Rashed al-Ghamdi

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Rashed al-Ghamdi is a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1]

Rashed al-Ghamdi was one of seven Saudis repatriated on February 22, 2007.^[1]

[edit] Identity

The Department of Defense exhausted all its legal appeals and faced a March 3, 2006 deadline to release the identities of the captives. The Department of Defense released a list of 759 names, which they described as a full list of all the captives who had been held, in military custody in Guantanamo.^[2]

Rashed al Ghamdi is notable because his name is not on the official list.

[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 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.

According to the Department of Defense all the captives who were held in military custody in the camp, between July 2004 and March 2005 had their status considered by a CSRT.