Hammad Ali Amno Gadallah

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Hammad Ali Amno Gadallah is a citizen of Sudan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.<^[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID number is 712. The US Department of Defense reports he was born on November 13 1969, in Duba, Sudan Duba, Sudan.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
2 Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant
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.

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.

[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 Hammad Ali Amno Gadallah's detainee ID.^[2] The allegations Gadallah would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a. The detainee is associated with the Taliban or al Qaida.

The detainee stated that he worked as an accountant for the Society for the Revival of Islamic Heritage (RIHS).
The RIHS is listed in the United States Department of Homeland Security - Terrorist Organization Reference Guide.
Before being named The Society for the Revival of Islamic Heritage, the office in Peshawar, Pakistan, was called the Afghanistan Support Committee (ASC).
The ASC was designated on the United States Executive Order Asset Freeze List for suspected support of terrorism financing in late 2001.
The detainee's name was found in an Arabic-Language document in which numerous Sudanese Shaykhs and Islamic scholars identify the United States as the greatest enemy of Islam and call for support of Afghan brothers by any means.

[edit] Transcript

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

[edit] Testimony

Gadallah acknowledged working as an accountant for the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society.^[3] He was hired in April 2000.

Gadallah acknowledged that the organization had once been registered as the Afghanistan Support Committee -- in 1989.

Gadallah was asked about the charities funding of terrorist projects. Gadallah was able to assure them, in detail, how he felt the use of generally accepted accounting principles, he could assure them that none of the funds the charity administered were diverted to finance terrorist projects.

Gadallah asked some questions about the Arabic-language document referred to in the allegations. The Tribunal couldn't show it to him, or tell him the title, or tell him the names of the Sudanese Shaykhs or Islamic scholars identified the United States as an enemy. He pointed out that the document presumably described the views of its authors, and that if his name appeared in it that implied nothing about his views.

[edit] Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant

The Washington Post reports that Gadallah was one of 38 detainees who was determined not to have been an enemy combatant during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[4] They report that Gadallah has been released.