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Abdu Ali al Haji Sharqawi

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Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj
Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj official Guantanamo portrait, showing him wearing thewhite uniformissued to compliant captives.
Born(1974-05-26)May 26, 1974(age 50)[1][2]
Taiz,Yemen
ArrestedFebruary 2002
Karachi,Pakistan
Detained atCIA'sblack sites
Guantanamo
ISN1457
StatusStill held in Guantanamo

Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj(born May 26, 1974 in Taiz, Yemen), also known asRiyadh the Facilitator,is aYemeniallegedAl-Qaedaassociate who is currently being held in the United States'Guantanamo Bay detention camps,inCuba.[3]He is accused of being a 'senior al-Qaida facilitator who swore an oath of allegiance to and personally recruited bodyguards for Osama Bin Laden.[4]

Al-Hajj arrived at theGuantanamo detention campson 20 September 2004, and has been held there for 19 years, 9 months and 22 days.[5][6]

Transportation to Guantanamo Bay[edit]

Human Rights groupReprievereports that flight records show two captives namedAl-SharqawiandHassan bin Attashwere flown fromKabulin September 2002. The two men were flown aboardN379P,a plane suspected to be part of the CIA's ghost fleet. Flight records showed that the plane originally departed fromDiego Garcia,stopped inMorocco,Portugal,then Kabul before landing inGuantanamo Bay.[7]

The Guardian reports that one of the two men has been released from US custody.[7]

A differing report shows al-Hajj was arrested by the CIA in Karachi, Pakistan, in February 2002, and rendered toJordan.He was transferred to Afghanistan in January 2004, where he was held at the CIA-run Dark Prison, then atBagram Air Base,and then finally transferred to Guantanamo in September 2004.[8]

Extraordinary rendition[edit]

Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj has written that after his capture, in February 2002, in Pakistan he spent two years in CIA custody in foreign interrogation centers, prior to his transfer to Guantanamo, in February 2004: [9][10] He writes that he spent 19 months in Amman, Jordan, and then five months in a secret interrogation center. While in Jordan he had been handed over to the custody of Jordan'sGeneral Intelligence Department.He wrote:

  • I was kidnapped, not knowing anything of my fate, with continuoustortureand interrogation for the whole of two years. When I told them the truth, I was tortured and beaten.
  • I was told that if I wanted to leave with permanent disability both mental and physical, that that could be arranged. They said they had all the facilities of Jordan to achieve that. I was told that I had to talk, I had to tell them everything.

Official status reviews[edit]

Originally theBushPresidencyasserted that captives apprehended in the"war on terror"were not covered by theGeneva Conventions,and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.[11] In 2004 theUnited States Supreme Courtruled, inRasul v. Bush,that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants[edit]

Combatant Status Review Tribunalswere held in a 3x5 meter trailer where the captive sat with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor.[12][13]

Following the Supreme Court's ruling theDepartment of Defenseset up theOffice for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[11][14]

Scholars at theBrookings Institution,led byBenjamin Wittes,listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations.:[15]

  • Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was listed as one of the captives who"The military alleges... are members of Al Qaeda."[15]
  • Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was listed as one of the captives who"The military alleges... were at Tora Bora."[15]
  • Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was listed as one of the captives who"The military alleges... served on Osama Bin Laden’s security detail."[15]
  • Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was listed as one of the captives who was a member of the"al Qaeda leadership cadre".[15]
  • Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was listed as one of the"82 detainees made no statement to CSRT or ARB tribunals or made statements that do not bear materially on the military’s allegations against them."[15]

Habeas Corpus[edit]

In June 2011, a federal Judge ruled that theObama administrationcan not use certain statements al-Hajj gave to justify his detention because the government did not rebut claims of torture in Jordan and Afghanistan. But the same judge rejected a defense attempt to suppress an incriminating statement al-Hajj made before his claims of torture.[16]

Formerly secret Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment[edit]

On 25 April 2011, whistleblower organizationWikiLeakspublished formerly secret assessments drafted byJoint Task Force Guantanamoanalysts.[17][18] His 11-pageJoint Task Force Guantanamo assessmentwas drafted on 20 July 2008.[19] It was signed by camp commandantRear AdmiralDavid M Thomas Jr. He recommended continued detention.

Joint Review Task Force[edit]

When he assumed office in January 2009,PresidentBarack Obamamade a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo.[20][21][22] He promised to institute a new review system. That new review system was composed of officials from six departments, where the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. When it reported back, a year later, theJoint Review Task Forceclassified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them. On 9 April 2013, that document was made public after aFreedom of Information Actrequest.[23] Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was one of the 71 individuals deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release. Al-Hajj was approved for transfer on 8 June 2021.[24]

References[edit]

  1. ^"JTF- GTMO Detainee Assessment".Department of Defense.Retrieved21 March2023.[permanent dead link]
  2. ^"Guantanamo Detainee Assessment"(PDF).Department of Defense.12 November 2015.Retrieved21 March2023.
  3. ^ OARDEC."List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006"(PDF).United States Department of Defense.Archived(PDF)from the original on 30 September 2007.Retrieved15 May2006. Works related toList of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through 15 May 2006at Wikisource
  4. ^"JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment"(PDF).therenditionproject.org.uk.
  5. ^ "Measurements of Heights and Weights of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (ordered and consolidated version)"(PDF).humanrights.ucdavis.edu, from DoD data. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 13 June 2010.
  6. ^ Margot Williams(3 November 2008)."Guantanamo Docket: Abdu Ali al Haji Sharqawi".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on 10 July 2011.Retrieved10 April2016.
  7. ^ab Richard Norton-Taylor,Duncan Campbell(10 March 2008)."Fresh questions on torture flights spark demands for inquiry".The Guardian.Archivedfrom the original on 14 March 2008.Retrieved17 March2008.Flight plan records show that one of the aircraft, registered N379P, flew in September 2002 from Diego Garcia to Morocco. From there it flew to Portugal and then to Kabul. Passenger names have been blacked out. However, Reprieve, which represents prisoners faced with the death penalty and torture, said that in Kabul the aircraft picked up Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash, two suspects who were tortured in Jordan before being rendered to Afghanistan and flown to Guantánamo Bay. Those rendered through Diego Garcia remain unidentified. In a letter to Miliband, Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: 'It is certainly not going to rebuild public confidence if we say that two people were illegally taken through British territory but then refuse to reveal the fates of these men.'
  8. ^ "Human Rights Watch, Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan (2008)".Human Rights Watch.Archived from the original on 15 January 2009.Retrieved8 January2009.{{cite news}}:CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. ^ Craig Whitlock(2 December 2007)."Non-Jordanian suspects sent by CIA to Amman spy center".The Boston Globe.Archived fromthe originalon 23 May 2011.Retrieved2 December2007.
  10. ^ Mariner, Joanne (10 April 2008)."We'll make you see death".Salon magazine.Archived fromthe originalon 13 January 2009.Retrieved5 November2008.
  11. ^ab "U.S. military reviews 'enemy combatant' use".USA Today.11 October 2007.Archivedfrom the original on 23 October 2007.Critics called it an overdue acknowledgment that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals are unfairly geared toward labeling detainees the enemy, even when they pose little danger. Simply redoing the tribunals won't fix the problem, they said, because the system still allows coerced evidence and denies detainees legal representation.
  12. ^Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in CourtArchived26 September 2015 at theWayback Machine,The New York Times,11 November 2004 -mirrorArchived30 September 2007 at theWayback Machine
  13. ^Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals"Archived9 March 2016 at theWayback Machine,Financial Times,11 December 2004
  14. ^ "Q&A: What next for Guantanamo prisoners?".BBC News.21 January 2002. Archived from the original on 23 November 2008.Retrieved24 November2008.{{cite news}}:CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  15. ^abcdef Benjamin Wittes;Zaathira Wyne (16 December 2008)."The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study"(PDF).The Brookings Institution.Archived(PDF)from the original on 19 May 2017.Retrieved16 February2010.
  16. ^ Tim Hull (8 June 2011)."Gitmo Detainee Seals Up Torture Confessions".courthousenews. Archived fromthe originalon 19 March 2012.Retrieved10 April2016.Next he was transferred to a so-called "dark prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to a recently unsealed ruling in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
  17. ^ Christopher Hope; Robert Winnett; Holly Watt; Heidi Blake (27 April 2011)."WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed -- Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West – while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose".The Telegraph (UK).Archivedfrom the original on 15 July 2012.Retrieved13 July2012.The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America's own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world's most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website.
  18. ^ "WikiLeaks: The Guantánamo files database".The Telegraph (UK).27 April 2011. Archived fromthe originalon 26 June 2015.Retrieved10 July2012.
  19. ^ "Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj: Guantanamo Bay detainee file on Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj, PK9YM-001457DP, passed to the Telegraph by Wikileaks".The Telegraph (UK).27 April 2011.Archivedfrom the original on 15 July 2012.Retrieved13 July2012.
  20. ^ Peter Finn (22 January 2010)."Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely".The Washington Post.Archivedfrom the original on 4 May 2015.Retrieved21 July2010.
  21. ^ Peter Finn (29 May 2010)."Most Guantanamo detainees low-level fighters, task force report says".The Washington Post.Archivedfrom the original on 10 May 2015.Retrieved21 July2010.
  22. ^ Andy Worthington (11 June 2010)."Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo?".Archivedfrom the original on 16 June 2010.Retrieved21 July2010.
  23. ^"71 Guantanamo Detainees Determined Eligible to Receive a Periodic Review Board as of April 19, 2013".Joint Review Task Force.9 April 2013. Archived fromthe originalon 19 May 2015.Retrieved18 May2015.
  24. ^"Unclassified summary of final determination"(PDF).Department of Defense.Retrieved21 March2023.

External links[edit]

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