Abdur Sayed Rahaman

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Abdur Sayed Rahaman (also transliterated as Shed Abdur Rahman) is a citizen of Pakistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] Rahaman's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 581. American intelligence analysts estimate Rahaman was born in 1965, in Pishin, Pakistan.

[edit] Identity

The documents prepared by American intelligence analysts for his Tribunal, identify him as Shed Abdur Rahman, but the detainee identifies himself as Abdur Sayed Rahaman.

Rahaman told his tribunal that American intelligence analysts had accused him of being three separate, and incompatible, roles in the Taliban.

The official list of the 558 detainees whose status had been reconsidered by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, released on April 20, 2006, listed his nationality as Pakistani.^[2] The official list of all the detainees, released 25 days later on May 15, 2006, listed him as a citizen of Afghanistan.^[1]

Dilawar, one of the two detainees who were beaten to death in Bagram in December 2002, was arrested while driving an informal taxi. His three prisoners survived Bagram, and were sent to Guantanamo. One of them has been identified as "Abdur Rahim, a 26-year old baker from Khowst".^[3] The list of detainees the Department of Defense released on May 15, 2006 is supposed to list all the detainees who had been held in military custody in Guantanamo.^[1] But it does not list anyone named Abdur Rahim. Shed Abdur Fahman is the closest match.

[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.^[4][5] Three chairs were reserved for members of the press, but only 37 of the 574 Tribunals were observed.^[6]

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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.

The authorities convened two Tribunals for Rahaman, three months apart.

The documents in his American dossier refer to him as Shed Abdur Rahman.^[7][8] Rahaman suggested his continued detention might be due to a case of mistaken identity, as there was a Taliban leader with a very similar name.

Rahaman chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

[edit] Allegations

A memorandum summarizing the evidence against Rahman, prepard for his Combatan Status Reiew Tribunal, was among those released in February of 2005.^[9]

a. The detainee is a member of the Taliban:

1. The detainee was born in Pishin, Pakistan.
2. The detainee joined the Taliban shortly after the Taliban took control of Kabul, Afghanistan in 1992 ^[sic] .^[10]
3. The detainee has been identified as holding a high-ranking position in the Taliban as a military judge.^[11]
4. In his position with the Taliban, the detainee tortured, maimed, and murdered Afghani nationals who were being held in Taliban jails.
5. Pakistani authorities arrested the detainee in Fall 2001.

[edit] Testimony

Rahaman acknowledged being born in Pishin, but denied he had ever been a member of the Taliban.

He said that when the Pakistani authorities came to his house, they told him they were looking for looted antiquities. They didn't find any, but took him in for questioning, anyhow. At the police station he was told that he had to pay a bribe.

Eventually he was turned over to American authorities, who, apparently, were told that he was Abdul Rahim Zahid, a former deputy Minister under tha Taliban. In addition one interrogator insisted he was a brutal prison guard named Basha. He noted that the accusation that he was a military judge was new to him,

Rahaman insisted that he was a poor and uneducated man.

[edit] Press reports

On July 12, 2006 the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees.^[12] Rahman was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article:

"Detainee 581 was accused of being Abdur Zahid Rahman, the Taliban’s former deputy foreign minister. He explained to the tribunal that he was, in fact, Abdur Sayed Rahman.

rahman: The entire time I have been here, I have not seen anything proving that I did anything wrong…. I have been here for three years and the past three years, whatever I say, nobody believes me…. I never even hit my own child at home. Why would I go and torture and murder someone?... The only time I have ever been in Afghanistan was for two days to attend a funeral…. I was only a chicken farmer in Pakistan.

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.^[13] It was Frum who coined the term "Axis of evil" for use in a speech he wrote for Bush. Rahman's transcript was one of the nine Frum briefly summarized. His comment on Rahman was:

"A detainee identified by eyewitnesses as a Taliban military judge, who inflicted hideous punishments on hundreds of accused, explained to the tribunal that he was in fact only a humble chicken farmer. The question, 'What did you feed your chickens?' baffled this detainee. He answered: 'A mixture of foods they sell in the bazaar' (perhaps at the Afghan equivalent of Petco)."

Frum came to the conclusion that all nine of the men whose transcript he summarized had obviously lied.^[13] 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] Determined not to have been an Enemy Combatant

The Washington Post reports that Rahaman was one of 38 detainees who was determined not to have been an enemy combatant during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[14] They report that Rahaman has been released. The Department of Defense refers to these men as No Longer Enemy Combatants.

[edit] References

v • d • e Captives held at Guantanamo Bay before being exonerated and found to not be "enemy combatants" Afghanistan Abdul Rahman, Mohammad Gul, Gul Zaman, Abdul Rahim Muslimdost, Qalandar Shah, Shahwali Zair Mohammed Shaheen Naqeebyllah, Rasool Shahwali Zair Mohammed Mohammed, Abdul Qudus, Shahzada, Hammdidullah, Mohammad Nasim, Kako Kandahari, Feda Ahmed, Nasibullah, Habib Noor, Jalil, Hukumra Khan Algeria Ahmed Adil, Akhdar Qasem Basit, Mohammed Ayub, Abu Bakr Qasim, Adel Abdulhehim, Sadik Ahmad Turkistani Egypt Sami Abdul Aziz Salim Allaithy, Allah Muhammed Saleem France Mustaq Ali Patel Jordan Khalid Mahomoud Abdul Wahab Al Asmr Maldives Ibrahim Fauzee Pakistan Fazaldad, Shed Abdur Rahman Saudi Arabia Saleh Abdall Al Oshan Sudan Hammad Ali Amno Gadallah Tajikistan Maroof Saleemovich Salehove Turkey Salih Uyar Uzbekistan Zakirjan Asam Yemen Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan