Mahmud Salem Horan Mohammed Mutlak Al Ali

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Mahmud Salem Horan Mohammed Mutlak Al Ali is a citizen of Syria, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 537. The Department of Defense reports that Mahmud Salem Horan Mohammed Mutlak Al Ali was born on May 5, 1974, in Doha, Syria.

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunal notice read to a Guantanamo captive. During the period July 2004 through March 2005 a Combatant Status Review Tribunal was convened to make a determination whether they had been correctly classified as an "enemy combatant". Participation was optional. The Department of Defense reports that 317 of the 558 captives who remained in Guantanamo, in military custody, attended their Tribunals.

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 Tribunal. 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

To comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, during the winter and spring of 2005, the Department of Defense released 507 memoranda. Those 507 memoranda each contained the allegations against a single detainee, prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's name and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of the memoranda. However 169 of the memoranda had the detainee's ID hand-written on the top right hand of the first page corner. When the Department of Defense complied with a court order, and released official lists of the detainee's names and ID numbers it was possible to identify who those 169 were written about. Mahmud Salem Horan Mohammed Mutlak Al Ali was one of those 169 detainees.^[2]

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

Detainee had a desire to join the Jihad after viewing the videos depicting the situation in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Detainee read a Fatwa in late September 2001 and within two weeks he began his journey to Afghanistan.
Detainee planned his travel from his country of residence, Kuwait, to Afghanistan by traveling through Iran and Syria.
Detainee traveled to Afghanistan with the intent to attend training at the al Farouq training camp, but the al Farouq training camp, because of changes necessitated after the events on 11 September 2001.
Detainee entered Afghanistan on 24 October 2001 and stayed at a Taliban center in Ferah.
Detainee was captured in a clinic in Kabul where he was treated for an illness.