Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mar'i

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Born in Khochna, Yemen Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mar'i was detained following a raid on his home in Pakistan on 23 September 2001 and is currently being held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.

In the list of Guantanamo detainees the US Department of Defense was forced to release on May 15, 2006 Mari'i's birthdate is unknown, but his place of birth is listed as Darmar, Yemen.^[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID nuumber is 577.

His 'capture' and subsequent labelling as a combatant are the area of some controversy since he claims I am not an enemy combatant, I am a sleeping combatant because I was sleeping in my home.[1]

Jamal claims he went to Kandahar, Afghanistan in May 2001, to prepare for field work gathering medical supplies for the Al Wafa charity. He then moved to Karachi, Pakistan where he worked with (or alternately was) the regional director, and purchased supplies from local hospitals to distribute to Al Wafa.

When his house was raided, Jamal was found with $13,000 which was to be used to bring his family to live with him. Following his detainment at Guatanamo, Jamal kept in contact with him family by telephone until Nov. 2003 at which point contact was lost between them.

[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.

Mar'i chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[2]

The unclassified allegations Alawi answered were:

a. The detainee has worked for various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) with al Qaida and Taliban connections:

Detainee admitted he was the director of the Baku, Azerbaijan branch of the Al Haramayn.
Al Haramayn is a NGO with known al Qaida connections.
Detainee admitted traveling to Kandahar (AF) in May 2001 to work in the al Wafa office.
Detainee admitted he was the director of the Karachi (PK) branch of al Wafa.
Al Wafa is an NGO with known al Qaida connections.
Detainee was apprehended during a raid on his residence on 23 September 2001 in Karachi (PK).
Alawi was capture in a facility with other individuals now detained by DoD and information related to weapons, explosives and tactics were found in that facility at the time of capture.

Alawi denied some of the allegations, and claimed that they contained contradictions. He admitted to being an employee of Al Haramayn, but not its director. He said that Al Haramayn was not an NGO, and that he was unaware of it having any terrorist connections.