[12] According to information about him provided by the Pentagon, Hadi was a key paramilitary commander in Afghanistan during the late 1990s before taking charge of cross-border attacks against the US and coalition troops from 2002 to 2004.

He was accused of commanding attacks on Afghanistan coalition forces and involvement in plots to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Following the American invasion in 2001, he clashed with Ahmed Khadr arguing that front line battle would prove more useful than guerilla tactics around Shagai, Pakistan.

Al-Hadi rose to the rank of Major in Saddam Hussein’s army before moving to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union.

Newsweek asserted that Zarqawi had left a bad impression on his fellow veterans of the struggle to evict the Soviet invaders and that bin Laden didn't trust him.

[16] A captured letter[17] 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.

[20] 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".

[24] 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.