The secret document described Prisoner 269, Mohammed el-Gharani, as the
very incarnation of a terrorist threat: “an al Qaeda suicide operative”
with links to a London cell and ties to senior plotters of
international havoc.
But there was more to the story, as there so often is at the Guantánamo Bay
prison in Cuba. Eight months after that newly disclosed assessment of
Mr. Gharani was written by military intelligence officials, a federal
judge examined the secret evidence. Saying that it was “plagued with
internal inconsistencies” and largely based on the word of two other
Guantánamo detainees whose reliability was in question, he ruled in
January 2009 that Mr. Gharani should be released. The Obama
administration sent him to Chad about five months later.
