Via Miami Herald:
“The Guantánamo parole board on Thursday approved the release of a Yemeni “forever prisoner,” dismissing U.S. intelligence that imprisoned the man for 13 years at the Navy base in Cuba as “discredited.”
The so-called Periodic Review Board heard the case of Mustafa al Shamiri, 37, on Dec. 1. His story captured the world’s attention because he was a victim of mistaken identity. Intelligence analysts wrongly cast him as a captive of consequence, an al-Qaida facilitator or courier, rather than a run-of-the-mill jihadist — because his name was similar to actual extremists.
The episode served as a cautionary tale about the military’s system of profiling Guantánamo’s captives, and the unreliability of 2008-era U.S military assessments of the captives that were leaked in later years by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. The assessments, carried out by the prison’s Joint Task Force, sought to ascribe to each prisoner risk and threat levels as well as a value for the information each man might be able to provide U.S. military intelligence.”
