Zia Ul Shah - McClatchy News Service Interview

McClatchy News Service Interview

On June 15, 2008 the McClatchy News Service published a series of articles based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. Zia Khalid Najib was one of the former captives who had an article profiling him.

The McClatchy article quoted Abdul Jabar Sabit, the Attorney General of Afghanistan, who visited Guantanamo and had interview Zia Khalid Najib. The Attorney General commented on how the USA seemed to base its release decisions on how compliant captives were, while in custody. He noted that the USA had released senior Taliban leaders who complied with the camp rules, while continuing to hold low-level foot-soldiers, or innocent victims of mistaken identity, who did not comply.

"This division did not have anything to do with the crimes attributed to them. Only their behavior in the prison was taken into account."

Zia Khalid Najib acknowledged that he had poor impulse control, and was routinely being punished by the guards provocations and Koran desecration:

"They would say they were taking me to isolation for three days, and then leave me there for three months. Then they would bring me back to a cell, and three or four days later take me back to isolation. . . . I would say, and this is a guess, I spent 15 days a month in isolation."

Zia Khalid Najib told his McClatchy interviewers that his first interrogators asked him about serving as one of Osama bin Laden's drivers -- an allegation he denied. He confirmed he had driven low level Taliban fighters, but he had never driven anyone from Al Qaeda. He said that interrogators stopped asking him about driving Bin Laden, but that many of his later interrogation sessions consisted largely of personality clashes:

"The interrogators spent entire sessions asking me why I was staring at them and yelling at me that I should look at the floor."

The McClatchy article noted that among the justifications for Zia Khalid Najib's continued detention was that he knew senior Taliban members, and his rebuttal. He attributed these allegations to incompetent translation.

"When they asked me if I know of them or did you hear about them I said yes . . . these people have big banners hanging all over Karachi and in Pakistan. Of course I heard of them."