A "high value" Somali prisoner at Guantanamo denied having Al Qaeda ties but said he fought Ethiopian soldiers in his homeland and had the right to do so, according to a Pentagon transcript released on Friday. The US military says Guleed Hassan Ahmed, a Somali in his early 30s, was a member of al-Ittihad al-Islami, a militant Islamist group the US government classifies as a terrorist organization. The military has previously given the man's name as Gouled Hassan Dourad. It also says he was an Al Qaeda cell leader in Djibouti and was part of a group that killed Ethiopians in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in 2002. Ahmed declined to attend an administrative hearing at the Guantanamo US naval base in Cuba on April 28 to assess whether he had been properly classified as an "enemy combatant."
| Well then, let's give him to the Aethiops ... |
| Yes, let's. That seems fair. |
About 380 suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters are still being held at the US military prison on the base. But he submitted a written statement to the hearing officers, according to the censored transcript. In it, Ahmed acknowledged receiving paramilitary training in Afghanistan and said he fought alongside al-Ittihad al-Islami but never joined the group and had no links to Al Qaeda. "My training was solely for the purpose of fighting in Somalia, but not against Americans," he wrote. "I did fight jihad alongside al-Ittihad against Ethiopians, which is my right to do," Ahmed was quoted as saying. "If Ethiopian military members came to Mogadishu, I would defend against them. That is my right to do as a Somali but it is against my religious beliefs to fight against civilians." |