Darunta training camp


The Darunta training camp was one of the most well-known of many military training camps that have been alleged to have been affiliated with al Qaeda.

Training with poisons

published a story in which they claimed to have acquired videotapes showing al Qaeda experiments poisoning dogs with chemical weapons, at Darunta.

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.
According to a paper by Hekmat Karzai, published by the Pentagon
the camp was really a complex of four camps, eight miles from Jalalabad.
Karzai wrote that the four camps were:
Abu Khabab camp
Assadalah Abdul Rahman camp
  • operated by Assadalah Abdul Rahman -- "the son of blind cleric Omar Abdel Rahman"
    • Hizbi Islami Camp
  • "operated by a group of Pakistani extremists fighting in Kashmir"
    • Taliban camp
  • "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.
    The documents from some Guantanamo captives, such as Abbas Habid Rumi Al Naely,
    state that the Khalden training camp was also located in Darunta.

    Administration

    Some sources claim the director of the camp was Midhat Mursi.

    Dispute over whether Darunta was an al Qaeda camp

    During his Administrative Review Board Abdul Bin Mohammed Bin Abess Ourgy
    acknowledged attending the Darunta camp, but he disputed that it was affiliated with al-Qaeda.
    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