Guantánamo Bay files: detained cleric was working with British officials | World news

 

• Monday 25 April 2011 22.13 BST

• Article history

 

Rohullah claimed he was in contact with British officials to help them eradicate poppy farming in Afghanistan. Photograph: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images

A senior Afghan cleric and politician who spent six years in Guantánamo Bay after being detained for links with al-Qaida and the Taliban in 2002 was working with British diplomats and possibly intelligence services at the time of his arrest, the files reveal.

Mullah Haji Rohullah Wakil, from the eastern Kunar province, was held by American forces in August 2002. His detention came as a shock to British and European officials in Kabul at the time who were in contact with the 42-year-old local tribal leader.

Rohullah had fought against al-Qaida and Taliban forces during the campaign of late 2001 alongside American troops and, officials have told the Guardian, was seen as playing a key role in maintaining stability in the north-east of Afghanistan.

The Americans, however, believed he was running drugs, was working to destabilise the Afghan government at the time and had a role in plots to assassinate senior government figures. A memo based on the detainee's own claims and quantities of collated US intelligence shows that Rohullah was close to British authorities. "This detainee … had dealings with the United Kingdom and with the Pakistani ISID [the main military intelligence service]," the memo, dated 17 June 2005, said.

Rohullah is reported to have told his interrogators he had been introduced by an Afghan intermediary to a "representative from the UK" and also "met British and US forces" in Peshawar, the Pakistani frontier town, around two months after the 9/11 attacks.

During this period, as a bombing campaign continued against Taliban positions and assets, western intelligence services were working hard to recruit Afghan commanders who would be able to launch military operations within Afghanistan to complement the air strikes.

Rohullah claimed to have met the British representative three or four times, to have told him he was ready to fight against the Taliban and to have received cash and "cellular telephones" from him.

Following the invasion, Rohullah "met with his British contact, the British ambassador in Afghanistan, and a person from British customs", the file says, quoting "a reliable source".

The British were looking for help in eradicating poppy farming in Afghanistan. Subsequently, the file says, Rohullah received around $500,000 "out of approximately $6m his British contact gave … a close associate."

The file continues: "Detainee advised he only received money from his British contact in support of anti-Taliban, anti-al-Qaida operations and the drug eradication."

The file also outlines an ongoing relationship Rohullah appears to have had with the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, the main Pakistani military spy agency, known as the ISI.

"Reporting indicates detainee worked in conjunction with Pakistani Intelligence-Service Directorate [sic] to undermine the current Afghan government," the memo says.

Despite Rohullah's connections, the Americans considered Rohullah "a supporter of al-Qaida and its global terrorist network."

Officials at Guantánamo Bay justified his detention on aid he was alleged to have offered to Arab militants fleeing fighting in December 2001 in eastern Afghanistan to escape to Pakistan.

A proof of the threat Rohullah posed, the memorandum says, was the sudden upsurge in violence in Kunar which followed his arrest. The memo recommended his continued detention.

Rohullah, though a follower of the rigorous conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, had a long history of opposition both to the Taliban, who follow the South Asian Deobandi tradition of Islamic practice, and to international Arab militants such as Osama bin Laden. The memo implicitly admits that the detainee's primary loyalty was to himself rather than to any militant group, describing the cleric as "out for personal gain and self-aggrandisement".

Rohullah was eventually released in 2008 into Afghan custody and finally freed in August of that year. Approached by the Guardian in Kabul shortly after his release from a local prison, Rohullah declined to comment, citing an agreement with local authorities.