Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel

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Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel is a citizen of Yemen, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 498. American intelligence analysts estimate that Haidel was born in 1978, in Ta'iz, Yemen.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 Allegations
- 1.2 Testimony
2 Press reports
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 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 memoranda released in March 2005 had Haidel's Guantanamo detainee ID number penned on it.^[2]

The allegations Haidel would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

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

The detainee arrived in Afghanistan from Yemen via Pakistan.
The detainee traveled to Afghanistan for military training to prepare to fight.
The detainee stayed at an Arab guesthouse in Kandahar.
The detainee provided general information about an al Wafa office in Kabul.
Al Wafa has been designated as a terrorist organization.
The detainee trained at al Farouq.
The detainee received weapons training for the Kalishnikov rifle, the PK rifle, and rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
The detainee received mortar training while serving in the back lines.

b. The detainee participated in military operations against the coalition.

The detainee fought for the Taliban.
The detainee fought at the front line against the Northern Alliance.
The detainee was in Tora Bora during the U.S. air campaign.
The detainee was injured by a bomb blast in Tora Bora.
The detainee was captured by Northern Alliance forces during his retreat from Tora Bora.

[edit] Testimony

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

[edit] Press reports

On July 12, 2006 the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees.^[4] Haidel was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article his transcript contained the following comment:

"When I was in the Kandahar prison, the interrogator hit my arm and told me I received training in mortars. As he was hitting me, I kept telling him, “No, I didn’t receive training.” I was crying and finally I told him I did receive the training. My hands were tied behind my back and my knees were on the ground and my head was bleeding. I was in a lot of pain, so I said I had the training. At that point, with all my suffering, if he had asked me if I was Osama bin Laden, I would have said yes…. Am I an enemy of the United States? I never knew any Americans until I came to this prison. Americans should know who their real enemies are. What is my crime for being here for three years? That is all I would like to say."