Amin Ullah

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Amin Ullah is a citizen of Afghanistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.[1] His detainee ID number is 848. American intelligence analysts estimate that he was born in 1956, in Chogha, 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 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.

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

[edit] Allegations

The allegations against the detainees were read out, and recorded, in most of the transcripts. They weren't recorded in Aminullah's transcript.

[edit] Statement

Aminullah told his Tribunal that he had served as a soldier for an Afghan leader he called President Dahoud. Mohammed Daoud Khan was the only President of the First Afghan Republic, from 1973-1978.

Aminullah told his Tribunal that the Taliban killed his brother, when they came to conscript him into their forces, threw him into jail, when he refused. He said his family found his body forty days after the Taliban conscripted him. Aminullah said that sometime later the Taliban came to conscript him, put him in jail, when he refused, and that while in prison he decided to comply. He was assigned to lead a squad of ten men. But he broke the rules, and would return to his family at night. The Taliban caught him, and punished him with imprisonment again.

He was leading his squad of ten when he heard on the radio of the American invasion. So he lead his squad of ten to desert, and return to Konduz, the area where they were all from, which had not yet been liberated from the Taliban. Aminullah fought against the Taliban in the liberation of Konduz, Mazar [sic] and Khanabad [sic] . After the capture of Khanabad the Northern Alliance demobilized him. He returned to his home, and when the last elements of the Taliban had been mopped up, four or five months later, he turned in his weapon, and those of the ten men he lead to a Sergeant Abdul Basir of the new Karzai government.

Afghan forces arrested him a year later. Aminullah said all the allegations against him were untrue.

Aminullah said that he like the new government, and he has welcomed the American help. He liked that his children were able to go to school.

[edit] Testimony in response to Tribunal officers' questions

  • Aminullah clarified that the first time he was imprisoned by the Taliban he was a soldier for Rabani, who was the official President of the rump of Afghanistan during the civil war that followed the ouster of the Communists, prior to the takeover of the Taliban.
  • Aminullah confirmed Sergeant Basir gave him a receipt for the weapons he turned in.
Q: One of the accusations against you is that you assembled a team to hijack a United Nations aircraft. Do you know anything about that?
A: The only airplanes I have seen are in the sky. When I was captured I traveled on a plane from Konduz to Baghram. I traveled from there to here. Those are the only times I have been in a plane. I was blindfolded and didn't know what the plane looked like. Yes, I have seen your planes in the sky. In Afghanistan all we have in this much bread and we have to work hard for it.
Q: So the Taliban never asked you to try and hijack a U.N. airplane?
A: Who am I for them to ask me to do this kind of thing? They should contact some one bigger than me. I fought with your forces against them.

[edit] Witness and evidence requests

When Aminullah was asked if he had any more evidence to present he reminded his Tribunal that he had requested two witnesses, he had provided their addresses, and he had requested the Tribunal send for the receipt for the weapons he turned in.

Main article: Guantanamo witnesses

[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 Amin Ullah's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 12-16