Shawki Awad Balzuhair

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Shawki Awad Balzuhair (born July 24, 1981) is a citizen of Yemen, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 838. The Department of Defense reports that Balzuhair was born on July 24, 1981, in Hadramout, Yemen.

[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 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 Tribunal. 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.

To comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, during the winter and spring of 2005, the Department of Defense released 507 memoranda. Those 507 memoranda each contained the allegations against a single detainee, prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's name and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of the memoranda. However 169 of the memoranda had the detainee's ID hand-written on the top right hand of the first page corner. When the Department of Defense complied with a court order, and released official lists of the detainee's names and ID numbers it was possible to identify who those 169 were written about. Shawki Awad Balzuhair was one of those 169 detainees.^[2]

[edit] Allegations

a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida:

The detainee traveled from Yemen to Afghanistan via the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, in April/May 2001.
The detainee received training in small arms, grenades, explosives, mortars, and infantry tactics at al Farouq on three separate occasions prior to 11 September 2001.

b. The detainee participated in military operations against the United States and its coalition partners:

The detainee served in the front lines near Bagram, Afghanistan prior to 11 September 2001.
The detainee repeatedly traveled between his guesthouse in Kabul and Omar Saif, Afghanistan after 11 September 2001, until he was ordered to retreat.
The detainee retreated from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Iran and then back to Pakistan, staying in safe houses for weeks to months at a time.
The detainee was captured by Pakistani police in a raid on a Karachi apartment on 11 September 2002.