Abdelaziz Kareem Salim al-Noofayee

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Abdelaziz Kareem Salim al-Noofayee is a citizen of Saudi Arabia, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 687.

When the Department of Defense was forced to comply with US District Court Justice Jed Rakoff's court order to release the documents from the Guantanamo detainees's Combatant Status Review Tribunals al-Noofayee's name came to light.^[2]

Al-Noorayee is notable because one of the reasons he was detained was that he was captured wearing a Casio F91W digital watch.^[3] He told his Tribunal: "The guards here wear the same Casio watch I did. The watch I was wearing looked like the same one the guards wear here. Does that mean they're al-Qaeda members?"

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
2 Administrative Review Board hearing
3 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 his 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.

Casio F91W, in daily alarm mode. The watch is currently set to ring an alarm, and flash its light, at 7:30am.

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.

[edit] Allegations

A memorandum summarizing the evidence against al-Noofayee prepared for his Combatan Status Reiew Tribunal, was among those released in March of 2005.^[4] The allegations al-Noofayee faced were:

a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida and the Taliban:

Originally from ########## the detainee traveled to Karachi, Pakistan in late 2001 via Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Damascus, Syria; Tehran, Iran; and Lahore, Pakistan.
In ############# the detainee was arrested by Pakistani police during a raid on the Issa guesthouse, in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Several of the individuals arrested in the raid on the guesthouse in March 2002 were identified by a senior al Qaida associate.
Detainee was captured with a Casio F-91W watch, known to be used by members of al Qaida.
The F-91W Casio watch has been associated with numerous al Qaida and radical Islamic terrorist improvised explosive devices.
The detainee trained at the Khalden Camp around 1997.
The Khalden Camp was run by a senior al Qaida operative.

[edit] Transcript

Al Noofayaee chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[5]

The allegations against al-Noofeayee, as repeated in the transcript, fills out the redacted passages redacted in Summary of Evidence memo.^[5] The transcript states that al-Noofayee is a citizen of Saudi Arabia. The transcript states that al-Noofayee was arrested in March 2002.

[edit] Response to the allegations

Al Noofayee's Personal Representative summarized Al Noofayee's response to the allegations from his interview with him:

Al Noofayee acknowledged traveling to Pakistan, for medical treatment. He traveled to Pakistan prior to September 11, 2001, his travel documents were perfectly in order, and he has never traveled to Afghanistan.
Al Noofayee acknowledged being captured in a guesthouse. Al Noofayee went to the guesthouse when he heard the Pakistani police were randomly arresting Arabs.
Al Noofayee said that he had no knowledge of the political affiliation, or anything else, about the other guests, except that they seemed busy reciting the Koran. The guesthouse was recommended to him by the Tabligh organization.
Al Noofayee acknowledged he had worn a Casio watch. He didn't know whether it was a F91W. He didn't understand how a watch could implicate him in terrorism. He pointed out it was a very common watch, and that many of the Guantanamo guards wore the same kind of watch.
Al Noofayee denied that he had received training at the Khalden training camp in 1997. He had never heard of the Khalden training camp prior to his capture, and, he repeated that he had never traveled to Afghanistan.

[edit] Response to Tribunal officer's questions

Al Noofayee said he was about 27 years old, that he considered himself a student, but that he had graduated from high school at 19, and between graduating and traveling to Pakistan he had worked elling vegetables in a bazaar -- the heavy labor for which he blamed his back problems.
Al Noofayee denied ever receiving any kind of military training.
Al Noofayee could not name a particular incident that triggered his back trouble.
The outpatient medical treatment Al Noofayee was receiving in Pakistan was bi-weekly massages and "tablets".

[edit] Al Noofayee and Tablighi Jamaat

The Tribunal's President asked questions to establish the timeline from Al Noofayee's arrival in Pakistan, until his capture.

Al Noofayee said he had arrived in Pakistan approximately two weeks prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He said that the Pakistani government started arresting all Arabs. So he asked for a recommendation of a safe place he could stay from an NGO that helped traveling muslims, the Tablighi Jamaat. They recommended the guest house were he was eventually captured. He didn't know that some of the other guests were members of al Qaeda. He kept to himself and didn't interact with them.

[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.

Al Noofayaee chose not to attend his Administrative Review Board hearing.^[6] His Assisting Military Officer distributed copies of the notes he made during his interview with Al Noofayee. Those notes were not included with the transcript of his hearing.