Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. At the time, the U.S. government described him as one of the top operating officials of Al Qaeda, someone involved in planning and organizing terrorist attacks.
That accusation would change the course of his life.
He was taken into American custody and eventually became one of the first prisoners subjected to the CIA’s new “enhanced interrogation” program. What followed was not a normal investigation or a courtroom battle. Instead, Zubaydah was subjected to a series of brutal interrogation methods designed to break him.
He was waterboarded at least 83 times between 2002 and 2006, according to oversight records.
Waterboarding was only one part of what he experienced. His treatment included extreme confinement, sleep deprivation and conditions designed to create fear and confusion. The interrogations were intended to make him talk, even if his body and mind were pushed beyond their limits.
Years later, drawings made by Zubaydah were released showing what he said had been done to him. The images depicted waterboarding inside a small, claustrophobic box, freezing water being poured over him while an air conditioner blasted cold air, and long periods of exposure to loud music.
His drawings also depicted something even more disturbing: a power drill being held against his head. These were not memories from a single terrible day. They became part of years of captivity.
Zubaydah’s case was also surrounded by uncertainty from the beginning. The U.S. government had initially portrayed him as an extremely important Al Qaeda figure and tried to connect him to major terrorist plots, including the September 11 attacks.
But years later, U.S. officials acknowledged that they were not claiming he had been involved in 9/11.
And still, he remained imprisoned. That is what makes Abu Zubaydah’s story so difficult to understand. The accusations that helped put him behind bars became increasingly complicated, but there was no ordinary trial that could settle the matter once and for all.
Instead, he became trapped inside the system.
While other prisoners eventually went home or were transferred to other countries, Zubaydah remained. He was never given a normal criminal trial, and no final verdict came to bring his story to an end. His own drawings eventually gave the outside world a glimpse into what he said had happened behind the walls of secret detention facilities and Guantanamo.
They showed a man strapped down, confined in boxes and subjected to treatment intended to destroy his resistance. More than two decades after his capture, Abu Zubaydah remains a prisoner.
He went from being presented as one of America’s most dangerous enemies to becoming something else entirely: a man held for years without a criminal charge, still trapped in the aftermath of the interrogation program created after 9/11. That is why he became known as a “forever prisoner.”
There was no dramatic courtroom ending. No final sentence. No moment when a judge declared his punishment complete and the doors opened. Instead, the years kept passing.
And Abu Zubaydah remained behind them.
