Fouzi Khalid Abdullah Al Awda

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Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al-Odah, is a Kuwaiti citizen, who has been detained without charge in Guantanamo Bay since 2002.[1][2] His Guantanamo detainee ID number is 232. The US Department of Defense reports that he was born on May 6, 1977, in Kuwait City, Kuwait.

Contents

[edit] Capture

According to an interview Fawzi's father, Khalid al-Odah, gave to Amnesty International, Fawzi traveled in 2001 to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border area in order to do charitable outreach work.[3] Following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, Fawzi fled Afghanistan, intending to return home to Kuwait. Fawzi successfully crossed the border into Pakistan but was then captured by Pakistani bounty hunters.

The bounty hunters handed Fawzi and eleven other Kuwaitis over to American authorities. The Kuwaitis were then transported to Cuba.

[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.
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.

Al-Odah chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[1] He gave a detailed, point by point reply to the unclassified allegations against him. There were also some accusations his interrogators kept contronting him with, which were not included in the unclassified allegations, that he chose to address.

[edit] Allegations

The allegations Al-Odah faced during his Tribunal were:[1]

a. Detainee is associated with Al-Qaida and the Taliban.
  1. In August or early September 2001, Detainee admits traveling through Afghanistan with Taliban members.
  2. Detainee admits firing an AK-47 at a training camp near Kandahar.
  3. Detainee admitted staying at a guesthouse with fighters armed with AK-47 rifles.
b. Detainee engaged in hostilities against the US or its coalition partners.
  1. The detainee admits carrying and AK-47 through the Tora Bora mountains for ten to eleven days during the U.S. air campaign in that region.
  2. Detainee was captured with five other men by Pakistani border guards.

[edit] Testimony

Al-Odah said:

  1. The reason for his trip was charity and religious education. His grandmother was dying of cancer. And she had asked him to seek out deserving people in need. His degree and his day job was Koran education He decided to go to Afghanistan to distribute his grandmother's gift. And he planned to pay visits to schools -- and training camps while there. He admitted having a Taliban escort -- necessary because the Taliban, as de-facto government, were run by the Taliban. He pointed out that representatives of the ICRC also required Taliban escorts.
  2. He spent approximately six hours at a training camp, for 12 to 14 year old boys. He spent part of that time giving his lecture. He acknowledged being taken to the camp's rifle range, and firing a few rounds, which he argued fell short of any suggestion of military training. He said it was the only time he fired a rifle in his entire life.
  3. He acknowledged being the guest of a hospitable resident of Jalalabad. His host did, intermittently, have two other guests. These guests carried rifles, just as all adult males carried rifles in this lawless country. He said he never talked with them and has no idea if they were members of the Taliban.
  1. He acknowledged carrying a rifle as he tried to make his way to the Pakistan border. Travel was very unsafe. He was asked what he would have done if he had encountered American soldiers. He replied he would have immediately and gratefully surrendered.
  2. He denied travelling with other men. He said he travelled alone, speaking as little as possible, as his accent would have betrayed that he was an Arab, not an Afghani. He denied being captured. He said he surrenedered himself when he got to the border, and reguested access to the Kuwaiti Consulate.
  • Al Odah said his interrogators kept accusing him of making ties to terrorist organizations during his trips to the United States. He acknowledged travelling to the United States many times, first, as a child, when his father, an officer in the Kuwaiti Air Force was serving as a liaison, and later as an adult. But he denied the accusation that those trips had anything to do with terrorism, or that he had ever had any association with terrorism.

The Tribunal's determination was that Al Odah had correctly been classified as an "enemy combatant".

[edit] Hunger Striker

On September 28, 2005, the Associated Press reported on a meeting between attorneys Thomas Wilner and Kristine Huskey and their Kuwaiti clients.[4] According to Wilner and Huskey, al-Odah and four of his compatriots, were on a hunger strike and had lost a dangerous amount of weight. They reported that al-Odah had been force-fed and could barely sit up.

Human Rights critics argue that the detainees retain the right to give or withhold consent to all medical procedures.

According to Fawzi's lawyer, Thomas Wilner, Fawzi wanted Wilner to file a legal request ordering the removal of his feeding tube. Wilner did file such a request because Fawzi's family was "frantic" and opposed the motion.

Wilner said that at the time, Fawzi looked "like a skeleton".

Al-Odah told his lawyers that camp authorities had warned the hunger strikers that they would start strapping them in "restraint chairs" during their force-feedings.[5]

[edit] Khalid Al-Odah's Washington Post Op-Ed

Fawzi Al-Odah's father, Khalid al-Odah, wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post, on September 2, 2006, entitled: "Put My Son on Trial -- or Free Him".[6] In the article Khalid argues that "hundreds of innocent men sit in prison", who could have been freed, if American authorities had granted them the protections of the rule of law and granted them a fair trial in a traditional court of law.

Al Odah's father stated that Fawzi had always been an admirer of the American system.[6]

The Washington Post identifies Khalid Al-Odah as the founder of the Kuwaiti Family Committee.[6] It states:

"The writer founded the Kuwaiti Family Committee four years ago to secure the legal rights of foreign nationals imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay."

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c documents (.pdf) from Fouzi Khalid Abdullah Al Awda's Combatant Status Review Tribunal
  2. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  3. ^ Interview with Khalid Al-Odah, father of Fawzi Al-Odah who is detained in Guantanamo Bay, Amnesty International, June 1, 2005
  4. ^ Lawyers Visit Detainees on Hunger Strike, Washington Post, September 21, 2005
  5. ^ Gitmo detainees say force led to drop in number on hunger strike at U.S. base, Findlaw, February 9, 2006
  6. ^ a b c Put My Son on Trial -- or Free Him, Washington Post, September 2, 2006

[edit] External links

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