RIYADH, 27 June 2006 — Embracing your son, nephew, or brother after an absence of five years is a feeling that perhaps cannot be described. It certainly wasn’t something easily articulated by Abdullah Al-Baddah, the uncle of repatriated Guantanamo detainees Abdul Aziz Al-Baddah and Ibrahim Al-Nasser.
“I cannot describe how it felt,” he said. “It was tears of joy. Just seeing them return to us after all this time of anxiety and doubt got everyone crying.”
Seventy-seven relatives of the 14 repatriated Saudi detainees from the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison gathered here last night to visit their loved ones who had arrived in the Kingdom Saturday morning.
The buzz of relief, joy and hope filled the air as the dozens of relatives made their way to their hotel rooms in the capital before visiting the repatriated detainees.
Abdullah, who spoke to Arab News on behalf of the detainees’ relatives, said they were also thankful to their attorney Katib Al-Shammari.
Abdullah said that what was most important to his family was the wellbeing of his nephews and that they were in good spirits.
Abdul Aziz left behind a wife and two young daughters — one of them just one-and-half years old — when he was detained.
“It really moved me when his daughter Reem, who is now six years old, told me that she was so excited to see her dad after all this time,” Abdullah said.
Abdullah said he learned that his nephews, both 21 at the time of their capture by US forces on Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, were detained at Guantanamo through a telephone call. “Abdul Aziz initially told us that he was going to Syria for a vacation. Then we got a call from someone who told us ‘your son has been captured on the Afghan border’,” he said.
He said Abdul Aziz and Ibrahim were influenced in their decision to go to Afghanistan by all the reports about killings of innocent people (through the collateral damage of the invasion by US-led forces) there after 9/11.
“We made several calls to government departments here,” said Abdullah. “And we learned that they were prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. We realized that it was now a matter between governments for them to be repatriated.” He went on to say that officials in the Interior Ministry were very cooperative and “always had their doors open” for them.
Abdul Aziz told his uncle and other relatives who visited him yesterday that he had sent them hundreds of letters from Guantanamo “almost on a daily basis”. Letters used to arrive via the Red Cross, the Interior Ministry and the Saudi Post, he said.
“We only got a few letters, sometimes one in several months. So we knew that they were not arriving from there. All of the letters were dated, but many of the sentences they wrote were censored and marked in black,” said the uncle.
Abdullah said that the two youths used to work with him in his candy company before they went on their journey in 2001.
“They were good lads and were hard workers. And I can assure you that their ideology is good,” he continued.
He had no doubt that his nephews were tortured either physically or emotionally during their five-year stay in Guantanamo Bay, but what was most important was that they finally returned home.
“We did see marks on them, but thank God none of them were on their faces,” he said.
Ibrahim told his mother and uncle that he planned to get married as soon as he was finished being interrogated by Saudi officials.
Abdullah was hopeful that another nephew of his who is still held captive in Guantanamo would be released soon.
