Amin Ullah

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Amin Ullah is a citizen of Afghanistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 848. American intelligence analysts estimate that he was born in 1956, in Chogha, Afghanistan.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
2 References

[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.

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.

Ullah chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[2]

[edit] Allegations

The allegations against the detainees were read out, and recorded, in most of the transcripts. They weren't recorded in Amin Ullah's transcript.

[edit] Statement

Amin Ullah told his Tribunal that he had served as a soldier for an Afghan leader he called President Dahoud. Mohammed Daoud Khan was the only President of the First Afghan Republic, from 1973-1978.

Amin Ullah told his Tribunal that the Taliban killed his brother, when they came to conscript him into their forces, threw him into jail, when he refused. He said his family found his body forty days after the Taliban conscripted him. Amin Ullah said that sometime later the Taliban came to conscript him, put him in jail, when he refused, and that while in prison he decided to comply. He was assigned to lead a squad of ten men. But he broke the rules, and would return to his family at night. The Taliban caught him, and punished him with imprisonment again.

He was leading his squad of ten when he heard on the radio of the American invasion. So he lead his squad of ten to desert, and return to Konduz, the area where they were all from, which had not yet been liberated from the Taliban. Amin Ullah fought against the Taliban in the liberation of Konduz, Mazar [sic] and Khanabad [sic]. After the capture of Khanabad the Northern Alliance demobilized him. He returned to his home, and when the last elements of the Taliban had been mopped up, four or five months later, he turned in his weapon, and those of the ten men he lead to a Sergeant Abdul Basir of the new Karzai government.

Afghan forces arrested him a year later. Amin Ullah said all the allegations against him were untrue.

Amin Ullah said that he like the new government, and he has welcomed the American help. He liked that his children were able to go to school.

[edit] Testimony in response to Tribunal officers' questions

Amin Ullah clarified that the first time he was imprisoned by the Taliban he was a soldier for Rabani, who was the official President of the rump of Afghanistan during the civil war that followed the ouster of the Communists, prior to the takeover of the Taliban.
Amin Ullah confirmed Sergeant Basir gave him a receipt for the weapons he turned in.

Q:	One of the accusations against you is that you assembled a team to hijack a United Nations aircraft. Do you know anything about that?
A:	The only airplanes I have seen are in the sky. When I was captured I traveled on a plane from Konduz to Baghram. I traveled from there to here. Those are the only times I have been in a plane. I was blindfolded and didn't know what the plane looked like. Yes, I have seen your planes in the sky. In Afghanistan all we have in this much bread and we have to work hard for it.
Q:	So the Taliban never asked you to try and hijack a U.N. airplane?
A:	*Who am I for them to ask me to do this kind of thing? They should contact some one bigger than me. I fought with your forces against them.*

[edit] Witness and evidence requests

When Amin Ullah was asked if he had any more evidence to present he reminded his Tribunal that he had requested two witnesses, he had provided their addresses, and he had requested the Tribunal send for the receipt for the weapons he turned in.