On June 22, 2007, an Afghan man was sent to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. That is perhaps the only fact in Haroon al-Afghani’s case that all agree on; others are disputed by his relatives, who are speaking to the media for the first time. In official documents, almost nothing certain is known about Afghani’s background and activities. Yet he has been held for more than eight years without being charged. Afghani is a so-called forever prisoner, a detainee at Guantánamo who has not been charged with a crime but has not been cleared for transfer. Nor does he even have a lawyer. At a time when President Barack Obama is repeating his desire to close down the prison and other prisoners are being released in trickles, the existence of someone like Afghani — a virtual mystery man in official documents — is a reminder of the legal morass that the U.S. overseas prison has found itself in. Afghani arrived in Guantánamo as George W. Bush’s administration was already shipping people out of the prison. The Department of Defense announced at the time it had transferred a dangerous terrorism suspect to Guantánamo Bay. The U.S. alleged that Afghani was a senior member of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, (HIG), an Afghan insurgent group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who helped end the Soviet occupation in the country. Afghani is also said to have been a courier for alleged senior Al-Qaeda operations planner Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who was also transferred to Guantánamo from CIA custody in 2007. Iraqi is charged with war crimes. Afghani lived in Pakistan and used to travel to Afghanistan to visit his relatives and farmland. According to the U.S., the Afghan National Directorate of Security captured Afghani in Farm-e-Hada area in Nangarhar province on Feb. 4, 2007. He was taken with six men also suspected of being HIG associates, according to a report by Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the prison and assessed the detainees.

But that claim comes from just one source, identified in JTF-GTMO report footnotes as TD-314/08910-07, a CIA report serial number. The information comes from an unidentified human source. The -07 denotes the year 2007. The classified reports were published by WikiLeaks. Often prisoners and their lawyers dispute the reports for banking on unreliable testimony or point out that they contradict other evidence and statements. In Afghani’s case, a footnote states that his capture date was “inaccurately” first reported as March 2007. A family member of Afghani’s believes that he was taken from a house near Jalalabad, Afghanistan. “I think he was alone while captured,” the relative said. The JTF-GTMO states that among Afghani’s personal items were “vehicle registration [and] miscellaneous papers … reportedly recovered in Jalalabad following detainee’s arrest.” There is a further accusation by the U.S. that Afghani was an improvised explosive device expert in charge of cells targeting U.S. and coalition forces. This intelligence comes from two sources, identified only as CIR 316/00242-07 and IIR 6 105 4594 07. “CIR” could be a criminal investigative report from the Department of Defense investigative task force, and “IIR” indicates a non-CIA report. Al Jazeera asked an expert — recognized as such by the Guantánamo military commissions — not familiar with Afghani to review his JTF-GTMO file. The expert (who asked not to be identified, to avoid jeopardizing professional relationships) said the file on Afghani “reminds me of the broad swath of disparate bits of [information] from various interrogations done over years and documented often by newly initiated persons in the JTF overseen by newish [and] temporary supervisors.” The expert added that it is “plausible that a notable … guy like Abd al Hadi al Iraqi would have trusted a native speaker as a courier… [because] Al-Qaeda leadership knew even the best linguist Arabs spoke Dari, [Pashto], Urdu and Farsi with an accent and could not hide in plain site like natives.” Afghani fluently speaks Arabic, Pashto and Farsi, Al Jazeera understands. “Moreover,” the expert said, “there was not much … integration of Al-Qaeda Arabs with Afghans or Pakistanis in operation or combat matters,” for two main reasons: “lack of trust and language barriers.” In short, the expert said, Afghani’s JTF-GTMO report was “pandering and wishful writing.”