Abu Zubaydah

Who is Abu Zubaydah?

Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen currently held in U.S. custody as an enemy combatant in Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002.

Abu Zubaydah has been in US custody for more than ten years, four-and-a-half of them in the CIA secret prison network. He was transferred among prisons in various countries as part of their extraordinary rendition program. During interrogation in the Bush administration years, Zubaydah was extensively tortured; he was water-boarded 83 times and subjected to numerous other enhanced interrogation techniques including forced nudity, sleep deprivation, confinement in small dark boxes, deprivation of solid food, stress positions, and physical assaults. These have been prohibited by the Obama administration. Videotapes of some of Zubaydah's interrogations are amongst those destroyed by the CIA in 2005.

In August 2010 it was reported that Zubaydah was first transferred to Guantanamo with three other "high-value detainees" in September 2003. Concerned that a pending Supreme Court decision might require revealing data about him, the CIA took back custody and transferred the four men from Guantanamo in March 2004.