Abdullah Wazir

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Abdullah Wazir is a citizen of Afghanistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] Wazir's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 976. American intelligence analysts estimate that Abdullah Wazir was born in 1979, in Sheikh Amir, Afghanistan.

Contents

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a trailer the size of a large RV. The captive sat on a plastic garden chair, with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor. Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed. The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a trailer the size of a large RV. The captive sat on a plastic garden chair, with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor.[2][3] Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.[4]
The neutrality of this section is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

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.

Wazir chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[5]

[edit] Witness request

After his Tribunal's President tried to explain the Tribunal procedured to Wazir he questioned how, in all fairness, the Tribunal could proceed, when the witness he felt would clear him had not yet responded. A conversation between him and his Personal Representative gave him the impression that he had a choice as to whether to proceed now without his witness, or to continue to wait. So he was very upset that, after choosing to wait, the Tribunal was convened two days later.

Main article: Witnesses requested by Guantanamo detainees

[edit] Allegations

The allegations Abdullah Wazir faced during his Tribunal were:

a. The Detainee is a member of, or associated with, al Qaida and the Taliban.
  1. The Detainee associates with a known al Qaida cell leader and explosives expert.
  2. The Detainee received AK-47 training.
  3. The Detainee was identified as a member of the Taliban and was seen working in the Kandahar military district office while carrying a handgun.
  4. The Detainee has expressed pro-Taliban views.
  5. The Detainee was apprehended on 13 August 2002 without papers while riding a bus into Pakistan with a known al Qaida cell leader and explosives expert. Additionally, he was apprehended with a satellite cell phone and a large amount of Pakistani and Afghan Rupees.

[edit] Testimony

Wazir denied membership in either al Qaida or the Taliban. He denied associating with an al Qaida cell leader. Wazir denied firing, owning or training on an AK-47 or any other weapons.

In response to the allegation that he worked in the Taliban office in Kandahar Wazir replied:

"Kandahar is very far away from my shop is in Khost, Afghanistan. I was constantly at work around the clock. I could not go down to Kandahar, as it is a one-day travel."

In response to the allegation that he expressed pro-Taliban views Wazir told his Tribunal that he was at odds with the Taliban, and they would be at odds with him, because he regularly engaged in a kind of missionary work they disapproved of.

Wazir responded to the allegation that he tried to cross the border without papers, carrying a large amount of money, and a "satellite cell phone", sitting next to a "known al qaeda cell leader":

  • Wazir said papers weren't necessary to cross back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Tribal areas. The same tribes lived on both sides of the border, and they were allowed to cross without papers.
  • Wazir said he was a successful businessman, and with a primitive banking system he had to carry his funds himself.
  • Wazir said with Afghanistan's primitive telephony, if an Afghan can afford one, a satellite phone is by far the best option.
  • Kareem, the guy he sat next to on the bus, was an acquaintance from his missionary work. They hadn't seen one another for five years. And he had no idea whether he had become involved in radical politics since then.

Wazir said he had been warned that if the border guards saw he had a satellite phone, and a lot of money, they would tell him crossing the border with the phone required an exorbitant fee. So, when he was one of the three people picked to be searched, at the border, he tried to surreptitiously slip the phone into Karim's pocket.

[edit] Bostan Karim's Tribunal

Bostan Karim acknowledged, during his Tribunal. that he was sitting next to Abdullah Wazir on the bus.[6] He too told his Tribunal that he and Wazir knew one another from their missionary work, but they hadn't seen one another in years. He said he ended up being captured because the border guard saw Wazir try to slip his satellite phone into his pocket -- something he didn't expect. Karim had requested Wazir as a witness at his Tribunal, but he was told that Wazir was "not reasonably available".

[edit] Press reports

Canadian journalist, and former special assistant to US President George W. Bush, David Frum, published an article based on his own reading of the transcripts from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, on November 11, 2006.[7] It was Frum who coined the term "Axis of evil" for use in a speech he wrote for Bush. Wazir's transcript was one of the nine Frum briefly summarized. His comment on Wazir was:

"An Afghan detainee intercepted at the Pakistan border carrying a satellite phone, thousands of dollars in cash, without an identity papers and riding alongside a noted al Qaida explosives expert explained that he had not realized he needed identity papers to cross the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Frum came to the conclusion that all nine of the men whose transcript he summarized had obviously lied.[7] He did not, however, state how he came to the conclusion they lied. His article concluded with the comment:

"But what’s the excuse of those in the West who succumb so easily to the deceptions of terrorists who cannot invent even half-way plausible lies?"

[edit] References

  1. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  2. ^ Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court, New York Times, November 11, 2004 - mirror
  3. ^ Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals", Financial Times, December 11, 2004
  4. ^ Annual Administrative Review Boards for Enemy Combatants Held at Guantanamo Attributable to Senior Defense Officials. United States Department of Defense (March 6, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-09-22.
  5. ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Abdullah Wazir'sCombatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 3-21
  6. ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Bostan Karim's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 77-83
  7. ^ a b David Frum. "Gitmo Annotated", National Review, November 11, 2006. Retrieved on April 23.