Zahir stem from him serving as a translator for Abdul-Hadi. A captured letter dated June 13, 2002, and thought to be from Saif al-Adel, mentions an Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi who is relatively senior in al-Qaeda and is at large (probably in Afghanistan) at the time of that writing. The US DoD statement says that Abdul-Hadi "during 2002–04, was in charge of cross-border attacks in Afghanistan" and that before his capture, he "was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qai`da's affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets". Capture On April 27, 2007, it was reported that he was detained at Guantanamo Bay. He was previously held by the CIA. According to BBC News, US sources told them that al-Iraqi was arrested "late last year", meaning in 2006. On September 6, 2006, US President George W. Bush officially confirmed that the CIA maintained a secret network of overseas interrogation camps when he announced that fourteen "high value detainees", including al-Iraqi, had been transferred to Guantanamo, from those secret camps. Bush claimed that the transfer of these fourteen men had emptied the CIA's secret interrogation camps. Critics pointed out that Bush had not announced the closure of the camps and that the date of al-Iraqi's capture had not been made known. Al-Iraqi had a writ of habeas corpus filed on his behalf. The Department of Defense announced on August 9, 2007, that all fourteen of the "high-value detainees" who had been transferred to Guantanamo from the CIA's black sites had been officially classified as "enemy combatants". Although judges Peter Brownback and Keith J. Allred had ruled two months earlier that only "illegal enemy combatants" could face military commissions, the Department of Defense waived the qualifier and said that all fourteen men could now face charges before Guantanamo military commissions. Medical condition al-Iraqi suffers from a spinal condition. Camp authorities flew in a neuro-surgical team for an emergency operation, hours before Cuba was struck by Hurricane Irma. According to Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, his lawyers blamed the severity of his spinal condition on a decade of medical mistreatment. On the other hand, military spokespeople used him as an example of the high-quality treatment the USA provides to captives. According to his lawyers, a CT scan performed in January 2017 pointed out the need for surgery. Camp authorities only scheduled his surgery after he