>Mahmoud Abd al Aziz is a balding 34-year-old Yemeni who has spent most of his adult life detained at Guantanamo Bay. He was one of the very first to be taken there, ten years ago this month, after being captured on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Al Aziz says … he’d gone to Kandahar to study the Koran.
Another Yemeni detainee, Allal Ab Aljallil abd al Rahman, said he went to Afghanistan for medical treatment.
He and 30 suspected al Qaeda members were detained on December 15th 2001 after they crossed into Pakistan on foot from the Tora Bora region. Most were young Yemenis who became known as the “Dirty Thirty” – and allegedly included at least several of bin Laden’s bodyguards. Sources cited in military reviews of the detainees’ cases say a “Pakistani warden told the group the best thing they could tell United States forces when interrogated was they were in Afghanistan to teach the Koran.”