Ex-CIA analyst Johnson claimed the innocence of some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

Most of the people detained and placed in Guantanamo Bay had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States. This was stated by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Larry Johnson to Izvestia on January 10.

He said that the CIA then offered a reward to anyone who would extradite someone linked to al-Qaeda (a terrorist organization banned in Russia).

"The local warlords in Afghanistan quickly figured out what was involved. They could just grab someone on the street - a cab driver, a shepherd - turn him in, claim he was al-Qaeda, and get a lot of money from the United States. So a lot of Guantanamo prisoners had nothing to do with terrorism," Johnson reported.

He added that if he were the former detainees who were held for years in prison for a crime they did not commit, he would seek revenge.

"I would seek revenge against the country that violated my rights. So the US has created a problem for itself," he stated.

On January 1, it became known that the US military appeals court refused the head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin in a challenge to the replacement of the death penalty for life imprisonment for the organizers of the September 11 attacks.

Earlier, on December 31, the New York Post reported that those accused of involvement in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. could still avoid the death penalty because of the new court decision. According to the publication, plea bargains for the three terrorists are back on the table.

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists took four passenger planes hostage. Two of them were directed by the militants at the World Trade Center towers in New York, while the third was aimed at the Pentagon building in Washington. The fourth plane was also flying towards the American capital, but crashed near the city of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. As a result of the attacks, in addition to members of the terrorist group killed almost 3 thousand people.