GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — The US has launched the U.S. navy’s oldest prisoner of the warfare on terror, a 75-year-old businessman who was held for almost 20 years as a suspected sympathizer of Al Qaeda however was by no means charged with against the law.
The person, Saifullah Paracha, a former authorized resident of New York, was certainly one of Guantánamo’s most uncommon and higher recognized “endlessly prisoners.” Army prosecutors by no means sought to place him on trial, however evaluation panels thought of him too harmful to launch till final yr.
His switch, in a secret navy mission that the Pakistani authorities disclosed on Saturday, culminated months of negotiations to rearrange his return. The Pentagon declined to remark. Biden administration officers have declined to say whether or not safety restrictions have been imposed on Mr. Paracha, however U.S. nationwide safety officers have usually sought monitoring of former navy prisoners and restrictions on their journey for no less than two years.
Mr. Paracha arrived at Guantánamo within the early days of detention operations, when a whole bunch of younger males captured overseas stuffed cellblocks on the seafront compound.
Simply earlier than he left, the twenty first commander of jail operations, a Nationwide Guard basic from Michigan, had taken cost and the detainee inhabitants had dwindled to 3 dozen. Of them, 21 have been accepted for switch to the custody of one other nation with safety preparations that fulfill the secretary of protection; for instance, participation in a rehabilitation program.
At Guantánamo, Mr. Paracha stood out among the many predominantly youthful Muslim males, most of whom have been captured of their teenagers and 20s by Afghan or Pakistani militias and turned over to the US as presumptive foot troopers of Al Qaeda or the Taliban.
He was captured in July 2003 at age 56 in an F.B.I. sting operation in Thailand. Businessmen posing as Kmart representatives lured him from his dwelling in Karachi, Pakistan, to Bangkok to debate what turned out to be a bogus merchandising deal. As a substitute, intelligence brokers seized, hooded and shackled him and flew him to Afghanistan.
Mr. Paracha was held first at a U.S. navy jail in Bagram, Afghanistan, the place he had a coronary heart assault, his attorneys stated. Moderately than ship him to the key jail community run by the C.I.A., the place prisoners have been tortured, the Bush administration moved him to Guantánamo in his 14th month of U.S. detention. He turned an early instance of the problem of holding growing old and infirm prisoners on the distant U.S. Navy base, which flies in navy medical specialists from the US.
“Saifullah ought to by no means have been in Guantánamo,” stated Clive Stafford Smith, a human rights lawyer who has been visiting him on the jail since 2005. “As a result of he was the oldest individual there, I always feared he would have his fourth coronary heart assault and die there. So I’m so comfortable that he’s lastly going dwelling.”
He had lengthy suffered from diabetes, coronary artery illness and hypertension, however wouldn’t have coronary heart surgical procedure at Guantánamo, which sends residents to the US for cardiac therapy.
In his early years of custody, the jail airlifted a cell cardiac catheterization lab to the bottom for the process, however he stated via attorneys that he wished to have the operation in a hospital that specialised in coronary heart care in both the US or Pakistan.
In April 2019, {a photograph} of him studying inside a communal cell appeared with an article in The New York Instances a few U.S. navy effort to adapt detention amenities for wartime prisoners who have been anticipated to die at Guantánamo.
In his file, U.S. intelligence businesses stated he had helped Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults, “facilitate monetary transactions and propaganda” after the assaults, and stated he met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan earlier than the assaults as a part of a delegation of Pakistani dignitaries.
For his half, Mr. Paracha claimed in an unsuccessful federal court docket petition for his launch that he didn’t know Mr. Mohammed’s true id or his position in the Sept. 11 plot. He stated he held some cash for him and allowed Mr. Mohammed’s nephew to make use of an enhancing studio in Karachi out of a way of Muslim kinship, not ideology, and he denounced violence and denied affiliation with Al Qaeda.
Months earlier than he was captured, federal brokers took Mr. Paracha’s eldest son, Uzair, into custody in New York, the place he was residing. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail for offering materials help to terrorism.
However Uzair Paracha’s conviction was overturned in 2018. Then in 2020, prosecutors dropped the case in opposition to him. He was returned to Pakistan after agreeing to relinquish his standing as a everlasting resident of the US.
The elder Mr. Paracha, who’s fluent in English, had lived in Queens within the Seventies, obtained a inexperienced card in 1980, and operated companies in Pakistan and the New York metropolitan area, together with journey businesses, an actual property enterprise and a media manufacturing agency.
At Guantánamo, inmates and a few guards referred to as him “chacha,” a time period of endearment which means uncle in Urdu. When the jail management allowed, he tutored youthful prisoners in English and finance. At occasions he introduced cellblock complaints to the guards.
Quickly after his switch to Guantánamo in 2004, Mr. Paracha went earlier than a panel of American navy officers that accepted his standing as an “enemy combatant,” a type of warfare prisoner. He denied having ties to Al Qaeda, described himself as a businessman with a Jewish associate and challenged the notion that the US might declare the world a battlefield in opposition to the terrorist group.
“Is your govt order relevant across the earth?” he requested the U.S. navy officer in cost, in line with a Pentagon transcript.
“It’s a world warfare on terrorism,” the officer defined.
Mr. Paracha replied, “I do know, sir, however you aren’t the grasp of the earth, sir.”
His spouse, whom he met and married in the US, divorced him whereas he was in custody. He was anticipated to stay along with his youngest son, Mustafa, who stated in an interview final yr that the primary order of enterprise can be a household reunion, adopted by complete medical care.
Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.
