Any Guantanamo Bay prisoner’s links to the ISI were seen by the US as a terrorism marker. The Pentagon listed association with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate as a measure of a Guantanamo Bay detainee’s “capabilities and intentions to pose a terrorist threat if the
detainee were given the opportunity.”
The 17-page document, one of hundreds of Wikileaks documents pertaining to Guantanamo Bay, gives a detailed list of “indicators” of the terrorism potential of a detainee. “The indicators are designed to point to the threat a detainee would pose if he were to be released from custody, and the intelligence that a detainee potentially possesses…”
The document is titled, “JTF-GTMO Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants” and dates to 2007.
The document lists hundreds of terrorism indicators. For example, the nature of a detainee’s capture, his being a student from certain Islamic institutions, the use of known al Qaeda cover stories like being a seller of honey.
In pages 12-13, one group of indicators are titled “member of, or affiliation with, the Taliban or Anti-Coalition Militia.” This subsequent list noted “association with Pakistan ISID, especially in the late 1990s up to 2003.” The ISI link is described as among the “primary indicators for assessing a detainee’s affiliation with the Taliban.”
The document’s final section has a list of “associated forces” of Al Qaeda. It defines these as “militant forces and organizations with which Al Qaeda, its network and the Taliban “had or has an established working, supportive or beneficiary relationship for the achievement of common goals.”
The lists includes Al Qaeda affiliates across the Arab world, Pakistan-based terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Harakat ul Jihad I Islami, as well as the “Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.”
Files also contain references, apparently based on intelligence reporting, to the ISI supporting, or even assisting al Qaeda.