Ravil Mingazov’s 22-year ordeal in detention from the U.S. notorious detention facility at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan to the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to solitary confinement in the United Arab Emirates ended this week with his repatriation to Russia, his son, Yusuf, told The Intercept.
A gaunt Mingazov was flown directly into Russia on Wednesday morning from the UAE and dropped at his elderly mother’s doorstep, to her shock and disbelief, according to Yusuf.
“We still don’t know if he’s safe there or not.”
For years, Mingazov’s advocates, including his family, have warned about the potential for further human rights abuses should he be repatriated to Russia, which he fled in 2000 over persecution of his Muslim faith. Now, his lawyer and son are expressing guarded optimism that he is at least out of solitary confinement in the UAE.
“I hope that Ravil will now be able to live his life in peace, with time to recover among family and friends,” said Gary Thompson, Mingazov’s lawyer.
Yusuf is relieved to be able to speak freely with his father again. “I’m very happy finally that he’s free but at the same time I’m not happy that they’ve done it the way they have,” he told The Intercept. “We still don’t know if he’s safe there or not.”
The Biden administration, the UAE Embassy in Washington, and Russian embassies in the UAE and the U.S. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Photo: Courtesy of Yusuf Mingazov
The Mingazov news comes after a tumultuous few weeks for Guantánamo detainees. Last week, three of the four defendants charged for the 9/11 attacks, who remain imprisoned at the base — 30 people remain in total — agreed to plea deals. Amid a firestorm of criticism, the deals were quickly scuttled by the Biden administration, the latest delay in a decadeslong prosecution. A military judge has asked to review the deals, reviving the possibility they may still go through.
In 2016, Mingazov, who was never charged with any crimes, was one of 23 detainees sent by the Obama administration to the UAE, a third country, because they could not be safely returned to their native country. In some cases, the UAE alternative owed to instability or security concerns, as with a raft of Yemeni detainees. In Mingazov’s case, it was a credible fear of persecution and torture.
Mingazov and his lawyer believed that the secret bilateral agreement negotiated by State Department officials and the UAE would guarantee a life of freedom, reintegration, and rehabilitation within the small Muslim-majority country. The agreement was said to include provision to prevent further transfers to countries where detainees faced certain credible risks like torture, a restriction on repatriation that is backed by international law.
Instead of being provided care, however, all of the men were placed in another Guantánamo-esque prison complex and held incommunicado for years. The UAE eventually expelled all the Guantánamo detainees it had promised to keep to their countries of origin, leaving Mingazov behind as the only former Guantánamo detainee still in the Emirates.
As of Wednesday, Mingazov too was gone.
Multiple human rights organizations and Mingazov’s immediate family have for years sought to block this outcome. Fears escalated last October when Russian and Emirati officials pushed the prisoner to accept a Russian offer of custody.
Choosing to remain in solitary confinement in the UAE, Mingazov refused to sign documents that would trigger a return to Russia. Now he has been sent without his sign-off, according to his son.
Advocacy groups have been raising public awareness about Mingazov’s situation for years. Nonetheless, he languished in solitary confinement for the entirety of his seven years in the UAE. He had no access to a lawyer, and phone calls to his family were cut off, then denied completely, when he would start to speak about his conditions, his son explained.
Still, he remained in UAE custody, refusing to be repatriated despite repeated assurances by the Russian ambassador to the UAE that he “would not be persecuted.”