Al Jazeera has obtained a copy of the government’s English translation of the secret personal diaries of Abu Zubaydah. The Bush administration once labeled him one of the key figures in its "war on terror," and he remains one of the most high-profile prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 while fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban regime.

The documents, which were obtained from a former U.S. government intelligence official who worked with the CIA and FBI on Al-Qaeda's rise to power, cast fresh light on Zubaydah and provide a fuller picture of the official U.S. accounts of the campaign against Al-Qaeda and related organizations. They also provide unique insights into the chaotic Afghan civil war of the 1990s.

The diaries, repeatedly cited but never released by U.S. officials in making the case for holding a number of prisoners at Guantanamo, have been long sought by terrorism experts and journalists for their participant-observer account of the decade's events leading to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that claimed almost 3,000 American lives.