Guantanamo prisoner: I'm just a cook

An Afghan prisoner made an impassioned plea for his release, telling a US military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay that he worked as an assistant cook for the Taliban regime but was never an enemy of America.

The 24-year-old Afghan prisoner rocked back and forth and fidgeted with his shackled hands as he asked to call four witnesses at his afternoon hearing at the US naval base in Cuba yesterday.

He said the witnesses could verify claims that he was forced to join the Taliban as a cook and had tried to escape but was recaptured.

“I swear to God I was never an enemy of America and I never will be,” said the prisoner, whose name cannot be published.

The tribunal president, whose name journalists are also prohibited from releasing, refused his request. “Whether or not the detainee was forced to join the Taliban, or in what role they served in the Taliban, is not relevant,” he said without elaborating.

None of the cases that have gone before the tribunals has been decided yet.

The man has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than two years. Some of the men have been held for nearly three years since the mission began in January 2002. All of the approximately 585 of them are accused of links to the Taliban or the al-Qaida terror network.

During the session, the detainee said he was captured by the Taliban while buying tea and sugar in his village and was later brought to Kandahar and Kabul. No dates were given.

He said his duties included bringing food to the Taliban fighters. He said he was never given a weapon and did not receive weapons training.

“If you keep me here for 10 years I’ll still be the same person,” he said. “If you let me go there will be no threat from me. You’re wasting food and time on me because I’m not worth it.”

The military said he was associated with the Taliban and was conscripted to work as a cook’s assistant. He was captured by the US-backed Northern Alliance in Kabul.

He was the 16th detainee whose case was being reviewed by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which are being conducted to determine whether the detainees should set free or continue being held as enemy combatants, a classification that gives them fewer legal protections than prisoners of war receive under the Geneva Convention.

The tribunals are separate from the military commissions set up to try charged detainees.

Preliminary hearings for four men charged with crimes ranging from conspiracy to aiding the enemy are due to begin during the week of August 23.

The Associated Press, which was told on Tuesday that there would be no morning tribunal session, was informed yesterday afternoon there had been a session in which a Saudi detainee refused to participate.

Navy spokesman Lieutenant Chris Servello said it was an oversight that the media were not informed of the morning session.

The 25-year-old Saudi did not say why he did not want to participate, Servello said. He is the seventh prisoner who has refused to participate in the tribunals.

The Saudi has been held in Guantanamo for more than two years and allegedly travelled to Afghanistan in March 2001 to fight with the Taliban.

The US military said the Taliban trained him to fight and he allegedly attended an al-Qaida-affiliated training camp in Afghanistan and fought against the Northern Alliance.

There are six tribunals being held today.