Mustaq Ali Patel

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Mustaq Ali Patel is a citizen of France, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 649.

Patel, Khaled Ben Mustapha, and Ridouane Khalid were the last French citizens held at the base. They were released in March 2005 and placed under formal investigation by a judge in Paris. Patel was born in India, around 1965, presumably the Western province of Gujarat, but has French nationality through his marriage to a Creole woman, Benedicte Acapandie, from Réunion.^[2] He was reported to have been an imam at a French mosque on the Indian Ocean island before going to Afghanistan. Some news reports also question his state of mental health at the time of his arrest by U.S. forces in 2001.

Contents 1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal 1.1 Allegations 1.2 Transcript 2 Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant 3 References

[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.

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

[edit] Allegations

The allegations Patel faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a. -- The general summary of the allegations that establish an association with terrorism were missing from the transcript. --

1. The Detainee traveled to Afghanistan after II September 2001.
2. The Detainee provided false identification upon his capture.
3. A visiting delegation from Saudi Arabia verified that the Detainee was not of the Saudi Nationality.
4. The Detainee even changed his story after his capture.
5. The Detainee was apprehended in Afghanistan.

[edit] Transcript

Patel told his Tribunal he was beaten by his inital captors to force him to falsely claim to be a Saudi. He claimed he had been beaten so badly that his memory and cognitive abilities had never recovered.

[edit] Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant

The Washington Post reports that Patel was one of 38 detainees who was determined not to have been an enemy combatant during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[4] They report that Patel has been released. The Department of Defense refers to these men as No Longer Enemy Combatants.

[edit] References