Thread by @JasonLeopold

Abu Zubaydah is the 1st high value detainee captured by CIA after 9/11 & the guinea pig for the agency s torture program. Today, SCOTUS w/consider whether he can be told of his treatment and where he was held which the US has said is a state secret

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8 years ago, I exclusively obtained the FBI's translations his diaries, which reveal a fascinating story about Abu Zubaydah's journey from computer engineering student in India to mujahedeen fighting in Afghanistan

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america.aljazeera.com/articles/abu-z…

In his diaries, Abu Zubaydah writes about the arrival of the Taliban in Afghanistan

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The diaries cover Abu Zubaydah's complete transformation right up until the 9/11 attacks and the weeks before he was captured by CIA in Pakistan in March 2002
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/…

On December 15, 2014, CIA contractor James Mitchell, the architect of the agency's torture program, admitted to me and acknowledged for the first time that he personally waterboarded Abu Zubaydah at a black site prison

vice.com/en/article/kz5…

Mitchell described for me in detail the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah and how the high value detainee was a guinea pig of sorts

While I was reporting on Abu Zubaydah, his childhood friend reached out to me on Twitter and told me an amazing story about their teen years. He provided me with a pic of AZ as a young man. Up until that point the only public pic had come from the US govt
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/…

Abu Zubaydah's friend reached out to me because he started to read Abu Zubaydah's diary and spotted his name.