Abdullah Abdulqadirakhum

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Abdullah Abdulqadirakhum is a citizen of China, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 285. The Department of Defense reports that Abdulqadirakhum was born on June 18, 1979, in Xinjian ^[sic] China.

Abdulqadirakhun is one of approximately two dozen detainees from the Uighur ethnic group.^[2]

Main article: Uighur detainees in Guantanamo

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 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.

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

During the winter and spring of 2005 the Department of Defense complied with a Freedom of Information Act request, and released five files that contained 507 memoranda which each summarized the allegations against a single detainee. These memos, entitled "Summary of Evidence" were prepared for the detainee's Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's names and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of these memos, when they were first released in 2005. But some of them contain notations in pen. 169 of the memos bear a hand-written notation specifying the detainee's ID number. One of the memos had a notation specifying Abdulqadirakhum's detainee ID.^[3] The allegations Abdulqadirakhum faced were:

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

The detainee departed Kyrgyzstan ^[sic] and traveled to Afghanistan, via Pakistan, in July 2001.
The detainee attended the Uigher ^[sic] training camp in the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan from September through mid October 2001.

b. The detainee participated in military operations against the United States and its coalition partners.

The detainee was present at, and participated in, the battle of Tora Bora.
The detainee retreated from his position in the Tora Bora Mountains to Pakistan in late 2001, at which point Pakistani authorities apprehended him and his unit.

[edit] Testimony

Abdulqadirakhum chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[4]

According to Abdulqadirakhum there were no Taliban or al Qaida at the place the Uighurs stayed.

Abdulqadirakhum acknowledged getting a limited amount of weapons training. Hs said he only fired once, a couple of bullets. He said his trainer was named Hassan Maksum. He was killed during the American bombing campaign. He said another Uighur, named Abdul Haq was in charge of the camp.

The training camp was incomplete, with no latrines. The Uighurs spent most of their time in construction.