Sahkhrukh Hamiduva

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Sahkhrukh Hamiduva is a citizen of Uzbekistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 022. The Department of Defense estimates Hamiduva was born in 1983 in 1983 in Kokan, Uzbekistan.

Main article: minors detained in the global war on terror

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
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.

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

[edit] Witnesses

Hamiduva had reqested witnesses. The Tribunal’s President had determined that several of the witnesses were relevant. But the State Department had not been able to comply with the requests to find them. So they were determined to be “not reasonably available”.

[edit] Allegations

The allegations against Hamiduva in the "Summary of Evidence", presented to his Tribunal, were:

a. The detainee is associated with forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.

Originally from Uzbekistan, the detainee traveled to Kabul, Afghanistan via Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and Konduz, Afghanistan.
The detainee spent one and a half years in an Islamic Movement of Tajikistan camp near Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The detainee willingly became a soldier in the Mujahidin Army.
The detainee traveled to Afghanistan to participate in jihad against the Russians and the Northern Alliance.
The detainee had an AK-47 while at the camp near Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The leader of the Islamic Movement of Tajikistan is also the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a designated foreign terrorist organization.
The detainee was captured by the Northern Alliance in Mazar-E-Sharif [sic].

[edit] Testimony

Hamiduva told his Tribunal he was a refugee, who had fled Uzbekistan to avoid religious persecution. His father, five uncles, and his older brothers had all been arrested. He fled Uzbekistan as a teenager, lived for a while in a refugee camp in Tajikistan, and later lived in another refugee camp in Northern Afghanistan.

The camps he lived in in Tajikistan were refugee camps, not training camps. He did not know of any training camps, or of any militants or extremists visiting the refugee camp.

When he left Uzbekistan he was too young to have gone through his mandatory service in the Uzbek army. He never joined any other military group, and had never received any medical training, or ever owned any weapons.

A mentor near his Afghan refugee camp owned a garage and taught him to drive, and, after working for him for a while, he bought a car and started to work as a taxi driver.

After the American attack on Afghanistan he was able to seek out United Nations refugee workers, who assured him they would be able to help him safely return to Uzbekistan. They issued him with a travel document. He was driving north, in his taxi, with five or six Afghans, who were returning to Mazari Sharif, when he was captured.

His taxi was seized. The Afghans were let go. He was transferred to American custody.

After a month and a half of interrogation and investigation, with the help of his UN documents, his interrogators told him they were confident that he was who he said he was, and he would be released. So he was quite surprised when he was transferred to Guantanamo instead.

Hamiduva said he had not been treated well in Guantanamo, so he had not been that cooperative with his interrogators. He had been subjected to sleep deprivation, and camp authorities had been withholding medical care from him. In addition, he had seen the Guantanamo guards administer brutal beatings to other detainees, breaking their arms and legs.