Cases: Ahmed Errachidi (Guantánamo Bay)
The cook who became the General
Ahmed Errachidi was born in Tangier, Morocco on 17 March 1966. He has a wife and two young boys, Mohammed and Imran, who live in Morocco. To support his family, Ahmed lived and worked as a chef in London for approximately 17 years. The people who knew Ahmed in England report that he was a kind and generous man who showed no signs of extremism whatsoever. He worked hard, sent money home to support his family in Morocco every month, and visited them as often as he could.
In 2001, Ahmed learned that his youngest son, Imran, had been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart defect and needed surgery. This operation was beyond Ahmed’s means, so he planned to start a business importing jewellery from Pakistan to raise the money. He travelled to Pakistan for this venture on 26 September 2001, where he soon saw tremendous human suffering in the wake of the US bombing campaigns in Afghanistan.
Struck by these scenes, Ahmed entered Afghanistan to help people fleeing the country; however, he quickly realized he could do nothing and that it was too dangerous to remain. He returned to Pakistan and was later arrested after a traffic accident. The Pakistani authorities told him that he would be deported; instead, they sold Ahmed to the US military for a bounty that was negotiated while he stood by in shackles and a hood.
From Pakistan, Ahmed was taken to Bagram and then to Guantánamo. The US dubbed him ‘the General,’ claiming Ahmed was in an Al-Qaida training camp in July 2001. Reprieve’s investigation revealed that he was working as a chef in the Westbury Hotel at that time. When we explained this to Ahmed in Guantánamo, he laughed, saying that he was the cook who became the General, and that the US had made ‘the breaking of an egg into the bursting of a bomb.’
After five long years of imprisonment, the US government concluded that there is no reason for Ahmed to be at Guantánamo and he was released in May 2007 and sent to Morocco.
Ahmed is represented by Reprieve's Legal Director Clive Stafford Smith, and by Reprieve’s Senior Counsel, Zachary Katznelson.
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