Majed Al-Shammari

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Majed Al-Shammari is a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[1] He was repatriated to Saudi custody on May 11, 2005

[edit] Identity

The Department of Defense exhausted all it legal appeals, and was forced, by a court order, from US District Court judge Jed Rakoff, to release the names of all the Guantanamo captives, by March 3, 2006. On May 15, 2006, when the DoD finally did release the list of 759 names, nationalities, of all the captives who had been held in military custody in Guantanamo, there was no Majed Al Shammari on the list.^[2]

The list did include individuals named Al Shammeri, or something similar:

The list included an individual named: Zaban Thaaher Zaban Al Shamaree. He too is reported to be a Saudi. Since he was not listed on the list of captives whose "enemy combatant" status was considered by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal he was released or repatriated a year or more prior to Majed Al Shammari.^[3]
The list included an individual named: Abd Al Aziz Sayer Uwain Al Shammeri. But, he is reported to be a Kuwaiti, not a Saudi. Abdul Aziz Al Shammeri was repatriated to Kuwait on November 4, 2005.^[4]
The list included an individual named: Mustafa Abdul Qawi Abdul Aziz Al Shamyri. But he is reported to be a Yemeni, not a Saudi.

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunal notice read to a Guantanamo captive.

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.

As someone who was repatriated five months after the last Combatant Status Review Tribunal sat, Majed Al Shammari should have had a Combatant Status Review Tribunal convened to confirm his "enemy combatant" status.