MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about Salim Hamdan, an admitted driver for Osama bin Laden who was convicted on charges of supporting al Qaeda by a military jury at Guantanamo Bay earlier this week. Said Boujaadia, the suspected terrorist who was captured with Hamdan in Afghanistan in late 2001, has received far less attention. In some ways, Boujaadia's story is more intriguing.

Like Hamdan, Boujaadia was once a detainee at Gitmo. But Boujaadia never received the high-profile trial Hamdan did. Instead, Boujaadia was repatriated to his native Morocco in May of this year--more than one year after authorities at Gitmo authorized his transfer. Boujaadia was held at Gitmo as a witness for Hamdan's trial, and when his role there ended Moroccan authorities took custody of him. But, Boujaadia's transfer does not mean he has been deemed an innocent. According to the last public accounts of his case, Moroccan authorities were investigating Boujaadia's plethora of ties to al Qaeda and global terrorism. Indeed, according to unclassified files produced by the U.S. government at Gitmo, the Moroccans have much to investigate.

On November 24, 2001, hundreds of troops loyal to Afghan leader Gul Agha Shirzai seized the village of Takhteh Pol in Northern Afghanistan. In the process they cut off the major highway leading out of the village and, within two hours, found themselves in the middle of a gun fight with a group of Arabs who were all associates of Osama bin Laden. One of the Arabs, according to the U.S. government, was one of bin Laden's sons-in-law. Three Arabs were killed in the shootout. And two others, Boujaadia and Hamdan, were captured along with shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles.

Prior to his time in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. government's files, Boujaadia had consorted with high-ranking members of two known al Qaeda affiliates: the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group ("GICM") and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ("LIFG"). Suspiciously, Boujaadia even allegedly made a trip to Spain with associates of both groups in 2000. However, the government's files do not indicate the purpose of their trip.

In an attempt to disguise their disturbing ties, Hamdan and Boujaadia "agreed to tell interrogators a cover story that they worked for the Al Wafa organization." But it was not much of a cover. Al Wafa is a Saudi-based organization that has posed as a charity but, in reality, was a front for the Taliban's and al Qaeda's operations. Al Wafa has been designated as an entity that supports terrorism under Executive Order 13224. Dozens of detainees at Gitmo, according to the U.S. government's files, have ties to al Wafa. The organization was particularly adept at smuggling terrorist operatives into and out of Afghanistan--including through transit hubs inside Iran. Indeed, Boujaadia traveled with his family to Afghanistan in July 2001 via Damascus, Syria, Tehran, Iran, and Meshad, Iran.

Boujaadia's trip to Afghanistan was facilitated by an especially dangerous al Qaeda operative named Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi, aka "Riyadh the Facilitator." Both al-Sharqawi and Boujaadia's brother-in-law, Zuhair Hilal Mohamed al-Tbaiti, were implicated in an al Qaeda plot to attack British and American ships in the Strait of Gibraltar in 2002. Indeed, according to the U.S. government, al Qaeda sent Zuhair "to Morocco to identify United States targets for future attacks" in mid to late January 2002. Moroccan authorities short-circuited the plot when they detained three Saudis, including Zuhair, and four native Moroccans. Zuhair, who was arrested in Morocco on May 12, 2002, was convicted of plotting the attacks and received a 10-year prison sentence in February 2003.