Among the 779 Guantánamo prisoner files that were forwarded to the Guardian and to Wikileaks, the most conspicuous is that of Algerian national Adil Hadi al-Jaz’iri bin Hamlili (ref.: PK9AG-001452DP).

It concerns a child soldier who was enlisted by his father in the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets. As an adult, he joined various organizations, including the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) of Algeria.

The US examiners were aware that the young man was an informant for the Canadian and British secret services, but they tortured him anyway to find out whether he might be in possession of useful information that neither the Canadians, nor the British had passed on to them.

It goes without saying that information extorted under the torture has no truth value. But the interest of the file lies in something else: it gives away the intentions of the torturers.

The US interrogators suspected the young man of having participated in the Karachi attack (on 8 May 2002) which claimed the lives of 14 people, 11 of whom were French engineers of the French naval shipbuilding company, Direction des constructions navales (DCNS).

To be more precise, the United States tortured an Algerian asset of the Canadian DID and British MI6 intelligence services to discover the real motives behind the Karachi attack.

A judicial inquiry was opened in Paris into this attack, whereas a fact-finding mission assigned by the National Assembly investigated two different avenues: that of the rivalry between India and Pakistan, and that of a political-financial scandal.

According to the latter hypothesis, the DCNS which sold Agosta 90B submarines to Pakistan allegedly set up a retro-commissioning fee racket in favour of Pakistani generals and of then French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur. However, payments were seemingly interrupted after Mr Balladur’s presidential bid foundered. The engineers were then supposedly murdered in retaliation for the Pakistani generals who lost out.

The Pentagon’s interest in unearthing the truth can be better understood in light of this hypothesis since, if correct, it would implicate current President Nicolas Sarkozy who was Balladur’s campaign manager at the time, and expose him to blackmail. Meanwhile, Canada and the United Kingdom - for whom Adil Hadi al-Jaz’iri worked - already have the information.

Incidentally, it is worth noticing that the file is signed by commodore David M. Thomas, Jr. who ran the Guantánamo torture center back then and currently commands several ships deployed by NATO "to defend human rights in Libya".

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Document : Detainee Assesment Brief ICO Guantanamo Detainee, ISN PK9 AG-001 452DP (S) (12p. 1,8 Mo).