Abdul Karim Irgashive

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Abdul Karim Irgashive is a citizen of Tajikistan held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.^[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID number is 641. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on May 7, 1965, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

[edit] Identity

The US Department of Defense was forced, by court order, to release the names of the captives taken in the "war on terror" who were held in Guantanamo. On April 20, 2006 they released a list of 558 names, nationalities and ID numbers, of all the captives whose status as "enemy combatants" had been reviewed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[2] Twenty-five days later they released a list of 759 names, nationalities, ID numbers, dates of birth, and places of birth, of all captives who had been held in military custody in Guantanamo.^[1]

There is a Guantanamo captive called Abdul Karim Irgashive named on the official list released on May 15, 2007.^[1] But there is no captive named Abdul Karim Irgashive named on the official list released on April 20, 2007, meaning that Abdul Karim Irgashive was released or repatriated prior August 2004, when the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants started to convene Combatant Status Review Tribunals.^[2]
There is a Guantanamo captive called Abdul-Karim Ergashev who is reported to have been released in 2005, so he should have had his "enemy combatant" status reviewed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[3]^[4]^[5] There is, however, no one listed on either official list.^[1]^[2]

[edit] Press reports

On July 22, 2007 a former Tajik captive named Abdul-Karim Ergashev attempted to sue President Bush for his unjustified extrajudicial detention in Guantanamo.^[5] Ergashev described himself as a political refugee, who had been staying in a refugee camp in Afghanistan, when the Americans initiated the American aerial bombardment of Afghanistan.

The Ferghana Information Agency reports:

"I was a driver in their camp, Everyone scattered when the Americans invaded Afghanistan and bombardments began. I wanted to go home too but couldn't because I did not have any papers or even money. Closer to the end of winter 2002, I drifted to the town of Tahor and the rais or chairman of a nearby village offered me a job. He said I would become his personal driver. I said "Why not?". It was a chance to earn my fare back. The man said the auto was waiting in one of the kishlaks (settlements) in Mazar-e-Sharif and we went there to collect it. The man brought me to some household and asked me to wait while he went and fetched the keys. The Afghani police broke into the building as soon as he left. They had me handcuffed and blindfolded in no time at all and turned me over to the waiting Americans. The Americans had been waiting nearby, you know. They ordered me to don a special blue coverall marking me as a POW. It occurred to me then that they had deliberately left me in the house in order to sell me to the Americans as a terrorist or Talib... I was taken to the city of Bagram where I was imprisoned with very many others for March-May 2002. It was Kandahar after that and finally Guantanamo, in September that year."

The Ferghana Information Agency reports that Ergashev claims he acquired Hepatitis C in Guantanamo, and had his gall bladder removed without explanation.^[5]