The Story of Sofiane Berhoumi: Freed from Guantanamo

The Story of Sofiane Berhoumi: Freed from Guantanamo

By Karin Friedemann

newtrendmag.org

Sofiane Berhoumi, now 53, was released from Guantanamo just 4 years ago after 20 years in captivity. His father, who was a private lawyer, died in 2004 while he was imprisoned. Sofiane graced me with his polite and positive presence for nearly an hour on the phone on 9/23/25 and for another hour on 6/7/26. He spoke about how people often fear him, but those who take the time to get to know him realize that he is gentle and kind. "You can't judge people from the cover." He said that communicating with understanding people makes life beautiful. Some strangers have become more than family to him. Recently he was invited to personally attend a human rights conference at Graz University in Austria with all expenses paid, but he was unfortunately denied a visitor's visa. I was very curious to hear his life story.

He is the eldest of five brothers and there is one older sister. As a student, he was a good swimmer and a soccer player and dreamed of playing for a team. Sofiane left Algeria for Europe in search of work opportunities. He looked for work in Spain and France and England at age 22. He also visited his sister in Paris. He left Spain by stowing away on a ship. He was working loading the ship with truckloads of coffee beans and other merchandise. Eventually he got asylum in 1996 in Britain due to the Algerian civil war. However, by 1998, after gaining safety in Britain, he learned about the war in Chechnya from charity presentations in the London mosque, in which videos and slides of suffering Muslims were shown and funds collected. Like many other Muslim men who were inspired to leave their homes and fight for the sake of Allah, Sofiane felt that his soul was longing to go to Chechnya to defend the Muslim cause.

He knew that in order to get sent to Chechnya to fight, he first had to go to Afghanistan for military training. From there, he would need assistance from an organized Islamic group to facilitate his transport and connect him with the Muslim fighters in Chechnya. This was standard practice in those days. There were many Islamic military training camps in Afghanistan who welcomed foreigners in search of adventure.

So, with the contacts he received through a Pakistani friend, and with his advice, Sofiane left London for Karachi, and then on to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he stayed at a Lashkar Taiba guesthouse until he was assigned to be sent to Khaldan Camp in Khost, Afghanistan. During his training, an accident with an explosive permanently destroyed the use of his left hand. Despite this severe handicap, he tried multiple times to go to Chechnya, but icy weather conditions prevented him. Therefore he was basically stranded in Afghanistan. Biding his time for six years, he learned a bit of Persian and Pashtun. Everything was okay, until al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Then his life changed forever.

Sofiane was hiding in the mountains of Tora Bora when the United States bombarded Afghanistan in November and December 2001. It was a terrifying experience. He saw many of his brothers killed by rockets fired from an Apache helicopter. Sofiane fled to Pakistan; first Peshawar then Islamabad. He ended up in Faysal Abad, a suburb of Lahore. In May 2002, the property where he was sheltering with Abu Zubaydah was raided by special Pakistani forces working for the CIA and he was sent to Guantanamo under suspicion of being al-Qaeda and dangerous. He was not with al-Qaeda. Neither was Abu Zubaydah. They were free, unaffiliated fighters. Abu Zubaydah had connections with al-Qaeda but was not part of their group. Abu Zubaydah was a Palestinian subjected to severe and prolonged torture, during which the US realized and admitted he was not with al-Qaeda. He continues to be held in Guantanamo.

Sofiane was charged with conspiracy and material support for a terrorist organization in 2005. In 2008 and again in 2012, the charges against him were dropped. In 2016 he went in front of a review board that included the US Justice Department, the CIA, and the National Security Agency. The decision went through six agencies until finally in 2016 he was cleared for release under the Obama administration. But when Trump became president, all transfers out of Guantanamo were frozen. Years later after many actual high profile al-Qaeda members were released from Guantanamo, Sofiane remained imprisoned, because nobody knew who he was. He was essentially a "nobody." He had never even served in one battle.

It was not until the Biden administration that Sofiane was scheduled for release. He was put on a plane on March 13, 2022 headed home to Algeria but two hours into the flight, the Algerian government announced bad weather conditions, so the plane turned around and took him back to Guantanamo! Sofiane found this very upsetting, worried they were playing a trick on him. On April 1, 2022 he boarded a second plane, which finally returned him back to his family.

Sofiane mentioned that a couple of the guards at Guantanamo really warmed up to him. He said 90% of the guards were mean and awful, but 10% were decent people who just happened to be in the US Army. So, generally speaking, he didn't like them and they didn't like him. They had been told that he was a dangerous terrorist, so how could they know? It was not until he started joking with them that they started to wonder, "How can you be cheerful when your life is so miserable?" He always tried to make the guards feel comfortable and laugh. Because keeping a positive attitude helped him keep up his morale despite his suffering.

Some of the younger guards started to confide in him instead of to their colleagues, because he sympathized with their lives. One female guard in her early twenties began to cry during her shift because she had no friends. Her mother had deserted her as a child due to mental illness, so she had to raise her younger brother alone. Sofiane encouraged her to give her mother a call. She took his advice, and experienced forgiveness with her mother. When Sofiane was released, she followed him all the way to the van that took him to the airport. "Please don't change," she said. "Stay like that." There was another young female guard who started crying when he was released. They cried together. There were some other guards, one was a Mexican-American man, who visited him and gave him a piece of food from time to time.

Sofiane's English interpreter for his legal proceedings was scared of him at first, but it wasn't long before the interpreter relaxed. Soon he was cooking special meals for Sofiane during their meetings with the lawyers, and watching movies with him.

Now, Sofiane is back in Algeria living with his mother. Long ago, when Sofiane was one year old, his mother was watching him sleep. She had a vision of a two-year-old with blue eyes wearing a US Army uniform. He was on top of her son, pinning him down. Several times the bully looked straight into her eyes in a way that was extremely frightening. This vision foretold his destiny with the Americans. Now his dear mother is old and sick. She is having trouble breathing, can't walk, and coughs a lot. Even so, she cooks for him and takes care of him. The local people are scared of him, and because he can't use his left hand, he has been unable to find work. She is patient and understands his situation, why he can't take care of her financially. Right now he is excitedly watching the World Championship games with his brothers at home.

It is very hard to scratch out a living in Algeria. Any medical care you need, you have to pay for it. Sofiane is in need of clothes. He asks anyone who has used or broken iPhone or laptops or anything he can sell to send them to him so that he can repair and resell them. Some supporters have started a collection to buy him a car so that he would be able to start a taxi service.

To donate: GoFundMe.com/f/a-taxi-and-a-new-beginning-for-sufiyan

Feds to Revoke Charity Head’s Citizenship

 TMO 

On the night of July 23, 2014 Enaam Arnaout, 51, CEO of the former Islamic charity, Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), learned from the TV news that the US government had filed legal documents to strip him of his citizenship.

Arnaout told TMO that the next day, July 24, a SWAT team driving dark SUVs showed up where he works and behaved in an intimidating manner as US Marshalls served Arnaout his “Complaint to Revoke Citizenship” papers.

Naturally, his employers were not too happy.

One of the Marshalls spoke to Arnaout smiling as if he knew him. “When did you get out?” he asked.

Arnaout answered him, “I got out four years ago and finished my probation.”

“OK, this is something new,” the US Marshall replied.

This draconian tactic of denaturalization has generally only been applied against accused war criminals, usually World War II era Nazis, although in 2007, Rasmi Khader Almallah was stripped of his US citizenship due to his connection with another persecuted Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation. He currently resides in Jordan.

In 2013, a Rwandan was sentenced to ten years in prison for naturalization fraud in addition to losing his citizenship based on war crimes allegations.

Arnaout received US citizenship in 1994 through marriage to his former wife, Nancy Catherine Noyes, a Florida nurse whom he met traveling in Pakistan.

“Denaturalization is required when an alien has concealed material facts or made willful misrepresentations which aided in the receipt of naturalization… Accordingly, Defendant’s naturalization must be revoked,” the government is now demanding.

Arnaout is accused of naturalization fraud on two issues: First, he claimed not to have worked for any organization other than BIF, designated by the US Department of Treasury as financiers of terrorism in 2002, and a telemarketing company.

“Defendant provided mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan with supplies and logistical support. By providing the mujahedeen with support and or money, Defendant knowingly affiliated himself with various organizations and associations that claimed to repel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan,” reads the complaint, which makes sweeping claims about connections and links to numerous terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda, no doubt supplied by the “intelligence” fraud Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project.

Secondly, the complaint states that in his naturalization application, Arnaout claimed not to have committed any crime for which he had not been arrested. In 2003, believing that he would not be able to get a fair trial in post-9/11 America, the charity head accepted a plea bargain. Government prosecutors are saying that he pled guilty, therefore he committed a crime and thus lied in his citizenship application.

Arnaout entered into the plea agreement in 2003, in which he pled guilty to a single count of racketeering. In that agreement, the prosecution acknowledged that neither Arnaout nor BIF had acted contrary to the interests of the United States, or had any ties to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. Arnaout’s statement of guilt acknowledges subverting on the order of $300,000 to $400,000 of charitable funds (out of a total of about $20,000,000) to buy boots, uniforms, tents, and an ambulance for Bosnian fighters, without the knowledge of the charitable donors. Arnaout also acknowledged that he used BIF funds to provide, in the fall of 1995, hunting boots to civilians and fighters in Chechnya who faced a winter of war against the Russian army, which had invaded Chechnya in 1994. Subsequently, Mr. Arnaout provided uniforms to the justice department of the Chechen government which was being formed in 1997.

Judge Conlon sentenced Arnaout to 136 months in prison. Upon appeal in February 2006, Conlon resentenced Arnaout to 120 months (10 years) in prison.

During the sentencing hearing in August 2003, US District Judge Suzanne Conlon told prosecutors they had “failed to connect the dots” and said there was no evidence that Arnaout “identified with or supported” terrorism. Arnaout will go in front of a different judge regarding his US citizenship.

How ironic, that this deeply religious man, who dedicated his life to providing emergency relief to war torn areas, who funded refugee camps, orphanages, hospitals, and schools for the poor and oppressed from Bosnia to China, is now being accused by the US government of “moral turpitude!”

“There’s an administrative, bureaucratic evil that is going on with respect to this War on Terror that is just unconscionable, it’s just stupid. There doesn’t seem to be any way for whoever’s running this country, primarily the intelligence agencies, to distinguish between people who are real threats and people who aren’t,” Arnaout’s attorney, Thomas A. Durkin told WGNtv.com.

“I am very disappointed that my government would be taking such a draconian position under all the circumstances of this case – particularly after all the tremendous hardships this criminal conviction has already visited upon Mr. Arnaout and his entire family,” wrote Durkin to US attorney Christopher Dempsey.

“Mr. Arnaout did not unlawfully engage in a RICO conspiracy during the naturalization period; nor did he provide false testimony or willfully misrepresent or conceal a material fact during his naturalization proceedings… Any attempt to strip Mr. Arnaout of his citizenship based upon the plea agreement he entered before Judge Conlon in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on February 10, 2003, would violate that agreement which was directly and personally negotiated by US Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Proceeding in such a fashion as you describe at this late date would, I submit, also violate a number of other constitutional rights of Mr. Arnaout and two of his children who have obtained naturalization through his citizenship status.”

The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) has taken on the task of fundraising for Arnaout’s legal expenses.