Abdur Sayed Rahaman

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Abdur Sayed Rahaman (also transliterated as Shed Abdur Rahman) is a citizen of Pakistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.[1] Rahaman's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 581. American intelligence analysts estimate Rahaman was born in 1965, in Pishin, Pakistan.

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[edit] Identity

The documents prepared by American intelligence analysts for his Tribunal, identify him as Shed Abdur Rahman, but the detainee identifies himself as Abdur Sayed Rahaman.

Rahaman told his tribunal that American intelligence analysts had accused him of being three separate, and incompatible, roles in the Taliban.

The official list of the 558 detainees whose status had been reconsidered by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, released on April 20, 2006, listed his nationality as Pakistani.[2] The official list of all the detainees, released 25 days later on May 15, 2006, listed him as a citizen of Afghanistan.[1]

Dilawar, one of the two detainees who were beaten to death in Bagram in December of 2002, was arrested while driving an informal taxi. His three prisoners survived Bagram, and were sent to Guantanamo. One of them has been identified as "Abdur Rahim, a 26-year old baker from Khowst". [3] The list of detainees the Department of Defense released on May 15, 2006 is supposed to list all the detainees who had been held in military custody in Guantanamo.[1] But it does not list anyone named Abdur Rahim. Shed Abdur Fahman is the closest match.

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a small trailer, the same width, but shorter, than a mobile home. The Tribunal's President sat in the big chair. The detainee sat with their hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor in the white, plastic garden chair. A one way mirror behind the Tribunal President allowed observers to observe clandestinely. In theory the open sessions of the Tribunals were open to the press. Three chairs were reserved for them. In practice the Tribunal only intermittently told the press that Tribunals were being held. And when they did they kept the detainee's identities secret. In practice almost all Tribunals went unobserved.
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Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a small trailer, the same width, but shorter, than a mobile home. The Tribunal's President sat in the big chair. The detainee sat with their hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor in the white, plastic garden chair. A one way mirror behind the Tribunal President allowed observers to observe clandestinely. In theory the open sessions of the Tribunals were open to the press. Three chairs were reserved for them. In practice the Tribunal only intermittently told the press that Tribunals were being held. And when they did they kept the detainee's identities secret. In practice almost all Tribunals went unobserved.

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.

The authorities convened two Tribunals for Rahaman, three months apart.

The documents in his American dossier refer to him as Shed Abdur Rahman.[4][5] Rahaman suggested his continued detention might be due to a case of mistaken identity, as there was a Taliban leader with a very similar name.

Rahaman chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

[edit] Allegations

A memorandum summarizing the evidence against Rahman, prepard for his Combatan Status Reiew Tribunal, was among those released in February of 2005.[6]

a. The detainee is a member of the Taliban:
  1. The detainee was born in Pishin, Pakistan.
  2. The detainee joined the Taliban shortly after the Taliban took control of Kabul, Afghanistan in 1992 [sic]. [7]
  3. The detainee has been identified as holding a high-ranking position in the Taliban as a military judge. [8]
  4. In his position with the Taliban, the detainee tortured, maimed, and murdered Afghani nationals who were being held in Taliban jails.
  5. Pakistani authorities arrested the detainee in Fall 2001.

[edit] Testimony

Rahaman acknowledged being born in Pishin, but denied he had ever been a member of the Taliban.

He said that when the Pakistani authorities came to his house, they told him they were looking for looted antiquities. They didn't find any, but took him in for questioning, anyhow. At the Police Station he was told that he had to pay a bribe.

Eventually he was turned over to American authorities, who, apparently, were told that he was Abdul Rahim Zahid, a former deputy Minister under tha Taliban. In addition one interrogator insisted he was a brutal prison guard named Basha. He noted that the accusation that he was a military judge was new to him,

Rahaman insisted that he was a poor and uneducated man.

[edit] Press reports

On July 12, 2006 the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees.[9] Rahman was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article:

Detainee 581 was accused of being Abdur Zahid Rahman, the Taliban’s former deputy foreign minister. He explained to the tribunal that he was, in fact, Abdur Sayed Rahman.
rahman: The entire time I have been here, I have not seen anything proving that I did anything wrong…. I have been here for three years and the past three years, whatever I say, nobody believes me…. I never even hit my own child at home. Why would I go and torture and murder someone?... The only time I have ever been in Afghanistan was for two days to attend a funeral…. I was only a chicken farmer in Pakistan.

[edit] Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant

The Washington Post reports that Rahaman was one of 38 detainees who was determined not to have been an enemy combatant during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[10] They report that Rahaman has been released. The Department of Defense refers to these men as No Longer Enemy Combatants.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  2. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, April 20, 2006
  3. ^ Tim Golden, In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths, New York Times, May 20, 2005 - - mirror
  4. ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Abdur Sayed Rahaman's first Combatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 34-53
  5. ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Abdur Sayed Rahaman's second Combatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 68-90
  6. ^ Summary of Evidence (.pdf) prepared for Abdur Sayed Rahaman's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, September 4, 2004 -- page 70
  7. ^ The Taliban did not take control of Kabul in 1992. The communist puppet government installed by the USSR lost Kabul in 1992. Afghaistan was then beset by years of civil war between the groups that had fought the communists. The Taliban didn't take Kabul until September 1996.
  8. ^ The phrase "a military judge" was redacted in the memo released in February 2005, but was included in the transcript released on March 3, 2006.
  9. ^ "Why Am I in Cuba?", Mother Jones (magazine), July 12, 2006
  10. ^ Guantanamo Bay Detainees Classifed as "No Longer Enemy Combatants", Washington Post
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