Personal stories beginning to emerge from files on Guantanamo detainees

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The evidence against the Kazakh apple seller showed he had been captured by the Taliban and forced to work as a cook.

In fact, the man told his U.S. military tribunal, he was only a cook's helper, and had never heard of al-Qaida or the Taliban until he was kidnapped and conscripted by Afghanistan's former hard-line Islamic regime.

"I never had a weapon. I never carried a weapon with me and I've never been in any kind of armed fight," he said in one of hundreds of military hearings to determine whether detainees at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay are being properly held without charges as "enemy combatants."

These and other details emerging from about 5,000 pages of transcripts released Friday suggest the Bush administration has cast a wide net in its war on terror but often come up empty.

American troops have picked up any number of low-level suspects along with admitted al Qaida and Taliban members and the rare high-value target, a Pakistani millionaire who twice met Osama bin Laden.

Captured in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the apple seller and dozens more men are identified for the first time in Guantanamo Bay transcripts the Pentagon.

People from many walks of life were captured and brought to the prison at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, where most remain held without charges. They range from peasants to millionaires, from illiterate villagers to college graduates.

In a typical guerrilla war, conventional forces struggle to distinguish friend from foe. But the U.S. war against terrorism is unique. It is being fought across the globe, against enemies operating from the shadows of the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan to the alleyways of Islamabad to the neighborhoods of London; Madrid, Spain; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

In Afghanistan, men often carry a rifle. Unless they are caught red-handed firing on U.S. troops, it is hard to tell the terrorists from the farmers.

"They're all armed," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military policy think tank in Alexandria, Va. "If they weren't, they'd be in trouble. There are clan rivalries there. Without a weapon they'd feel naked."

The Bush administration scoffs at claims of innocence.

"They're bomb-makers," Vice President Dick Cheney said recently. "They're facilitators of terror. They're members of al-Qaida and the Taliban. If you let them out, they'll go back to trying to kill Americans."

Only a few detainees openly acknowledge taking up arms against the United States.

Other detainees were nabbed far from any battlefield.

Bisher al-Rawi, a Londoner with wealthy Iraqi and Jordanian parents, was arrested in Gambia. He was accused of harboring radical Jordanian cleric Abu Qatada while in London. Videotapes of Qatada's sermons were found in a Hamburg, Germany, apartment used by three of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The United States classified al-Rawi as an "enemy combatant," a status the Bush administration says deprives detainees of rights afforded by the Geneva Convention to prisoners of war. Al-Rawi said he was innocent and that he had helped MI5, Britain's domestic spying agency, keep tabs on the Muslim community in London.

"On more than one occasion, after MI5 questioned me, I would go out to the community to find the answers," he said. "On three or four separate occasions, the questions involved Abu Qatada."

The tribunal president told al-Rawi the British did not back up his account.

"The British government didn't say they didn't have a relationship with you, they just would not confirm or deny it," said the judge, whose name was blacked out in the transcript. "That means I only have your word what happened."

There is no indication from the transcripts whether Gul, Bukhary and al-Rawi or any of the other hundreds of detainees who went through "enemy combatant" hearings remain in custody at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. military will not comment on specific cases.

What the documents do suggest is that in hearing after hearing, the unclassified evidence seems frustratingly inconclusive. Witnesses are not reachable, testimony may be twisted and unanswerable questions -- such as whether a detainee would attack the United States if released -- are left hanging.

Some analysts say such confusion is emblematic of the type of war being waged.

"Irregular warfare and counterterrorism blur the boundaries between normality and abnormality, between civilians and combatants, between what is legal and illegal," said Prof. Ahmed S. Hashim, an expert in the Middle East and counterinsurgency at the Naval War College. "Shortcuts are taken to achieve results without due process of law."

If al-Qaida attacks the United States again, the Bush administration might be less concerned about distinguishing between friend and foe, Hashim predicted.

"There is a possibility that if there is another major attack, the net will be cast wider, not narrower," Hashim said, "and that people could be arrested for their ethnic background and not because there is any concrete evidence against them."