GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba _ The Afghan captive who invited the rap singer Ludacris to stop by the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects was denied parole.
The Periodic Review Board said Haroon al-Afghani lacked "credibility and truthfulness" at his June 14 hearing. "The board is unable to assess the detainee's intentions for the future and claimed change of mindset," it said in a decision released by the Pentagon Friday. It was dated eight days earlier.
Afghani was captured by Afghan security forces and handed over to the United States, which brought him to Guantanamo on June 22, 2007. He was one of the last captives brought to the prison.
The U.S. military considers Afghani to be a former Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, or HIG, commander who organized and led attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The board "noted the detainee's lack of a realistic plan for the future," his "long-term membership and leadership position" in HIG and "extensive time spent fighting coalition forces."
His lawyer, Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, told the U.S. interagency review panel that the Afghani's wife and daughter are in Pakistan, and he feels "immensely guilty" about leaving them "to fend for themselves." He also has a sister in London. "He wants nothing more than to return to his wife and family."
A 2009-10 task force deemed him a possible candidate for prosecution, but he was never charged. The decision essentially rebrands him as a "forever prisoner," an indefinite detainee.
This month, in an apparent effort to show how westernized he'd become in U.S. custody, Sullivan-Bennis said that discussed the base's Fourth of July concert featuring Ludacris with her client _ and the captive expressed interest in meeting him.
It didn't happen. The artist, who's been working on "Fast and Furious 8," made a quick visit to the base, stayed in a townhouse complex more typically used by lawyers and Sept. 11 families, and stopped by the Radio Gitmo station, where he signed a T-shirt.
