The Taliban on the Death of Awal Gul

In light of the statements released this past week by the Center for Constitutional Rights and lawyers for Awal Gul--the Guantanamo detainee who died of an apparent heart attack--the following statement, apparently issued by the Taliban, is, well, very interesting. Both the CCR statement and statement by Gul's attorneys either flatly deny or cast strong doubt upon the premise that Gul was lawfully detained at Guantanamo as a part of the Taliban. CCR said:

Awal Gul’s death illustrates too well what Guantánamo has become--a prison where Muslim men are held indefinitely until they die because the president lacks political courage to release or charge them in any forum. . . . CCR also condemns the Defense Department for recycling untested allegations of Awal Gul’s association with terrorism.  If history shows anything, these claims were likely coerced out of Mr. Gul or others, and would likely collapse under judicial review. It shames the Defense Department to speak ill of the dead to justify the years-long detention of a man who never saw the inside of a courtroom.

Gul's lawyers were more explicit:

The government charged that he was a prominent member of the Taliban and its military, but we proved that this is false. Indeed, we have documents from Afghanistan, even a letter from Mullah Omar himself on Taliban letterhead, discussing Mr. Gul’s efforts to resign from the Taliban a year or more before 9/11/01. He resigned because he was disgusted by the Taliban’s growing penchant for corruption and abuse. Mr. Gul was never an enemy of the United States in any way. . . . Mr. Gul . . . resigned from the Taliban more than one year before September 11, 2001. He was arrested in December 2001 when he voluntarily traveled to meet American military officials. He had nothing to hide then and has nothing to hide now. We shared all the evidence from Afghanistan that proves his innocence with the government and the federal court.

Here's what the Taliban has to say, according to the web site Jihadology, which is devoted to primary source material on jihadism. I cannot independently verify either the authenticity of the document or the accuracy of the translation, though I have no reason to doubt either:

According to a report by credible sources, the prominent Jihadi commander of Nangarhar province, Moalim Awal Gul embraced martyrdom on Wednesday last due to bestiality of the American rulers. “We are creatures of Allah and return to Him (eventually).”

It is now one year since the issuance of decree by the figurehead president of America, Barack Obama, concerning the closure of the Guantanamo Prison but it is still operative. Hundreds of Mujahideen have been suffering in the prison in a very brutal environ for the past nine years without any legal justification. On the one hand, the prisoners are deprived of their basic rights of life but, on the other hand, they have borne the brunt of the callous and inhumane conduct of the American jailers during the past nine years. The indictments have not been proved against them as yet. They are deprived of the right to have access to lawyers to defend them. Hundred of times, the American ruler resorted to the use of weapon against the prisoners whenever they staged strikes for obtainment of their legitimate rights. The martyrdom of the eminent commander Moalim Awal Gul at the hands of the Americans in Guantanamo Prison is a clear indicator of the American violation of all national and international agreements and covenants and portrays their brutal behavior with the detainees in this illegitimate prison. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan calls on all so-called Heads of the judiciaries of the White House and the coalition countries to stop torturing the prisoners of the Islamic Emirate and end violation of their human rights. Otherwise, the responsibility will rest with your military and judicial chiefs, should the Islamic Emirate have to take any step in response to your brutality. Similarly, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly urges all global organizations of human rights and of prisoners’ rights advocacy entities to fulfill their humanitarian responsibility as regards the prevention of the bestiality of the brutal Americans against prisoners in Guantanamo and in other Americans prisons.

Assuming it is genuine, the statement would appear both to strongly bolster government claims about who Gul really was--though it does not specifically say that he was a Taliban commander or that he never resigned from the organization--and to illustrate that Guantanamo still remains at least something of a propaganda talking point for extremists.  On this latter point, the statement seems to me altogether consistent with the role which my colleague Dan Byman recently suggested that Guantanamo plays in jihadi propaganda.