A U.N. human rights panel has urged the United States to immediately release Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay and the first detainee waterboarded by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also said that after studying other cases at Guantánamo over the past 15 years, it had seen a pattern that could “constitute crimes against humanity.”
The prisoner, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Husayn, was captured in a raid in Pakistan in 2002 and has been held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba without charges since 2006.
The United States has argued that its basis for holding him indefinitely in the war against terrorism is that, although he was never a member of Al Qaeda, he helped jihadists reach Afghanistan for training before the Sept. 11 attacks.