KUWAIT, 5 November 2005 — Five Kuwaitis held at Guantanamo Bay returned home yesterday after more than three years’ captivity and will face a local court, an Interior Ministry official said.
They were among a dozen Kuwaitis held at the US military base in Cuba since the 2001 US-led war that ousted Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“The five arrived very late at night, after midnight,” the ministry official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
The men flew home aboard a Kuwaiti plane carrying medical and security teams sent by the government. They were identified as Saad Al-Azmi, Mohammad Al-Daihani, Adel Al-Zamel, Abdullah Al-Ajmi and Abdulaziz Al-Shimmari.
The official said some family members were allowed to greet the men at Kuwait airport before they were whisked away by state security. Others met the detainees at a military hospital where they will undergo medical tests. “I saw all five, they look like they came out of a jungle; their hair and nails are long and dirty, they looked miserable,” said Waleed Al-Zamel, whose brother Adel, 42, is among the five.
“We did not recognize him ... He used to be a fun loving person full of joy, now I saw someone who looks like a wild man. He keeps looking left and right, and he spaces out. He looks like he doesn’t know if he is happy or sad,” he told Reuters.
Hussein Al-Ajmi said his brother Abdullah had told him about bad treatment at Guantanamo. “All forms of psychological war was waged on them. They were put in small cells and their religion was insulted,” he said.
The Pentagon has said the men’s transfer came after a US military review that examines each case on its own. It said a total of 252 detainees have left Guantanamo since it opened in January 2002 and that approximately 500 remained.
Khaled Al-Odah, Chairman of the Families of Kuwaiti Detainees at Guantanamo committee, said Kuwait will hold talks with US officials to free the remaining six Kuwaitis, who include Odah’s son Fawzi, 27, a religious studies teacher. He was arrested in Pakistan near the Afghan border in 2001.
