Abdul Helil Mamut

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Abdul Helil Mamut is a citizen of China, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 278. The Department of Defense estimates that Mamut was born in Kashkar, China, in 1977

Mamut is one of approximately two dozen detainees from the Uighur ethnic group.^[2]

Main article: Uighur detainees in Guantanamo

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 allegations
- 1.2 testimony
2 References

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct a competent tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were lawful combatants -- rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

Mamut chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[3]

[edit] allegations

The allegations against Mamut were:

The detainee traveled to Afghanistan via Pakistan to receive training at a Uighur training camp in Tora Bora.
The detainee arrived at the Uighur Tora Bora training camp on 17 June 2001.
The detainee received training on the AK-47 while at the Uighur Tora Bora training camp.
The detainee was at the Uighur Tora Bora training camp when it was bombed by US/Coalition forces in October.
The detainee evaded in the Tora Bora mountains for two and half months before being captured by Pakistani Security Forces along with a group of other Uighur fighters and Arabs.

[edit] testimony

Mamut testified that he originally traveled to Pakistan to study. He spent three years at a technical college in Lahore. But he ended up dropping out, because his academic preparation in China was insufficient. It was only after he was flunking out at the technical college that he decided to get any training he could. He had heard that some Uighurs were getting some training in Afghanistan, and he decided to join them.

He said there were no Arabs or Afghans in the camp. That he and his fellow Uighurs did get some minimal training on the AK-47, individually, one at a time, but most of their time was spent in construction work.

He acknowledged that he and his fellow Uighurs had fled when the camp when the USA bombed it. He denied that they had fled armed, or had joined any streams of armed refugees.