Ayman al Shurafa

Ayman Mohammed Al Shurafa has been held in US custody since 2001. From the viewpoint of the US military officers who have held him in Guantánamo Bay for nearly seven years, Ayman could be released tomorrow—and yet in prison he sits.

Ayman is stranded for the simple reason that he has slipped through the diplomatic cracks between the Palestinian Authority, from which he holds a passport, and Saudi Arabia, the country where he was born and called home for over twenty years.

Ayman was born in 1975 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His father and mother raised him and his three brothers there. His extended family, however, are Palestinian and live in Gaza; Ayman’s most recent passport is Palestinian.

During college, Ayman decided it would be easier to finish his business degree in Gaza, so he enrolled in university there. But he had chosen a bad time to relocate: the intifada broke out, danger clouded his prospects for graduation, and he could not return to college for the next term after a holiday.

Ayman began searching for other options in Saudi Arabia, but was denied educational opportunities because of his nationality. Lacking choices, when a Saudi sheikh advised him that he needed to be “prepared” to defend Muslim countries – a religious duty in Islam known as e’dad, conceptually distinct from jihad or any participation in combat – Ayman decided to take up the call.

He travelled to Afghanistan in summer 2001 to study and train, but never once raised arms against US forces or anyone else. He fled the region after war broke out, got swept up, and finally landed in Guantánamo Bay.

Seven years later, Ayman regrets his decision, and says that when he answered the sheikh's advice, he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was getting himself into. He knew nothing of the Taliban or al Qaeda at the time. He brought his high school diploma, so he could enrol in university while he trained. He also insists he never had malevolent intentions towards Americans, the Israeli government, the Saudi government, or anyone else. Throughout his imprisonment by US officials, Ayman has remained courteous and kind, and says he bears the American people no ill will.

Critically, the US military has already decided Ayman is no threat. Ayman testified at length before a panel of US military officers at his first “Administrative Review Board.” After that hearing, the military panel decided that Ayman was “approved to leave Guantánamo Bay, subject to the process for making appropriate diplomatic arrangements for his departure.” The US military specifically found that he posed no danger to the United States or its allies, and that he had no intelligence to give. He could leave Guantánamo tomorrow if he had somewhere to go.

But the “appropriate diplomatic arrangements” have proven elusive for Ayman. The Palestinian Authority has yet to take up his case, although he has a Palestinian passport. The situation in Gaza makes it impossible for him to return to family there. The Saudi Government refuses to take him back, as he is a Palestinian national. His only option is to wait for someone else to welcome him home.

Meanwhile, Ayman’s world consists of a two meter by three meter cell, where the fluorescent lights shine ceaslessly. He spent over a year in the supermax regime of Camp 6. For the two hours of “recreation” he was allowed daily, guards escorted him to an outdoor pen, where he had the chance to walk a few paces or to kick a deflated football—alone. This “rec” often took place at night, so days passed without Ayman seeing the sun.

Ayman has done his best to bear up peaceably in Guantánamo. Prisoners and military alike esteem him. He leads his brothers in prayer, and he is friendly with the guards on his block. Yet hope, in such circumstances, is difficult to maintain. He evinces clear signs of depression, even desperation. He has asked the Guantánamo authorities for medication to “let the days go by without feeling anything.”

Ayman is, first and foremost, a man who cares deeply about family. His greatest wish is to get married, settle down, and one day rejoin his family. But in Guantánamo, he went years without speaking with his family on the phone, and cannot receive family visits. Letters from his loved ones take months to go through, when they go through at all. His mother is elderly and increasingly frail, and Ayman is obsessively plagued by fears that he will never set eyes on her again. Unless he can find a country willing to take him, Ayman’s concerns could well prove justified.