The Al Ansar guest house is a name Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts have applied to several guest houses they consider suspicious.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Close to one hundred Guantanamo captives had their continued extrajudicial detention justified, at least in part, due to allegations that they had stayed in suspicious guest houses.
JTF-GTMO allegations place guest houses named al Ansar in Kabul, Afghanistan; Peshawar, Pakistan; and Kandahar, Afghanistan.
During the Russo-Afghan War, Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam rented a house in University Town, Peshawar, which they named "Beit-al-Ansar" (the House of the Faithful). Here, with the approval of the CIA, the ISI and the Saudi Istikhbarat, they established a logistics base for the thousands of Arab fighters arriving in the city. Bin Laden would vet the volunteers before assigning them to the various Afghan factions [10]
Bin Laden would lead religious debates, many centred on the Sura Yasin of the Qur'an [10] which are reported to have played a pivotal role in the formation of the al Qaida network.[11] Saad Al-Faqih, reported to be an expert on al Qaeda's history, has stated that al Qaeda's origin was tied to a computer system situated in the "bait al-Ansar guesthouse"
TM: |
You said something interesting in an interview with Frontline back in 1999—and you just repeated it here—namely that al-Qaeda originated from a documentation system in the Bait al-Ansar guesthouse back in the 1980s. |
SF: |
The term yes, but the organisation's history is much more interesting than that! |
At the 2005 bail hearing for Hassan Almrei in Canada, an unidentified Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent named only as J.P. stated that Bayt al-Ansar had been "associated with al-Qaeda... since 1984", although even the most liberal estimates suggest that the group didn't even exist until 1988-1990.[12][13]
According to the Summary of Evidence memo prepared for Sabri Mohammed Ebrahim Al Qurashi's first annual Administrative Review Board, on 26 July 2005:[4]
Abu Khaloud has been identified as the manager for the Al Ansar guesthouse. He arranged for individuals to go train at the al-Farouq camp.
In the Summary of Evidence memo prepared for Zuhail Abdo Anam Said Al Sharabi's Administrative Review Board hearings he faced the allegations:[5][6]
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According to a Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Abdullah Mohammed Khan's first annual Administrative Review Board, on 29 July 2005.[7][8]
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According to the Summary of Evidence memo prepared for Jalal Salam Awad Awad's second annual Administrative Review Board, on 7 February 2006
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