Camp Khalden

The Khalden training camp (also transliterated as khaldan) was one of the oldest and most well-known military training camps in Afghanistan. While some reporters repeat descriptions offered by US intelligence officials that the camp was an al-Qaeda training camp, other reporters note that the camp was set up during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, with the support of the Central Intelligence Agency. Having attended one of these camps has triggered suspicion for many of the detainees in the War on Terror. The Khalden training camp was led by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in late 2001.

Ahmed Ressam, the Millennium Bomber, said he attended the camp using the alias "Nabil", beginning in April 1998 for five to six months. He said Khalden Camp then generally hosted 50–100 trainees at any time, and he trained there in light weapons, handguns, small machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs), explosives (including TNT, C4 plastic explosives, and black plastic explosives), poisons (including cyanide), poison gas, sabotage, target selection, urban warfare, tactics (including assassinations), and security. Trainees were from Jordan, Algeria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, and France. During the time he was there, he met Zacarias Moussaoui.

During the early years of the War in Afghanistan, the Bush administration described the Khalden Camp as an al-Qaeda training facility, an assertion used as evidence of an alleged connection to al-Qaeda for Abu Zubaydah and more than 50 other men held as enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Since 2006, however, this allegation has been contested by the 9/11 Commission Report, Brynjar Lia, head of the international terrorism and global jihadism at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment; and unclassified records from the detainees' tribunal reviews (CSRT)s at Guantanamo.

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