Majid Al Barayan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Majid Al Barayan is a citizen of Saudi Arabia held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] Al Barayan's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 051. The Department of Defense reports that Al Barayan was born on September 27, 1972, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Contents

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

CSRT notice read to a Guantanamo captive.
CSRT 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.

[edit] Allegations

During the winter and spring of 2005 the Department of Defense complied with a Freedom of Information Act request, and released five files that contained 507 memoranda which each summarized the allegations against a single detainee. These memos, entitled "Summary of Evidence" were prepared for the detainee's Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's names and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of these memos, when they were first released in 2005. But some of them contain notations in pen. 169 of the memos bear a hand-written notation specifying the detainee's ID number. One of the memos had a notation specifying Al Barayan's detainee ID.[2] The allegations Al Barayan would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:

a. The detainee is a member of al Qaida:
  1. The detainee traveled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan.
  2. The detainee trained at the al Farouq training camp in Afghanistan.
  3. The detainee received weapons and explosives training.
b. The detainee engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners:
  1. The detainee fought on the front lines of Afghanistan north of Taloqan, against the Northern Alliance.
  2. Detainee was in charge of an anti-aircraft missile launcher mounted on a truck.
  3. The detainee was captured at the Pakistani border.

[edit] Testimony

There is no record that Al Barayan chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

[edit] Repatriation

A Saudi named Majed Abdullah Saeed Baryan was one of sixteen Saudi captives repatriated from Guantanamo on September 16, 2007.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  2. ^ Summary of Evidence (.pdf) prepared for Majid Al Barayan's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - October 8, 2004 - page 79
  3. ^ "Sixteen Saudis return from Guantanamo Bay prison", asharq alawsat, September 6, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-07.