Hisham Sliti

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Hisham Sliti, a Tunisian, is currently being held as an enemy combatant by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba.^[1] Sliti's Guantanamo ID number is 174. The list of the names of all the Guantanamo detainees states that his date of birth was February 12, 1966.

Little is known about Sliti before his detainment. Like other Guantanamo Bay detainees, charges against him have not been revealed. Clive Stafford Smith represents Sliti as one of his lawyers.

Sliti reported to his lawyers that he was beaten on August 5, 2005. Sliti claims that his interrogator threw a chair, and a mini-fridge at him, and then called in the initial reaction force.^[2] Sliti participated in a widespread hunger strike during July 2005, and then participated in a second hunger strike that started in August 2005 due to Qur'an desecration.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 Allegations
- 1.2 Testimony
2 References

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

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 Sliti's detainee ID.^[3] The allegations he would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

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

Originally from #############, the detainee traveled to Jalalabad, Afghanistan via Italy; Belgium; Paris, France; London, England; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Peshawar, Pakistan.
The detainee was aided in his travels from Belgium to Afghanistan by a known Belgian-based Islamic facilitator.
The detainee received training on the use of light arms at the Khaldan Camp near the Khowst ^[sic] Province , and the Derunta Camp in Jalalabad.
The detainee is associated with the Tunisian Combat Group.
The Tunisian Combat Group is a terrorist organization with links to al Qaida.
The detainee was associated with a group involved in providing false passports/visas to senior terrorist members as well as having promoted and facilitated their travels through several western countries.
The detainee lived in a Tunisian guesthouse in Jalalabad.
The Tunisian guesthouse in Jalalabad consisted of Tunisian immigrants that formed a network to train and fight against the Tunisian government.
In December 2001, the detainee was arrested at the Afghanistan border, while attempting ot cross into Pakistan.