Muhammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani

Who is Muhammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani?

Muhammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani is a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was a captive held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Bagram Theater Internment Facility. He has been described as one of the four men responsible for an escape from Bagram, on July 11, 2005. According to Eric Schmitt and Tim Golden of the New York Times, US officials didn't first identify him and Omar al Farouq under their real names, when they first escaped.

Schmitt and Golden reported "Intelligence officials gave differing views on the importance of Mr. Kahtani. One official described him as having been responsible at one point for maintaining Al Qaeda's operational support structure in Afghanistan; another said he was an important Qaeda fighter, but not a senior-level operative."

Al-Kaktani and the other three men were being held in Cell 119, Bagram, an isolation cell, with four other men. Schmitt and Golden reported that it had been planned to transfer the four men to the Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba.

Al-Kahtani appeared in a video released by al Qaeda later in 2005. Radio Free Europe reported that Al-Kahtani appeared in an al Qaeda video with the other escaped men in October 2005.