Zohair Abdul Mohammed Al-Shorabi

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Zohair Abdul Mohammed Al-Shorabi is in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.^[1]

[edit] Identity

In early 2005 the Associated Press acquired the unclassified dossiers from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals of 58 Guantanamo captives, which they made available for download on their web-site. One of those dossiers bore the name of a captive named, Zohair Abdul Mohammed Al-Shorabi.

In early 2006 the Department of Defense exhausted all its legal appeals and was forced to release the transcripts from the Guantanamo captives Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Board hearings, and a complete list of all the captives names. The court order from US District Court judge Jed Rakoff gave the DoD a deadline of 6pm March 3, 2006. The DoD finally released what they said was a complete list of all 558 Guantanamo captives whose status was reviewed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on April 20, 2006.^[2]

Zohair Abdul Mohammed Al-Shorabi's name is not found on the April 20th list.

The DoD released what they said was a complete list of all 759 Guantanamo captives who were held, in military custody, in Guantanamo, on May 15, 2006.^[3]

Zohair Abdul Mohammed Al-Shorabi is not listed on the May 15th list either.

Captive 569's name, on both official lists, was Zuhail Abdo Anam Said Al Sharabi. American counter-terrorism analysts estimate that he was born in 1977, in Taiz. This name is the closest match to Al-Shorabi's

Main article: Guantanamo captives whose names were spelled inconsistently by the DoD

Main article: Guantanamo detainees missing from 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 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.

There is no record that Al-Shorabi chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

The Associated Press acquired a copy of the unclassified dossier prepared for Al-Shorabi's Tribunal, and made it available for download.^[1]

The allegations Al-Shorabi would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a The detainee is al Al Qaida fighter.

The detainee traveled to Afghanistan in 1999 in order to train at a “Libyan” camp near Kabul, Afghanistan.
At this camp, the detainee trained with pistols and Kalishnikov ^[sic] rifles.
With the above weapons, the detainee fired approximately five rounds per weapon each day over a period of 10 days.
The detainee claims that he personally observed Usama Bin Laden.