Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri

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Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri is a citizen of Morocco, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.[1] His detainee ID number is 197. Shokuri reports his date of birth as April 5, 1968. The Department of Defense reports that he was born in Asafi, Morocco.

Contents

[edit] Press reports

On July 12, 2006 the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees.[2] Shokuri was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article his transcript contained the following comment:

[T]he only way I know the United States is through movies from Hollywood or through cartoons. I’m a big fan of a lot of their singers…. [T]he first time I saw an American soldier was at Kandahar Air Base…. When I first saw myself in Kandahar, it was like I was in a cinema or a movie. I saw a 1996 movie called The Siege. The movie was about terrorists carrying out terrorist attacks in the United States…. [In the movie] the CIA and FBI were not successful in finding that terrorist group and the United States Army interfered and gathered all the people of Arabic descent and put them in a land cage or camp just like it happened in Kandahar. I was shocked, thinking, “Am I in that movie or on a stage in Hollywood?”… Sometimes I laugh at myself and say, “When does that movie end?”

[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.

[edit] Allegations

A memorandum summarizing the evidence against Shokuri prepared for his Combatan Status Reiew Tribunal, was among those released in March 2005.[3] The allegations Shokuri faced during his Tribunal were:

a. The detainee was associated with the Taliban and al Qaida:
  1. The detainee traveled in June 2001 from Damascus, Syria, through Turkey and Iran, to Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
  2. Prior to helping form the Moroccan Islamic Fighting Group (GICM), the detainee was involved with Jama'at Al-Tablighi [sic].
  3. Jama'at Al-Tablighi [sic] is a Pakistan-based Islamic missionary organization that is being used as a cover to mask travel and activities of terrorists, including members of al Qaida.
  4. The detainee was the ########## ######### ######### of the GICM.
  5. The GICM is associated with and supported by other known terrorist groups, including the: Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Hizb-E Islami Gulbuddin [sic] (HIG), al Qaida, Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), Egyptian National Tarouat Salah, the Taliban and the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA).
  6. The GICM allies itself with al Qaida and has supplied personnel for al Qaida for operations abroad.
  7. The GICM, with assistance from al Qaida, planned to carry out attacks against U.S. citizens in foreign countries.
  8. The detainee associated with known al Qaida members.
  9. The detainee is associated with a former Afghan-Arab linked to an al Qaida sleeper cell in Morocco.
  10. The detainee obtained AK-47 rifles and a mortar from the Taliban.
  11. Members of the GICM trained in an area between Kabul and the front lines against the Northern Alliance, where they fired AK-47 Rifles [sic].
  12. The detainee left Jalalabad on foot in November 2001, when the city fell, and was arrested by the Pakistani Police on 19 December 2001 as he tried to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

[edit] Transcript

Shokuri chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[4]

The allegations were read aloud, and recorded in Shokuri's transcript.[5] The version read aloud did not have his position within the GICM -- he was the head of the GICM's Military Commission. The version read aloud listed fewer terrorist groups associated with the GICM.

[edit] Opening statement

Shokuri said that all the detainees he had talked with, who had been allowed to meet with the lawyers handling their habeas corpus cases had been told they should not participate in their Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[5] But Shokuri said he chose to participate anyhow, because he had faith in his total innocence.

Shokuri said he had lived for six years in Pakistan, where he studied and did humanitarian work. Following his stay in Pakistan he traveled to Yemen and Syria. During the summer of 2001 he traveled to Afghanistan -- for humanitarian work.

[edit] Testimony

[edit] Release and disappearance

Various press reports assert that Shokure was transferred back to Morocc on October 12, 2006.[6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, April 20, 2006
  2. ^ "Why Am I in Cuba?", Mother Jones (magazine), July 12, 2006
  3. ^ Summary of Evidence memo (.pdf) prepared for Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - November 16, 2004 - page 69
  4. ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 70-85
  5. ^ a b Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Yunis Abdurrahman Shokuri's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 70-85
  6. ^ 10th Moroccan detainee transferred home from Guantanamo, International Herald Tribune, October 23, 2005
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