Thu, Apr. 02, 2009
The U.S. government on Monday agreed to release a Yemeni surgeon who reportedly treated al Qaida wounded at Tora Bora in Afghanistan under a new review ordered by President Barack Obama meant to empty the prison camps here by January 2010.
Ayman Batarfi, 38, had told a military review panel in 2005 that he was a humanitarian worker who found himself at the battle of Tora Bora in 2001 while Osama bin Laden was in the area, according to a Pentagon transcript. He said he'd met bin Laden while the doctor was burying the dead from American air assaults, but that he did not respect the al Qaida leader, who he called "a coward."
Batarfi will be sent to "an appropriate destination country in a manner that is consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States," said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd in Washington, D.C.
Amnesty International described Batarfi as a humanitarian worker, an orthopedic surgeon who was swept up as an innocent Arab trying to flee the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. His lawyers said he was volunteering at a clinic in Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001 when Northern Alliance forces overran the city.
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