He is one of only 39 detainees left at Guantanamo. Once tortured, prisoner’s case is a test of larger political realities at play.
Mohammed al-Qahtani, known as Detainee 063, was tortured over a roughly 50-day period between November 2002 and January 2003 at Camp X-Ray in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp.
Alberto Mier/CNN
“There is no life for me here. If I have a future, it is outside this place.”
Nearly two decades ago, in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, a man named Mohammed al-Qahtani was captured on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Saudi national, US authorities alleged, was an al-Qaeda operative who was supposed to have been the “20th hijacker” but he failed to board United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
After his capture, al-Qahtani was imprisoned, tortured by the US government and – when charges against him were dropped in 2008 – left to languish behind bars with no end in sight.
Today, he sits in an isolated cell at Camp 6 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is one of only 39 detainees left in a facility that once housed approximately 680 so-called enemy combatants, a Department of Defense spokesperson confirmed to CNN. His attorneys have waged a protracted legal battle for al-Qahtani’s repatriation to Saudi Arabia.
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Workers allege ‘nightmare’ conditions at Kentucky startup JD Vance helped fund
JD Vance was an early investor, board member and public pitchman for AppHarvest.
CNN Illustration
“It was a nightmare that should have never happened.”
Last year, facing hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, AppHarvest declared bankruptcy.
The rise and fall of the company, and Vance’s role in it, cuts against his image as a champion for the working class — an image that helped catapult him to the top of the Republican ticket as Donald Trump’s running mate.
A CNN review of public documents, and interviews with a dozen former workers, shows that AppHarvest not only failed as a business after pursuing rapid growth, but also provided a grim job experience for many of the working-class Kentuckians Vance has vowed to help.
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Emails show how a right-wing group steers GOP leaders on major policy issues
Photo Illustration by Jason Lancaster/CNN/Getty Images
“Here’s the full edited version National Review sent to me, if Jay wants to give this a 30-second glance over.”
When Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft jumped into the state’s gubernatorial race last year, the Republican vowed to tackle a slew of culture war issues, promising to fight the “woke politics” of “left-wing” banks and touting how he used his position to enact a regulation targeting those financial firms.
Ashcroft also said candidates shouldn’t focus on issues that let the one percent “force their beliefs on 99 percent of the population.”
While Ashcroft positioned himself as a champion for working class voters, emails obtained by CNN and the progressive watchdog group Documented show that he was steered toward adopting his “anti-woke” investment regulation by a little-known, right-wing think tank with deep ties to conservative billionaires. The communications show that officials with the Foundation for Government Accountability suggested regulatory language to Ashcroft and even wrote an op-ed article that Ashcroft published in a national conservative magazine under his own name.
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Biden promised but failed to end federal use of private prisons. That’s left the industry ready to cash in big under Trump
“They will essentially profit off every step of this process: the detention, the monitoring, the deportation.”
Just over four years ago on the campaign trail, Joe Biden made a bold pledge to voters that as president he would end the federal use of private prisons – facilities where inmates have long complained of abusive treatment.
But as he left office last month, his record on that matter fell short: While Biden ended the Bureau of Prison’s contracts with private prisons, he allowed their use by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand.
Today, because of ICE detainees, the federal government has more people in private prisons than when Biden took office, according to data obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information request and provided to CNN.
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