Mohammed Ali Shah

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Mohammed Ali Shah (Persian: محمد على شاه) is an Iranian citizen currently detained in Camp Delta at the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay.^[1] Shah's Guantanamo detainee ID is 1154.

1 Press reports
2 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
3 Administrative Review Board hearing
4 Return to Afghanistan
5 References

[edit] Press reports

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan Ali Shah fought with a moderate military group, backed by the United States.^[2]

After the Soviet withdrawal Ali Shah went to medical school, and became a doctor.^[2]

On September 25, 2005, Newsday published two articles about Shah. One of them contains extensive excerpts from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[3] The other contains a long discussion of Shah's ethnicity and how unlikely this made the allegations contained within his dossier. Ali Shah's dossier accused him of running guns to the Taliban, and providing safe passage and a refuge to the fleeing family of a senior Taliban commander...

"...Ali Shah's family, scholars and a former high-ranking Taliban official - voice astonishment at the charges, saying they betray a basic ignorance by U.S. forces of Afghan politics."

That's because Ali Shah is a Shia Muslim, a member of the sect most brutalized by the Taliban and least likely to have any motive to help them. The American suggestion that a hard-line Taliban commander would send his family to Iran for safety is like imagining a former World War II Nazi general hiding his family in Israel, the Afghans said."

The Washington Post quoted from Shah's Administrative Review Board hearing.^[4]

"Shah said that if he is freed, he would return to his hometown of Gardez to work as a doctor.

"'I would like to serve my people and my government under the light of peace and freedom,' he said."

Shah was profiled in the diary of an Afghan-American law-student, who travels to Guantanamo to serve as a translator for Peter Ryan]], one of the lawyers the Center for Constitutional Rights organized to conduct habeas corpus appeals.^[5]

[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.

Shah chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[6]

[edit] Administrative Review Board hearing

Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".

They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat -- or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.

Shah chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.^[7]

[edit] Return to Afghanistan

The Washington Post reports that Ali Shah was one of sixteen detainees returned to Afghanistan in early October of 2006.^[8] They were held for several days by Afghan authorities before they were released on October 12, 2006.