British-born jihadi who blew himself up for Islamic State this week was a convert detained for two years at Camp X-Ray
When US special forces found Jamal al-Harith in a jail in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in January 2002, he said he viewed them as his saviours. But after another 15 years, two of which he spent in Guantánamo Bay, he was to blow himself up in Iraq on behalf of Islamic State, sworn enemies of the US.
Harith’s Guantánamo file says US officials decided to ship him to Camp X-Ray at the American base in Cuba because “he was expected to have knowledge of Taliban treatment of prisoners and interrogation tactics”. He was soon to learn even more about US methods.
Related: Isis suicide bomber ‘was Briton freed from Guantánamo’
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