MIAMI _ The Guantanamo parole board has re-branded the Indonesian former CIA captive known as Hambali as a "forever prisoner," declaring him too dangerous to release from U.S. military custody.
The Periodic Review Board said in a decision released Tuesday that Encep Nurjaman Hambali, with a "lengthy history as a jihadist," has no real remorse about his "significant role in major terrorist attacks and plotting." When he went before the board on Aug. 18, he was "elusive and non-credible," the panel wrote, offering "half truths and clear attempts to minimize and conceal his pre-detention activities."
The decision raises to 26 the number of Guantanamo "forever prisoners" _ captives declared indefinite Law of War detainees by the board created by President Barack Obama in 2011. Four others await Periodic Review Board decisions.
The other half of Guantanamo's last 60 detainees break down to 20 men cleared for transfer or release to other countries with assurances that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and 10 men facing war crimes charges. Captives charged at military commissions are not entitled to reviews.
A March 2016 intelligence profile described Hambali as "an operational mastermind in the Southeast Asia-based Islamic extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah" and the main link between that group and al-Qaida from 2000 until his capture in Thailand on Aug. 13, 2003, in a joint U.S.-Thai operation. It said he helped plan the Oct. 12, 2002, car bombing of a nightclub in Bali, a popular tourist island, that killed 202 people. It also described two earlier board-declared indefinite detainees at Guantanamo as his lieutenants.
Hambali, now 52, was held in secret CIA prisons for three years before his September 2006 transfer to Guantanamo. The last time the Obama administration reviewed his case, a 2009 Task Force recommended that prosecutors consider putting him on trial, either in federal court or by military commission.
He has never been charged in either court. Another prisoner, however, has pleaded guilty to providing some cash used to fund Jemaah Islamiyah's Aug. 5, 2003, bombing of a Marriott in Jakarta that killed 11 people.
Hambali's civilian attorney, Ohio Federal Public Defender Carlos Warner, called the review process "a sham," saying he was forbidden to "participate in the hearing in a meaningful way." Warner was unable to get to Guantanamo for the video teleconference hearing, transmitted between the captive at the base and the board not far from the Pentagon in Virginia.
"The Department of Defense has demonstrated that it is only interested in processing cases in a predetermined fashion without a full and fair hearing," Warner said by email from Akron on Tuesday.
The Periodic Review Board decision released on Tuesday was dated Sept. 19.
