Biography and His Early Years in Afghanistan
According to his younger brother Hesham they had eight siblings. According to Jason Leopold, Lead Investigative Reporter of Truthout, Hesham remembers his older brother "as a happy-go-lucky guy, and something of a womanizer."
Born in Saudi Arabia, Abu Zubaydah moved to the West Bank as a teenager where he joined in Palestinian demonstrations against the Israelis.
Abu Zubaydah is reported to have studied Computer Science in Pune, India prior to his travel to Afghanistan/Pakistan in 1991.
Abu Zubaydah moved to Afghanistan in 1991 to fight alongside the mujahideen in the Afghan civil war. In 1992 Abu Zubaydah was injured from a mortar shell blast which left shrapnel in his head and caused severe memory loss, as well as the loss of his ability to speak for over one year. Abu Zubaydah eventually became involved in the jihad training camp known as the Khalden Camp where he oversaw the flow of recruits into and out of the camp. He obtained passports and paperwork for men transferring to other training camps or home.
The Khalden Camp has been described by the U.S. Government as an al-Qaeda training facility—an assertion that has been utilized as evidence of Abu Zubaydah's, and over 50 other Guatanamo detainees' alleged connection to al-Qaeda. This allegation has been contested, however, by multiple detainees, the 9/11 Commission Report, and Brynjar Lia, head of the international terrorism and global jihadism at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment. Abu Zubaydah testified in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that the Khalden Camp was at such odds with al-Qaeda and Bin Laden that it was closed by the Taliban in 2001, at al-Qaeda's request. This account was corroborated by two other detainees, Noor Uthman Muhammed, who was alleged by the U.S. Government to have been the emir, or leader, of the Khalden Camp, and a close friend of Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sulayman Jaydh Al Hubayshi. In addition, Noor Uthman Muhamed's charge sheet references the closing of the Khalden camp at the request of terrorist leaders. Brynjar Lia states in his book that there was an ideological conflict between the leaders of the Khalden Camp on one side, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the other, and that this led to the closing of the Khalden Camp. Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sulayman Jaydh Al Hubayshi, and Noor Uthman Muhammed confirmed this divide in their CSRT testimony. Of the 57 detainees the U.S. Government claims are associated with the Khalden Camp, 27 have been released, including Abu Zubaydah's good friend Khalid Sulayman Jaydh Al Hubayshi.
On September 12, 2009, Colin Freeze, writing in the Globe and Mail, reported on recent interviews with Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, a Lebanese citizen, US resident, and green card holder, who has been held without charge in the USA since 2003. Elzahabi told the Globe and Mail that Abu Zubaydah had served under him when he was a squad commander during the war against the Soviets. Elzahabi said that after the Soviet ouster Elzahabi worked as an instructor at Khalden.
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