U.S. Prisoners in Cuba Run the Gamut

June 13, 2002 -- While Americans puzzle over the story of Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born hoodlum who was accused this week of plotting to explode a "dirty bomb" on behalf of Osama bin Laden, the reality is, there are many more like him.

Americans already know about John Walker Lindh, the privileged student from a San Francisco suburb who was found among the huddled masses of angry jihadis in the dusty Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif after an uprising in which a CIA agent was killed.

Lindh is being held at a secret location, but still more apparently prodigal sons are to be found at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where U.S. forces are holding approximately 300 people accused of being members of bin Laden's al Qaeda organization and/or the fundamentalist Taliban.

The bulk of those at Camp X-Ray, like most militant Muslims around the world, are young men from disenfranchised backgrounds in the Middle East. However, at least a dozen were brought up in the West, with rights and privileges unknown to many of their cellmates.

U.S. authorities have limited access to the prisoners, but fragments of their identities have emerged through media reports over the course of their six-month captivity.

At least a handful are from Britain, France and Australia. Countries as distant as Sweden and Denmark are also believed to have contributed to the mix.

A Deadly Vow

By far, the best-known of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is David Hicks, a high school dropout from Australia who became a globe-trotting soldier-of-fortune.

Hicks, 26, was captured in early December 2001 after the Northern Alliance's victory in the Afghan city of Kunduz. He reportedly was trying to escape in a beard and tribal garb, but his blue-green eyes gave him away.

In January, he was flown from Afghanistan to Cuba, and on the flight over, media reports say he developed his reputation as a prisoner to beware of.

He managed to slip out of his cuffs, and had to be duct-taped to his seat for the remainder of his flight. Upon arriving in Cuba, he reportedly issued an ominous vow: "Before I leave here, I am going to kill an American."

Hicks was by no means raised a bloodthirsty Islamic militant. He was born in Adelaide, also known as the "City of Churches," which locals point out was settled by pious Lutherans instead of the convict laborers who established many of Australia's other cities.

However, Hicks has seen some hardship in his life. He was born to a working-class family and his parents divorced when he was 10. He left home and school at 14, spent time in a boys' home, and on farms as a ranch hand.

Father of Two, Rodeo Rider, Al Qaeda Member?

By the time he was 21, Hicks was in a common-law marriage and the father of two children. He was a jack-of-all-trades, working at various low-paying jobs that ranged from rodeo rider to butcher. His life might have been relegated to gutting chickens or skinning kangaroos on a production line if his relationship hadn't fallen apart.

In 1999, Hicks decided to take up soldiering overseas and joined the Kosovo Liberation Army. That trip only lasted about six weeks, but Hicks returned with an intense interest in Islam.

He visited the local mosques and asked to be called Mohammed Dawood. Months later, he left for Pakistan, where he reportedly fought against Indian troops in Kashmir. Hicks' captors believe he went from there to Afghanistan to train with al Qaeda.

Hicks has had no contact with the outside world since his capture, except for one letter delivered to his parents through the Red Cross. His father, Terry, has defended him. Terry Hicks says he has not seen proof his son joined al Qaeda, and has been pressing for his return to Australia.

Like Lindh's defenders, Terry Hicks said all he knows is that his son was fighting against the Northern Alliance.

The other Australian at Guantanamo is Mamdouh Habib, a father of four and Egyptian native who was a well-known supporter of radical Islamic causes.

However, his family has told reporters he is not involved with al Qaeda, and that he had gone to Pakistan last July in search of an Islamic school for his children.

A Wannabe Astronaut

Another unusual case is that of Briton Feroz Abbasi, who was born in Uganda but moved to an upscale suburb of London when he was 8.

Friends described him to British media as a well-behaved and conscientious student, interested in rollerblading and Michael Jackson. They expressed shock at his alleged involvement with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

When he was growing up, he told friends he wanted to become Britain's first black astronaut, the Miami Herald reported.

Abbasi had been studying computers before he dropped out and went on a tour of Europe to consider his future. His conversion to Islam reportedly began after he was mugged in Switzerland, and he turned to the mosques for solace.

In London, he began attending a mosque that has been linked to Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks, and shoe-bomb suspect Richard Reid. Sometime after spring 2000, he began living in the mosque, and from there it is believed he went on to Afghanistan.

Abbasi was captured after the fall of the city of Kunduz. His mother, a nurse, believes her son was brainwashed while attending the mosque.

From Boyhood Pals to Brother Jihadis

But Abbasi is far from the only Briton who might have seemed an unlikely inmate of Cuba's Camp X-Ray. Three Britons — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed — all hail from the same town of Tipton, near Birmingham, where they reportedly were known as slackers and layabouts.

Friends and family described Rasul as a shy 24-year-old who had dropped out of law school and was working part time at an electronics store.

They said he was very Westernized, drinking, smoking and chasing girls. They also say he had to be prodded to worship, and therefore, they think he was also "brainwashed."

Iqbal and Ahmed, both 20, were described similarly.

Iqbal's father told one newspaper his son preferred billiards and soccer to politics. Iqbal and Rasul knew each other when they were young, when they attended the Sacred Heart school, ironically, a Catholic school, reported London-based The Guardian.

All three men disappeared while traveling in Pakistan in the fall of 2001. The Guardian reported Rasul traveled to Pakistan for the wedding of one of his brothers, but The New York Times said he told his family he was going to take a computer course in Pakistan.

Iqbal also went to Pakistan in the fall, reportedly to carry out an arranged marriage. Conflicting reports say Ahmed was going to join his friend, go on vacation or visit relatives.

Educated Sorts as Well

Guards at Guantanamo say their prisoners are more than angry young men, however.

Army Lt. David Walters, 32, platoon leader of a military police unit that accompanies shackled prisoners from their cells to the U.S. interrogation center, told the Miami Herald some of the prisoners are well-educated.

At least one of the degree-holding prisoners is a Westerner, Walters said. He described another detainee as "a very educated Arab," and said a man claiming he had a double major from a U.S. university was either Saudi or Afghan.

Another military officer told the Herald that the prisoners include U.S. university or college alumni and that one of the prisoners had identified himself as a "Badger," meaning a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.

And then there's Essa Khan, 23, whose family told Pakistan's The News that he is a homeopathic doctor who was picked up by mistake while running a clinic in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

The family of Kuwaiti Fawzi al-Odeh, 24, also told the Herald that their son's capture was a mistake. His father said he went to Pakistan to take part in a Muslim humanitarian aid effort.

Indefinite Detentions

Nowadays, men like Hicks and Abassi, Rasul and Iqbal face conditions that are likely far worse than anything they would have ever experienced at home.

They are caged in 8-by-8-foot chain-link cells, lighted all night long by the glare of spotlights. During the day, they face the beating Caribbean sun.

There has been concern about the conditions from diverse critics, including human rights groups, the European Union, various clergy, intellectuals and lawyers. But by far the biggest protests come over the prisoners' legal status.

Amnesty International said in a statement that it was concerned the United States had "raised the prospect of indefinite detention without charge or trial, or continued detention after acquittal."

"The Bush administration cannot hold people indefinitely without charge," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

However, the Bush administration has shown little inclination to see things that way.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been moving to legalize such detentions — even within the United States — despite the United States' shameful experience with Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has evoked similar sentiments, saying he does not want the detainees to be able to "get in more airplanes and have them fly into the World Trade Center again."

And there is little hope that any of the prisoners at Guantanamo will be able to leave Cuba to be imprisoned in their own countries.

While France, Denmark and Sweden have asked for the return of their nationals, and there have been grass-roots movements in Britain and Australia to have their nationals returned, the United States has not responded to any of the calls, and in London and Canberra, authorities have largely deferred to Washington.

Six months have now passed since the establishment of the prison in Cuba, and none of the prisoners has been brought before the courts or a military tribunal.