At his tribunal session, Parhat denied having any "Arab" (that is, al Qaeda) trainers at the Tora Bora camp or having had anything to do with al Qaeda. But he did admit that Mahsum was the leader of his group:
Q: There is an important gentleman in the Uighur community by the name of Hasan Mahsum; do you know who this man is?
Parhat: Yes. I saw that person.
Q: Who is he, please?
Parhat: He is a Turkistani person. [Note: As the DOD transcript notes, the Uighurs frequently refer to themselves as "Turkistani."]
Q. Is he the leader of your Uighur group?
Parhat. Yes.
Q. Would he give the Uighurs in the camp guidance and instruction on what to do?
Parhat. Maybe he would do that and there was another person and he was the leader of the camp guiding all the people. I saw this person twice at the camp. I forgot the leader name.
Q. Would that be Mr. Abdul Haq?
Parhat. Yes. . . .
Q. There is a concern that Mr. Hassan Maksum may have relationships with al Qaeda people. Do you know any thing about this?
Parhat. I don't think so. The people in Turkistan will not associate with al Qaeda.
On this last point, Parhat is either lying or ignorant of the relationship between the ETIM and al Qaeda. As the Combatant Status Review Board noted in its summary of evidence (a document used to determine whether or not a Gitmo detainee is an enemy combatant) for Parhat, the ETIM's training facilities at Tora Bora "were funded by
Bin Laden and the Taliban."
Parhat denied this specific point too, but there is abundant evidence indicating that the Tora Bora training camp was an al Qaeda-Taliban-ETIM joint venture. For example, as terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna rightly noted in an interview earlier this year:
We have seen that al Qaeda and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement have released a number of statements and videos where ETIM is training in al Qaeda camps with their instructors. Hasan Mahsum, the leader of ETIM, was killed in South Waziristan--the area that al Qaeda was operating in 2003--by the Pakistani forces. There have been a number of ETIM members arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are working very [closely] with Al-Qaeda. Abu [Zubaydah], the operations chief for Al-Qaeda, met with Uighur radical groups entering Pakistan. The relationship between the two is very strong.
Former Indian intelligence officer B. Raman has similarly explained the relationship between the ETIM and al Qaeda. Raman has written that the ETIM "is a major component of the terrorist network headed by bin Laden" throughout South and Central Asia. Raman further claims:
Hasan Mahsum, the ETIM ringleader, used to hide in Kabul and had an Afghan passport issued by the Taliban. Bin Laden asked the ETIM to stir up trouble in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then stage an organized infiltration into Xinjiang. The "Turkistan Army" under the ETIM fought along with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This "Army" has a special "China Battalion" with about 320 terrorists from Xinjiang. The battalion is under the direct command of Hasan Mahsum's deputy Kabar.
The Times's editorial noted that supporters of Parhat and his fellow Uighur detainees "maintain that they were captured by mistake and had no hostile intentions toward the United States." This is a common defense of the ETIM-associated detainees at Gitmo. They are supposedly only interested in targeting the Chinese regime, so the U.S. should look the other way.
But as disgusting as the Chinese regime's human rights record is, there is no moral equivalency between legitimate opposition and terrorists who seek to hijack their cause. Osama bin Laden's grand vision was to unite terrorist groups around the world by bringing nationalist, ethnic and other sectarian groups under the banner of his jihad. Bin Laden and al Qaeda were at least partially successful in this endeavor in Algeria, Somalia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Southeast Asia, South and Central Asia, as well as Iraq. There is every indication that he was successful in incorporating the ETIM into his global designs as well. Moreover, it is not true that the ETIM targets only Chinese interests. As Raman points out, the group has also "fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Uzbekistan" among other locations. ETIM trainees may profess a lack of hostility towards the United States, but once allied with al Qaeda, there is no telling where they may be asked to wage jihad.
We do not know what basis the Court of Appeals had for determining Parhat was improperly labeled an "enemy combatant." We may never see the classified evidence they relied upon. Perhaps there are mitigating factors that trump Parhat's disturbing ties. We can only hope that the Parhat decision was not grounded in an ignorance of the ETIM.
Thomas Joscelyn is a terrorism researcher, writer, and economist living in New York. He is the author, most recently, of Iran's Proxy War Against America (Claremont Institute).
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