Moammar Badawi Dokhan

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Moammar Badawi Dokhan 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 317. The Department of Defense reports that Dokhan was born on July 17, 1972, in Damascus, Syria.

[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 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.

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. Moammar Badawi Dokhan was one of those 169 detainees.^[2]

[edit] Allegations

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

The detainee traveled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan with the stated intention of joining the Taliban.
The detainee's name was contained on a list of incarcerated associates found on a computer used by suspected al Qaida members in Pakistan in early 2002.
The detainee's name was contained on a list of captured mujahidin found in Pakistan on a hard drive associated with a high-ranking al Qaida operative.

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

The detainee served as a rear echelon guard and manned an observation post in the area of Bagram, Afghanistan.
The detainee carried a rifle while on duty at the observation post.