence, which has four-to-six meter walls covered with barbed wire. One of the choppers, a MH-60 Blackhawk apparently modified to evade radar, is out of commission due to “mechanical failure,” according to initial reports from US officials.

“One group of commandos moves toward a smaller guest house next to the compound’s main building. Bin Laden’s trusted courier opens fire and is shot and killed, along with his wife.

The courier is the only man at the compound who fires on the Americans, contrary to earlier accounts from the White House that described a firefight throughout the nearly 40-minute operation.

“…Another US special forces team enters the main three-story house.”

“… They encounter the courier’s brother…who was shot and killed”, according to a US official who offered no further details. According to NBC news, the man “has one hand behind his back” when the team entered the room, “causing the SEALs to suspect he may have a gun, which turns out not to be the case.

“The commandos move up the stairs and in one of the rooms meet up with Bin Laden’s adult son, Khalid, who is also killed…”

“On the top floor, they find Bin Laden and his wife in the bedroom. She reportedly tries to move between her husband and the commandos, and is shot in the leg. Bin Laden, who gives no signal of surrender, is shot in the head, and some media say he is also struck in the chest. Earlier versions of the raid said Bin Laden “resisted” and that he had used his wife as a human shield, but the White House later acknowledges those details are incorrect.

“President Barack Obama, following events from the White House, is told the SEALs have tentatively identified Bin Laden. A Time magazine report, based on an interview with CIA Director Leon Panetta, suggests Bin Laden was killed less than 25 minutes into the raid.

-“In Bin Laden’s room, the US team finds an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9 mm Russian pistol. Other weapons are discovered in the compound, but no further details are given.

“The special forces find cash and telephone numbers sown into Bin Laden’s clothing…”

“The Navy SEALs hauled away everything that could offer a lead to further information: note pads, the five computers, 10 hard drives and more than 100 storage devices (CDs, DVDs, USB).

“…The U.S. team destroys the downed helicopter after moving the women and children in the compound to a safe area.

“…Thirty eight minutes after the start of the raid, U.S. helicopters fly away, carrying away the corpse of Bin Laden.”

The AP published information of political and also human interest:

“One of three wives living with Osama Bin Laden told Pakistani interrogators she had been staying in the Al-Qaeda chief’s hideout for five years, and could be a key source of information about how he avoided capture for so long, a Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.”

“Bin Laden’s wife, identified as Yemeni-born Amal Ahmed Abdullfattah, said she never left the upper floors of the house the entire time she was there.

“She and Bin Laden’s other two wives are being interrogated in Pakistan after they were taken into custody following Monday’s American raid on Bin Laden’s compound in the town of Abbottabad. Pakistani authorities are also holding eight or nine children who were found there after the U.S. commandos left.

“Given shifting and incomplete accounts from U.S. officials about what happened during the raid, testimony from Bin Laden’s wives may be significant in unveiling details about the operation.

“Their accounts could also help show how Bin Laden spent his time and managed to stay hidden, living in a large house close to a military academy in a garrison town, a two-and-a-half hours’ drive from the capital, Islamabad.

“The Pakistani official said CIA officers had not been given access to the women in custody.”

“The proximity of Bin Laden’s hideout to the military garrison and the Pakistani capital has also raised suspicions in Washington that Bin Laden may have been protected by Pakistani security forces while on the run.”

The EFE news agency inquired what Pakistan citizens thought about that.

According to that agency, 66 per cent of Pakistanis do not believe that the US Special Forces killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda; they think they killed another person, according to a joint poll ran by the British demoscopic institute, YouGov, and Polis, from Cambridge University.

The poll was said to have been carried out among Internet users, who usually have a higher educational level, in three big cities:  Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore. The poll excluded rural demographic groups, which makes results to be all the more surprising, according to researchers.

Reportedly, 75 per cent of those polled said they also disapproved the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by the United States during the operation to capture and kill Bin Laden.

It was also reported that less than three fourths of those polled do not believe Bin Laden approved the 9/11 attacks against the United States, which justified the US invasion in Afghanistan and the war against Islamic terrorism.

According to the poll, 74 per cent think that Washington’s government does not have any respect for Islam and considers itself at war with the Islamic world; 70 per cent disapproves the Pakistani policy of accepting US economic aid.

Eighty six per cent are said to oppose also to the fact that the Pakistani government may in the future –and criticized the possibility that they may have done in the past- authorize attacks using drones against military groups.

Sixty one per cent of the Pakistanis who were interrogated said they sympathized with the Taliban or believed they could represent respectable viewpoints, against only 21 per cent who are radically opposed to them.

Reuters equally published some interesting reports:

“One of Osama bin Laden’s wives told Pakistani interrogators that the Al Qaeda leader and his family had been living for five years in the compound where he was killed by U.S. forces this week, a security official said on Friday.

“The official, who identified the woman as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, the youngest of Bin Laden’s three wives, told Reuters she was wounded in the raid.

“The security official said Abdulfattah told investigators: ‘We have been living there for the past five years’.”

“Pakistani security forces took between 15 and 16 people into custody from the compound after U.S. forces removed Bin Laden’s body, said the security official. Those detained included Bin Laden’s three wives and several children.”

According to a report published by ANSA, a US drone killed today no less than 15 persons in Waziristan, north of Pakistan.  Others were seriously injured. But, who would care about those daily killings in that country?

However, I ask myself one question: Why is there so much coincidence between the assassination that was carried out at Abbottabad and the attempt to simultaneously assassinate Gaddafi?

One of Gaddafi’s youngest sons, who was not involved with political issues, Sarif al Arab, was accompanied by his little son and two little cousins at the house where he lived; Gaddafi and his wife had visited him shortly before the attacks launched by NATO bombers. The house was destroyed; Sarif al Arab and the three kids were killed. Gaddafi and his wife had left shortly before the attack. That was an unprecedented event. But the world has hardly known about that.

Was it a mere chance that such an event coincided with the attack against Osama Bin Laden’s refuge, which was perfectly known by the US government, which kept a close watch on it?

News released today by Vatican City reported as follows:

“May 6 (ANSA) – Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli, said today to the Vatican’s agency FIDES: ‘I certainly do not want to interfere with the political activity of anyone, but I have the duty to declare that the bombings on Libya are immoral’.

“I am surprised that statements were made on the fact that I should deal only with spiritual matters and that the bombings have been authorized by the UN. The UN, NATO or the European Union doesn’t have the moral authority to decide to bomb Libya, he said.”

“Let mi stress that bombing is not dictated my moral or social conscience of the West or humanity in general. Bombing is always an immoral act.”

Another news published by ANSA on May 6 reports that the governments of China and Russia expressed their deep concern about the war in Libya and said they will work together to call for a cease fire.

According to the Chinese Foreign Minister Jechi Yang, they strongly believed that the most important goal was to achieve an immediate cease fire.

Truly worrying events are happening.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 6, 2011

8:17 p.m.

Translation: Machetera / Tlaxcala

One more sign among many illustrating the profound moral crisis of “Western and Christian civilization” that the USA claims to represent is offered by the news of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Aside from the rejection his image and manner of struggle provokes among us, the nature of the operation carried out by U.S. Navy Seals is an act of insurmountable barbarism perpetrated under the direct orders of someone who on a daily basis dishonors the Nobel Peace Prize granted him by the Norwegian parliament in 2009.

According to Alfred Nobel’s wishes in his last will and testament, this distinction ought to be granted to the person who “…shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” The lunatic who announced the death of the al-Qaeda leader to the USAmerican public, saying that “justice has been done” is the perfect antithesis of Nobel’s stipulation. A commando operation is the last thing related to due process, and throwing the remains of the victim into the sea in order to hide the evidence of what one has done is what mafiosos or genocidal tyrants do. The least the Norwegian parliament could do is demand the return of the prize.

There are many questions that remain in the shadows after the horrifying operation staged on the outskirts of Islamabad, and the U.S. government’s tendency to deliberately misinform the public makes the whole operation even more suspect. A White House subject to this unhealthy compulsion to lie (remember the “weapons of mass destruction” existing in Iraq, or the infamous Warren Commission Report that ruled that there had been no conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy but that it was the work of “lone wolf” Lee Harvey Oswald) forces us to handle each one of its statements gingerly.

Was it bin Laden or not? Why not think that the victim might have been anyone else? Where are the photos, the proof that the deceased was actually the hunted man? If a DNA test was done, how was it done, where are the results and who are the witnesses? Why wasn’t it presented for public consideration, as for example, was done with the remains of Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara? If as is claimed, Osama was hiding in a mansion turned virtual fortress, how is it possible that in a battle that lasted forty minutes, the U.S. commandos returned to their base without receiving so much as a scratch? Did the defenders of the world’s most wanted fugitive, who were claimed to possess an arsenal of deadly weapons of the latest generation, have such poor marksmanship? Who was with him? According to the White House, the commandos killed bin Laden, his son, and two other men guarding him along with a woman who they said was finally used as a human shield by one of the terrorists. It also said that two more persons had been wounded in the battle. Where are they, and what is going to be done with them? Will they be taken to trial, will their statements be taken to shed light on what happened, will there be a press conference where they talk about what occurred? It seems that this “feat” will go down in history as a mafia operation similar to the Valentine’s Day massacre ordered by Al Capone to liquidate his rival gang lords.

A living Osama was dangerous. He knew (knows?) too much, and it’s reasonable to suppose that the last thing the U.S. government wanted was to bring him to trial and allow him to speak. In such a case, a scandal of enormous proportions would have been released with the revelation of CIA connections, weapons and money supplied by the White House, illegal operations performed by Washington, the dark family connections with the U.S. oil lobby and, most especially, with the Bush family, among other trivialities. In summary, this was a witness that had to be stifled one way or another, like Muammar Gaddafi. The problem is that a dead Osama has already been turned into a martyr for the cause by Islamic jihadists, and a desire for vengeance will surely propel many dormant al Qaeda cells to perpetrate new atrocities in order to avenge the death of their leader.

One also can’t help noticing how opportune bin Laden’s death has been. With the brush fire in the Arab world destabilizing an area of crucial importance to the strategy of imperial domination, the news of bin Laden’s murder has put al-Qaeda right back on center stage. If there’s one inarguable truth at this point it is that these revolts do not correspond to any kind of religious motivation. The causes, their subjects, and their forms of struggle are eminently secular and none of them – from Tunisia to Egypt, including Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Jordan – are driven by the Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda.

The problem is capitalism and the devastating effects of neoliberal policies and the despotic regimes that neoliberalism has placed in these countries, and not the heresies of Western “infidels.” But U.S. imperialism and its followers in Europe have gone out of their way since the very beginning to make it seem as though these revolts are the product of some kind of evil Islamic radicalism and al-Qaeda, something that simply isn’t true.

Santiago Alba Rico rightly observed that at the height of the secular protests against the IMF and World Bank adjustment policies, a previously unknown fundamentalist group killed Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian activist from the International Solidarity Movement, in an abandoned house in the Gaza strip. Just a few weeks later, a suicidal terrorist set off a bomb in the Jamaa Fna plaza, one of the most well-known tourist destinations not only in Morocco but in all of Africa, and killed at least fourteen people. “Now,” continues Alba Rico, “bin Laden himself reappears, not alive and menacing, but in all the glory of a long postponed, studied, carefully staged and somewhat unlikely martyrdom.  ‘Justice has been done,’ said Obama, but justice calls for courts, judges, summary proceedings, an independent sentence.” None of that has happened, nor will it. But Islamic fundamentalism, the missing protagonist in the huge demonstrations in the Arab world is now on the first page of all the world’s newspapers, with its Islamic martyr leader killed in cold blood by the Western leader’s soldiers. The White House, which knew since mid-February of this year that bin Laden was sheltered in this fortress on the outskirts of Islamabad, waited for the opportune moment to launch its attack, with a view toward favorably positioning Barack Obama in the imminent electoral campaign for presidential succession.

There’s one more detail that is not anecdotal in the least and which makes the US adventure even more immoral: a few hours after being shot, the corpse of the presumed bin Laden was tossed into the sea. The deceitful statement from the White House said that his remains were entombed with respect for Islamic rites and traditions, but this is not true.  Islam’s funeral rites establish that the corpse should be washed, dressed in a shroud, taken to a religious ceremony that includes speeches and funeral honors in order to then proceed to the burial place. Furthermore it specifies that the corpse should be buried directly in the earth, resting on its right side and with its face turned toward Mecca.

How quickly must the battle have taken place, the corpse have been recovered and identified, its DNA collected, and its transfer effected to a naval aircraft carrier situated a little more than 600 kilometers from the suburbs of Islamabad where the confrontation took place, in order for the body to be put overboard, all in time to respect Islamic funeral customs? In reality, what happened was that someone, bin Laden presumably, was shot and “disappeared,” following the preferred sinister practice of the genocidal dictatorship that devastated Argentina between 1976 and 1983. An immoral act that not only offends Muslim beliefs but also thousands of years of Western cultural tradition, even those preceding Christianity. As Sophocles masterfully testified in Antigone, depriving the deceased of a tomb sparks the most heated passions. Such as those which are today igniting the cells of Islamic fundamentalism, eager to teach a lesson to the infidels who insulted the body and memory of their leader. Barack Obama ended up saying that after the death of Osama bin Laden, the world is a safer place to live. He is thoroughly wrong. Most likely his action simply awakened a sleeping monster. Time will tell whether or not this is true, but in the meantime there are plenty of reasons to worry.

Osama Bin Laden

The Pakistani government on Monday confirmed the death of Osama Bin Laden, leader of the Al Qaeda network, in an operation by U.S. soldiers less than 100 kilometers from the capital.

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the operation in Abbottabad, about 60 kilometers from Islamabad, was in line with the express U.S. policy of the elimination of Bin Laden by U.S. forces wherever he was found.

After describing the death of one of the most-wanted men in the world as a serious setback for terrorist groups everywhere, the Foreign Ministry statement said that U.S. President Barack Obama had telephoned his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari to inform him of Bin Laden´s death.

Obama issued a surprise message to the U.S. nation shortly before midnight on Sunday saying that a U.S. commando had killed Bin Laden in a residence in Abbottabad, and that he had phoned Zardari shortly after confirming the kill.

In Pakistan, the insurgent organization Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan threatened on Monday to carry out attacks in that Islamic country and in the United States to avenge Bin Laden´s death.

“If Bin Laden attained martyrdom, then we will avenge his death and we will attack the governments of Pakistan and the United States and their security forces,” said a spokesman for the rebels, Ehsanullah Ehsan, in a telephone call to several news media in Pakistan.

The Al Qaeda network is said to have close ties with the Pakistani Taliban movement.

Shortly after the kill was made public, Zardari met with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the army high command, but no details of the meeting were released.

(Published The New York Times)

A judge ruled in January 2009 that Mohammed el-Gharani should be released

The secret document described Prisoner 269, Mohammed el-Gharani, as the very incarnation of a terrorist threat: “an al Qaeda suicide operative” with links to a London cell and ties to senior plotters of international havoc.

But there was more to the story, as there so often is at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba. Eight months after that newly disclosed assessment of Mr. Gharani was written by military intelligence officials, a federal judge examined the secret evidence. Saying that it was “plagued with internal inconsistencies” and largely based on the word of two other Guantánamo detainees whose reliability was in question, he ruled in January 2009 that Mr. Gharani should be released. The Obama administration sent him to Chad about five months later.

The secret assessment of Mr. Gharani, like many of the detainee dossiers made available to The New York Times and other news organizations, reflected few doubts about the peril he might have posed. He was rated “high risk,” and military officials recommended that he not be freed. But now, a comparison of the assessment’s conclusions with other information provides a case study in the ambiguities that surround many of the men who have passed through the prison at Guantánamo Bay.

The murkiness of the secret intelligence — and the fact that interrogators gathered much of their information from the Guantánamo equivalent of jailhouse informers — has been highlighted in news reports and has drawn criticism from human rights groups in recent days. But some commentators who say the government faced difficulties sorting intelligence in a time of war have noted that such reports were often uncertain, based on bits of information, educated guesses and accounts of witnesses with their own agendas.

“Why is anybody shocked here?” asked James Jay Carafano, a national security expert at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The nature of intelligence is it is ambiguous sometimes. It is sometimes based on sources you wouldn’t take to Sunday school.”

Mr. Gharani’s was not the only case to crumble when the Guantánamo intelligence was tested in court. Judges have been unpersuaded by the government’s evidence in several habeas corpus cases, including another federal judge who in 2009 threw out “90 percent” of the case against a young detainee from Afghanistan, Mohammed Jawad, because it was based on a confession he gave that she ruled was “the function of torture.” Mr. Jawad was released soon after.

Mr. Gharani, who was one of Guantánamo’s youngest prisoners, has said he was subjected to abusive treatment at the prison, including solitary confinement and sleep deprivation.

His May 2008 prisoner assessment unambiguously states the most elementary of facts: born in Medina, Saudi Arabia, in 1981.

The document, though, contains few clues that even such statements may be uncertain. In an interview, Mr. Gharani’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, called the quality of the information in the dossier “drivel.” He said Mr. Gharani was six years younger than the military believed. That means he would have been 11, not 17, when he was said to have been linked to a London terrorist cell.

“After seven years of having him in custody,” Mr. Stafford Smith said, “they didn’t even know how old he was.”

The dossier noted that at Guantánamo, Mr. Gharani had confessed to being a member of Al Qaeda and then retracted his admission. “His original admission is assessed to be truthful,” the file said with little explanation.

The strongest statements in the assessment, which was a pattern in many of the files, were attributed to other detainees. In Mr. Gharani’s case, two of those were a Yemeni and a Saudi detainee who provided incriminating information that was quoted in many of the dossiers.

For Mr. Gharani’s file, the two serial informers provided telling details. One, Yasim Muhammed Basardah, said he recalled traveling with Mr. Gharani and other members of Al Qaeda. The other, Abdul Hakim Bukhary, said he had heard that Mr. Gharani was a member of the London terrorist cell and claimed that he “would sing about what he was going to do to the Americans” if he were released.

The assertions from the two men, both since released from Guantánamo, did not note information that might have put their damaging claims in context.

Mr. Basardah, according to other documents reviewed by federal judges in court cases, was an unreliable informer with serious psychiatric problems. The references to Mr. Bukhary did not provide an important caveat: his own dossier said he had acknowledged deliberately misleading interrogators and “has no recollection of a lot of things.”

While Mr. Gharani’s dossier leaves doubts about some of the evidence against him, it also leaves some important questions unanswered. He claimed that he happened to be praying in a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, when he was arrested amid the tumult after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The dossier dismissed that as a familiar terrorist “cover story.” It noted that he was arrested by Pakistani forces in the company of a group of Qaeda fighters escaping the battle of Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in December 2001.

Like many of the files, his paints a picture of suspicion: a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His name supposedly was on a terrorist’s computer; he was said to be a Qaeda courier with ties to leaders, including Osama bin Laden; he reportedly received militant training; and he was described as “hostile” to prison guards.

Even after his release, the ambiguity about Mr. Gharani remains. The Obama administration sent him to Chad, where he is a citizen, and another set of secret government documents obtained by WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, and provided to The Times, suggests that the American government is quietly watching the Chadian government watch Mr. Gharani with suspicion.

Secret diplomatic cables show that the American Embassy had been told by law enforcement officials in Chad that months after he arrived there, Mr. Gharani “obtained a fraudulent birth certificate” and “used it to obtain a Chadian national identity card under a false name.” Mr. Gharani, the embassy cable went on, had used the card to apply for a Chadian passport under the false name. It said he also produced supporting documents indicating that, under his new identity, he attended law school in London.

“Our contacts tell us that the passport application was denied, apparently because the Chadian side became aware” of who he was, the cable said.

Moreover, Mr. Gharani recently told the British legal charity that represented him, Reprieve, that a Chadian official had bluntly told him he would never be issued a passport because the Ministry of the Interior viewed him as “a terrorist.”

But there is once again another side to the story. Mr. Gharani is desperate to get out of Chad — not for any nefarious reason, his lawyers insist, but because his family lives in Saudi Arabia, where he grew up. He is struggling to earn an income and is suffering from an undiagnosed illness and wants to seek medical treatment outside of Chad.

“He’s having a really terrible time,” said Katherine O’Shea, a spokeswoman for Reprieve, the British legal nonprofit founded by Mr. Stafford Smith. “He doesn’t know anyone in Chad.”

Mr. Gharani’s lawyers also said that they had never heard about any effort on their client’s part to obtain a false passport and did not believe that the account was true. They said Mr. Gharani had limited phone service in Chad and could not be reached for comment.