Muhammed Qasim

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The caption to this poster, distributed by the CIA in Afghanistan, reads: “You can receive millions of dollars for helping the Anti-Taliban Force catch Al-Qaida and Taliban murderers. This enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."

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.

Muhammed Qasim is a citizen of Afghanistan who is reportedly held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.^[1]

1 Identity
2 Capture
3 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
4 References

[edit] Identity

The Philadelphia Inquirer printed an article by David L. McColgin, who described working as a lawyer for a Guanntanamo captive named Muhammed Qasim.^[1] The US Department of Defense released what it described as a full list of all the captives who had been held, in military custody, in Guantanamo.^[2] It only lists two individuals named Qasim: A Yemeni named Khaled Qasim, and a Uyghur named Abu Bakr Qasim. Muhammed Qasim is not listed. McColgin wrote that Qasim attended his Combatant Status Review Tribunal in 2004.

Main article: Guantanamo detainees missing from the official list

[edit] Capture

McColgin wrote that Qasim was captured on February 7, 2003.^[1] He was captured by a mixed force of Americans and Afghans. He believes that a neighbor falsely alleged he was a member of the Taliban so he could be paid a bounty.

McColgin wrote that Qasim was a thirty year old farmer, in Zormat, Afghanistan, who supported his mother and a sister.^[1]

[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.

Qasim chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.