Faruq Ali Ahmed

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Faruq Ali Ahmed (born December 12, 1983) was a Yemeni who was captured and detained in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] The Department of Defense reports that Ahmed was born on December 1, 1983, in Ta'iz Yemen.

Main article: minors detained in the global war on terror

Ahmed detainee number is 032.^[2]

[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 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.

Ahmed chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[3]

[edit] Allegations

The allegations against Ahmed were:^[3]

a The detainee associated with known members of the Taliban.

1. The Detainee traveled from his home in Yemen to Afghanistan via Pakistan in March 2001.
2. The Detainee admitted to giving his passport known by him to be a member of the Taliban.
3. The Detainee admitted to lodging at an official Taliban residence in Kabul, with a Taliban representative he met in Quetta Pakistan.

b The detainee was a member of al-Qaida.

1. The Detainee was observed carrying an AK-47 and wearing fatigues at UBL’s private airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
2. The Detainee was captured by Pakistani Forces as part of an organized group of 30 Mujhedeen after the fall of Tora Bora.

[edit] Transcript

Faruq Al Ahmed agreed to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[4]

[edit] Response to the allegations

[edit] Response to Tribunal questions

[edit] Testimony

Ahmed denied associating with members of the Taliban. He said his only concern was to teach children.

He acknowledged traveling to Afghanistan.

He acknowledged giving his passport to an associate, for safekeeping. He didn’t know whether this individual was a member of the Taliban.

He said the name of the man he paid to take him to Kandahar was Abdul Malik. He did meet him in Quetta. He did stay overnight at his house, in Kandahar, before proceeding to Kabul, the next day. In Kabul Malik introduced him to Abderrahman. He acknowledged that there were armed men in the Abderrahman’s house and he assumed they were members of the Taliban. But he stayed in his room and didn’t interact with them.

He denied being a member of Al Qaeda.

He denied ever carrying a rifle, going to an airport or wearing a uniform. He said he never saw any Taliban wearing any uniform beyond a headscarf.

He denied being captured as part of a group. He said he was captured alone.

He acknowledged that his travel expenses had been paid for by Muhammad Abduhma a man he met in Yemen who encouraged him to go to Afghanistan.

[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.

Ahmed chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.^[5]

[edit] Ahmed's writ of habeas corpus

Ahmed was the subject of an article in the February 3, 2006 issue of the National Journal.^[6] According to the article Ahmed's Personal Representative, from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, filed a protest to the fairness of his review, which was attached to his writ of habeas corpus. The article reported that the two more serious allegations against Ahmed, which he had flatly denied, were based solely on a denunciation by two other detainees, one of whom the FBI had warned was an unreliable liar. The article quotes from Ahmed's Personal Representative's protest:

"I do feel with some certainty that [the accuser] has lied about other detainees to receive preferable treatment and to cause them problems while in custody, Had the tribunal taken this evidence out as unreliable, then the position we have taken is that a teacher of the Koran (to the Taliban's children) is an enemy combatant (partially because he slept under a Taliban roof.)"

The other detainee who denounced Ahmed was Mohamed al-Kahtani, who the subject of a Time magazine expose. Al-Kahtani was held in an isolation unit and subjected to interrogation for 18 to 20 hours a day, for 48 days out of 54. The article notes:

"By late November 2002, an FBI agent wrote, Detainee 063, Mohamed al-Kahtani, was 'evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to nonexistent people, reporting hearing voices, cowering in a corner of his cell covered with a sheet for hours on end.)' "

The interrogation log that Time made available for download chronicles how the exhausting nature of Al-Kahtani's questioning brought on physical collapses. When Al-Kahtani collapsed medical technicians were called in to give him IV drips, enemas, force-feedings, to get him going again.

At the end of his interrogation Al-Kahtani identified the mug shots of thirty of the other detainees as bodyguards of Osama bin Laden. Ahmed was one of the thirty men Al-Kahtani fingered. Al-Kahtani was later to recant everything he confessed during his extreme interrogation.

The story identifies David Remes and Mark Falkoff of Covington and Burling, lawyers who volunteered through the Center for Constitutional Rights to represent Guantanamo detainees, as Ahmed's lawyers. They represent 16 other detainees. The article quotes Remes as saying he didn't actually expect that his clients would be innocent, that he volunteered because he felt every suspect deserved legal advice. But that when he and Falcoff traveled to visit the families of their clients, and looked into their backgrounds, they found all the evidence was consistent with their clients telling the truth about their lack of ties to terrorism.

Remes and Falkoff found that several other clients of theirs faced denunciation from al-Kahtani and from the other unnamed detainee that the FBI had identified as an unreliable liar.

[edit] One new allegation against Ahmed

According to the article, during his Administrative Review Board hearing, Ahmed faced one new allegation:

"The board told Farouq that a new piece of evidence had turned up against him, he later told his lawyers. Somebody had said, at some point in the past four years, that they had heard the name "Farouq" over a walkie-talkie during the battle of Tora Bora."

The article points out that Farouq is a very common personal name, noting:

"It's a first name, in fact, that is shared by the foreign minister of Syria, the culture minister of Egypt, the political director of the Palestinian Fatah party, the major general in charge of earthquake relief in Pakistan."

Farouq is also the name of one of al Qaeda's most well-known military training camps.

[edit] References

1. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
2. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense
3. ^ ^{a b} documents (.pdf), from Faruq Ali Ahmed's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - mirror - pages 126-131
4. ^ documents (.pdf), from Faruq Ali Ahmed's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - mirror - pages 126-131
5. ^ Summarized transcript (.pdf), from Faruq Ali Ahmed's Administrative Review Board hearing - page 36
6. ^ Guantanamo's Grip, National Journal, February 3, 2006