KZBlog

Three Kazakhs out of four allegedly held have been released from Guantanomo Bay:

The three Kazakhs arrived in their Central Asian homeland on Saturday and were met by relatives who took them home, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov.

Omarov said the three would not face investigation and charges “because their release means that they had been cleared of all suspicions of having terror links.”

He gave no further details on the three men.

But, using legal records and Pentagon documents, The Miami Herald has identified the three men as:

• Ihlkham Battayev, 34, who had been incorrectly identified in Pentagon documents as an Uzbek citizen.
• Abdullah Tohtasinovich Magrupov, 23.
• Yakub Abahanov, age unknown.

Omarov said the Kazakh government was working on the release of the fourth and last Kazakh citizen being held at Guantánamo who was captured in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion to topple the Taliban regime and al Qaeda.

Pentagon records identify him as Abdulrahim Kerimbakiev, 23.

According to lists maintained by the Washington Post here, the Kazakhs were not charged by military commissions.

In terms of what the Kazakhs were doing in Guantanomo, there are a few sources:

Earlier this year, the RFE/RL had noted that three Kazakhs were being held in when a list was released by the Pentagon. John Daly of the UPI claimed that the Kazakh Embassy says the Kazakhs were mistakenly arrested, as they were there on humanitarian missions.

In an article on detainees’ requests to be released the Washington Post writes:

A detainee from Kazakhstan said he was captured by Afghans and turned over to the United States, but did not understand why he was in custody because he just grows vegetables. The tribunal officials tried to pry information from him.

“We are trying to figure out why you are here, the U.S. wouldn’t detain someone for two years for simply growing vegetables. Can you help us understand?” the tribunal official said, with no response. “Do you want to tell us why you think you are here?”

The detainee then answered: “I am here because I went to Afghanistan with my family for a better life. They captured me at that house, that is the reason why I am here,” he said, before he was asked if he grew poppies in his garden. “I don’t know what a poppy is,” he said.

Finally, Cage Prisioners, a website that monitors detainees on the war on terror has a report on one of the Kazakh prisoners here

According to the US government, he was a suspected member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), trained to use the Kalashnikov automatic rifle, caught smuggling 600,000 in US currency, and apprehended in the conflict with the US and its allies where he suffered leg and back injuries.

In a written statement, the detainee said that he would have been killed if he had tried to escape the group, that he did not want to join the Islamic group for Jihad, that he had no knowledge of money or documents, and that information about smuggling 600,000 in US currency was false.

Cage Prisoners also has a profile on one of the detainees, Ilham Battayev