Surveillance photo of the Darunta training camp after U.S. bombardment.Darunta, Kabul, Peshawar, and some cities in Nangarhar, Afghanistan.
The Darunta training camp(also transliterated as Derunta) was one of the most well-known of many military training camps that have been alleged to have been affiliated with al Qaeda.[1][irrelevant citation]
Training with poisons
CNN published a story in which they claimed to have acquired videotapes showing al Qaeda experiments poisoning dogs with chemical weapons, at Darunta.[2]
Location
The camp is reported to have been near Jalalabad.
According to The Guardian, it was 15 miles from Jalalabad, just north of the village of Darunta across the dam.[3]
According to a paper by Hekmat Karzai, published by the Pentagon
the camp was really a complex of four camps, eight miles from Jalalabad.[4]
Karzai wrote that the four camps were:
"where religious militia were trained and indoctrinated to fight the Northern Alliance."
The CIA provided intelligence, pinpointing Osama bin Laden's presence, that enabled Northern Alliance allies to bombard him in at the Darunta camp in 1999.[5]
Some sources claim the director of the camp was Midhat Mursi.[7]
Dispute over whether Darunta was an al Qaeda camp
During his Administrative Review BoardAbdul Bin Mohammed Bin Abess Ourgy
acknowledged attending the Darunta camp, but he disputed that it was affiliated with al-Qaeda.[8][9]
He asserted that the Derunta camp was a non-al Qaeda camp, that dated back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, that it was originally run by the Hezbi Islami, and that after his attendance there the Derunta camp was one of the many non-al Qaeda camps that the Taliban shut down at al Qaeda's request.
Other Guantanamo captives have reported that the similarly well-known Khalden training camp was not an al-Qaeda camp, and was shut down in 2000,
at Osama bin Laden's request.
Alleged attendees
Individuals alleged to have attended the Derunta camp
The "millennium bomber"; admitted that he trained how to manufacture advanced explosives and make electronic circuits for six weeks at the camp.[17][18]
The detainee may have been involved in a November 1995 bomb attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad. He then escaped to the Shamshad and Deruntah camps in Afghanistan the day of the attack.
The Deruntah training camp has a poisons course that lasts approximately two weeks and teaches students how to poison food and drinks.
Hisham Sliti faced the allegation: "The detainee received training on the use of light arms at the Khaldan Camp near the Khowst Province , and the Derunta Camp in Jalalabad".[19]
Abdul Haddi Bin Hadiddi faced the allegation: "The detainee reportedly received military training on the use of light arms in the Derunta Camp in Jalalabad, Afghanistan."[14]
The detainee received military training at the Derunta camp in Jalalabad, Afghanistan and Khaldan camp near Khowst, Afghanistan.
The detainee received training on light arms while at the camps.
Derunta was one of Usama bin Laden's most important bases in Afghanistan. The camp provided training in the use of explosives and toxic chemical usage. Derunta also contained several secondary bases belonging to Usama bin Laden.
^Elizabeth Van Wie Davis (January 2008). "Uyghur Muslim Ethnic Separatism in Xinjiang, China"(PDF). Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved 2010-03-21. A January 2007 Chinese raid on a training camp in Xinjiang killed 18 terrorist suspects and one policeman. Seventeen more suspects were reported captured and explosives were seized. The raid was said to have provided new evidence of ties to "international terrorist forces." The raid marks the latest clash between Uyghur Muslim separatists and Chinese security services, reflecting a limited challenge to China's mainland stability. In Beijing's view, however, instability in Xinjiang could also bring instability to Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan. As with many of these disputes throughout Asia, the root causes of the problem are a complex mix of history, ethnicity, and religion, fueled by poverty, unemployment, social disparities, and political grievances.
^U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (February 2, 2010). "U.S. v. Ressam"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on March 1, 2012. Retrieved February 27, 2010.
