Omar Deghayes

Deghayes had three nephews fighting for Al Qaeda's al-Nusra Front in the Syrian Civil War, Amer Deghayes (20), Abdullah (18) and Jaffar (then 16). Abdullah was killed in 2014, with Amer wounded in the same battle. Jaffar was killed six months later at the age of just 17.

a. The detainee stated he could not be in the extremist training video because he was never in Chechnya, Russia. b. The detainee claimed to have no knowledge of Usama Bin Ladin or al Qaida. c. The detainee said he never worked for the Taliban while living in Kabul. d. The detainee claimed to have no knowledge of the September 11th attacks or any planned attacks against the United States.

Deghayes had a lengthy interview with Patrick Barkham, a reporter from The Guardian newspaper, published on January 21, 2010. In it he reviewed his entire experience of arrest and detention.

On April 29, 2009, the Spanish investigating magistrate, Baltazar Garzón, initiated a formal investigation into whether confessions from Deghayes and three other former Guantanamo captives were the result of the use of abusive interrogation techniques. By this time, the Obama administration had released legal opinion memos prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, under the Bush administration, which have become known as the Torture Memos. Dating from August 2002 through May 2005, these authorized specific enhanced interrogation techniques to be used by the CIA and DOD, which have since legally held to be torture.

On March 6, 2008, the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón dropped the extradition request on humanitarian grounds. Garzón based his decision on a medical examination, which he made public on February 12, 2008. The report said Deghayes suffered from: "post-traumatic stress syndrome, severe depression and suicidal tendencies." Garzón ruled the mental health of Deghayes and El-Banna had deteriorated so badly in detention that it would be cruel to prosecute them.

In August 2007, the British government under Gordon Brown requested Deghaye's release. He was released on 18 December 2007 and returned to Britain. Deghaye and another former detainee were arrested under a Spanish warrant on allegations of al-Qaeda involvement in 2003; he was released on bail while his case is considered.

Since his return to Britain in December 2007, Deghayes has married a second time.

On August 10, 2007, family members released a detailed dossier listing the torture and humiliation that Deghaye claimed that he and other detainees were subjected to while in U.S. custody. The material was reported by numerous media.

In August 2007, Stafford Smith said that the face in the videotape was eventually identified as a Saudi Arabian foreign mujahideen leader in Chechnya named Abu al-Walid. Commander of a resistance group, he was killed by Russians in April 2004. Stafford Smith said the face of al-Walid looked more like Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, than it resembled Deghayes.

On August 7, 2007, the United Kingdom government requested the release of Omar Deghayes and four other detainees who had been legal British residents prior to their detention. Responding to considerable interest in the case of Deghayes and other men, the UK government warned the public that the negotiations might take months.

On December 18, 2007, Deghayes was freed from Guantanamo Bay and flown to the UK.

In 2006, the British High Court considered whether the United Kingdom government should petition the United States government on behalf of Guantánamo detainees who had legal British residency status. (It had already petitioned on behalf of British citizens.) The High Court concluded that it did not have the authority to make recommendation in the area of foreign affairs, but said that the evidence that the British residents were being tortured was "powerful".

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Omar Amer Deghayes' second annual Administrative Review Board, on August 8, 2006. The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

His attorney Clive Stafford Smith said that in 2005 an investigation by BBC Newsnight discovered that, shortly before Deghaye's arrest, an anonymous informant had mistakenly identified him to Spanish authorities as appearing in a videotape including Arab mujahideen among rebels in Chechnya. They issued a warrant for his arrest and notified the Americans, who later took him into custody in Pakistan. (The person in the videotape was later correctly identified as Abu al-Walid, an insurgent leader who was killed in Chechnya by Russians in April 2004.) Stafford Smith has said of the mis-identification: "This was typical of the whole Guantánamo experience. They said they had evidence and they wouldn't let you see it. Then when you did, it was incorrect."

Part of the stated case against Deghayes was that an anonymous informant had told Spanish analysts that he was one of the individuals in a Chechnyan rebel video tape. Spain had passed on this information to the United States shortly before Deghayes was taken to Guantanamo. An inquiry by BBC Newsnight in 2005 found that Deghayes was not on the tape. The team consulted with Professor Tim Valentine of Goldsmiths College, a facial recognition expert, who said that the face in the videotape could not possibly be that of Deghayes. For one thing, it lacked clearly identifiable marks which he carries left by a childhood injury.

In September 2005, Deghayes was among the numerous hunger strikers, a protest that was reported as having started over the beating of the detainee Hisham Sliti.

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Deghayes's first annual Administrative Review Board, on May 24, 2005. "The following primary factors favor continued detention:"

Initially the Bush Presidency asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged and the United States Supreme Court heard a habeas corpus petition; it ruled in Rasul v. Bush (2004) that detainees had a right to an impartial forum to challenge their detention. It said that the US government had an obligation to conduct competent tribunals to determine the status of each detainee and whether he was or was not entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for each CSRT. That for Omar Amer Deghayes's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, held on September 27, 2004, included the following allegations:

Together with many other prisoners, in 2002, Deghayes was transported to the recently constructed Guantanamo Bay detention camp and held as a suspected enemy combatant. In 2005, he claimed that Guantanamo guards held him down and sprayed pepper spray directly into his eyes. Deghayes said a guard also gouged his eyes. He was left permanently blind in his right eye.

After the United States invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, Deghayes moved temporarily to Pakistan for what he thought would be safety with his Afghan wife and child. He has said that he was arrested, along with his family, by bounty hunters in Pakistan. He was "sold" to the American forces and taken into military custody. He was first held and interrogated at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. His wife and child were later released.

b. The detainee stated that he had no knowledge of Usama bin Laden or al Qaida, had no prior knowledge of the 11 September 2001 attacks and never worked for the Taliban.

d. The detainee stated that he would not accept anyone committing attacks similar to those of 11 September 2001.

After his father was killed by the Libyan government in 1980, al-Walid's family was eventually able to leave in two groups, in 1985 and 1986. His mother's request for asylum in Britain in 1987. Deghayes grew up in a secular household and was granted status as a legal resident. As a college student, while studying at University of Wolverhampton and later in Huddersfield, he began to explore Islam. His mother and sister became British citizens.

Omar Deghayes (born November 28, 1969) is a Libyan citizen who had legal residency status with surviving members of his family in the United Kingdom since childhood. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He was held by the United States as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay detention camp from 2002 until December 18, 2007. He was released without charges and returned to Britain, where he lives. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 727. Deghayes says he was blinded permanently in one eye, after a guard at Guantanamo gouged his eyes with his fingers. Deghayes was never charged with any crime at Guantanamo.

Omar Deghayes was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1969. His father was an attorney and a prominent figure in Libya, but got at cross purposes with Muammar Gaddafi.