Mehrabanb Fazrollah

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Mehrabanb Fazrollah is a citizen of Tajikistan held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID number is 77. The Department of Defense reports that Fazrolloah was born on October 18, 1962, in Pyandj ^[sic], Tajikistan.

[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 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 Fazrollah's detainee ID.^[2] The allegations he would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a. The detaine is a member of the Taliban.

1. The detainee voluntarily traveled from Tajikistan to Afghanistan in March or April of 2001.

b. The detainee participated in operations against the United States and/or its coalition partners.

1. The detainee admitted to fighting with the Taliban.
2. The detainee was captured carrying a Kalishnikov ^[sic] rifle and ammunition.

[edit] Testimony

There is no record that Fazrollah chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

[edit] References

1. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
2. ^ Summary of Evidence (.pdf) prepared for Mehrabanb Fazrollah's Combatant Status Review Tribunals - September 30, 2004 - page 71