Tuesday, September 27, 2011

WikiLeaks uncovers Canadian detainee mystery: Mentally disabled man held in detention for 18 months in US-run Afghani prison

U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks have exposed a troubling case of a mentally ill Canadian-Egyptian held in a U.S.-run Afghanistan prison for more than 18 months.

Khaled Samy Abdallah Ismail, an Egyptian-born engineer, was captured in April 2006 and held at the Bagram Theatre Internment Facility where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the cables say.

The American military held Ismail at Bagram — a prison dubbed the "other Guantanamo" — until at least October 2007 and often relegated him to segregation despite "largely circumstantial" evidence against him, while they debated whether to send him to Egypt or Canada. Ismail is the only known Canadian to be held in Bagram for that length of time.

Canadian consular officials paid their first visit to the dual citizen eight months after his capture, but another nine months passed before Canada suddenly refocused on the case and hatched a plan to bring him to Ontario, according to the cables from March and October of 2007.

Then the paper trail goes cold, shrouding his case in mystery and leaving unanswered questions about how he ended up in Afghanistan and what happened to him.

Through sources, court documents and the two leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, CBC News has pieced together a partial picture of Ismail's life in Canada and strange journey to war-torn Afghanistan. more

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