Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby

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Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby (born March 1, 1961) (also known as Salim Gherebi) is a citizen of Libya held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID number is 189. The Department of Defense reports that Gherebi was born on March 1, 1961, in Zletan, Saudi Arabia.

1 Access to US Civil Courts
2 Identity
3 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
4 Salim's legal representation
5 References

[edit] Access to US Civil Courts

Salem was the first Guantanamo captive to challenge whether he should have access to US Civil Courts.^[2] Human rights lawyer Stephen Yagman filed the appeal on Salem's behalf after being contacted by Salem's brother

Justice Matz ruled against Salim, but Matz's ruling was overturned on appeal, by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, on December 18, 2003.^[3]

On February 20, 2007 two of the three judges on US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that when the Military Commissions Act stripped the right to use habeas corpus from the Guantanamo captives retroactively, and that appeals, like Salim's, which were in process, were vacated.^[4]

[edit] Identity

While Salem's name is listed in recent DoD documents as Salem Abdul Salem Ghereby, in earlier court rulings the DoD referred to him as Salim Gherebi, Fallen Gherebi, Falen Gherebi and Faren Gherebi.^[2]

[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.

[edit] Salem's Combatant Status Review Tribunal dossier

The Associated Press acquired the entire unclassified dossiers prepared for 58 of the Guantanamo captives' Combatant Status Review Tribunals, and made them available for public download.^[5]

[edit] Unclassified Summary of basis for Tribunal decision

The "Unclassified Summary of basis for Tribunal decision" states Salem did not acknowledge his Personal Representative or his translator when they came to read his CSRT notice to him.^[6]

The document ended with:

Upon careful review of all the evidence presented in this matter, the Tribunal makes the

following determinations:

a. The detainee chose not to participate in the Tribunal proceeding. No evidence was produced that caused the Tribunal to question whether the detainee was mentally and physically capable of participating in the proceeding, had he wanted to do so. Accordingly, no medical or mental health evaluation was requested or deemed necessary.

b. As indicated in Exhibit D-a, the detainee made a conscious decision not to acknowledge the Personal Representative’s invitation to participate in the Tribunal process. Instead, he chose to recite verses of the Koran during their entire meeting. Accordingly, the Tribunal finds the detainee made a knowing, intelligent and voluntary decision not to participate in the Tribunal process.

c. The detainee is properly classified as an enemy combatant because he was part of or supporting A1 Qalda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.

[edit] Detainee Election Form

The Personal Representative recorded, on the "Detainee Election Form":^[7]

"Detainee recited versus ^[^sic] from the Koran during the entire interview, would not acknowledge the presence of either the PR or translator. When asked if he wanted to participate the PR took the lack of response as a negative."

[edit] Summary of Evidence

The allegations from the Summary of Evidence memo in Salem's dossier were:^[8]

a. Detainee is a member of al Qaida:

The Detainee is a Libyan national who has, since 1992, traveled to numerous areas of conflict throughout the Middle East and Former USSR. He claims to have arrived in Afghanistan in 1995.
The Detainee lost most of the fingers of his right hand in an explosives accident while in Tajikistan in 1994.
The Detainee was an al Qaida operative in Kabul.
One of the Detainee’s aliases appeared on a list of individuals who reportedly trained at the al Qalda training camp at Jihad Wahl, Afghanistan in 1996.
The Detainee was captured by Pakistani Forces in November 2001 aider entering that country without documentation or authorization.

[edit] Salim's legal representation

Salim's lawyer is Duke University professor Erwin Chemerinsky.^[9] He handled Salim's writ of habeas corpus.

In 2002 Chemerinsky said he received death threats for his efforts on Gherebi's behalf:^[2]

“I’ve never done anything that’s gotten the quantity of hate mail this has gotten,”
“I just feel it’s so important for the United States to follow the law, We’re not seeking to aid the terrorists, but no matter how heinous their crimes are, we have to follow the law.”