Mehrabanb Fazrollah
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Mehrabanb Fazrollah is a citizen of Tajikistan held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] His Guantanamo detainee ID number is 77. The Department of Defense reports that Fazrolloah was born on October 18, 1962, in Pyandj [sic] , Tajikistan.
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[edit] Identity
When the Department of Defense released the transcripts from the captive's Combatant Status Review Tribunals the transcript from Mehrabanb Fazrollah's Combatant Status Review Tribunal bore the Internee Security Number 1037. Nazargul Chaman, captive 1037, also attended his Tribunal, but his transcript was not released.
[edit] Combatant Status Review
Initially the Bush administration asserted they could withhold the protections of the Geneva Conventions from captives in the War on Terror, while critics argued the Conventions obligated the United States to conduct competent tribunals to determine the status of prisoners. Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted Combatant Status Review Tribunals, to determine whether the captives met the new definition of an "enemy combatant".
From July 2004 through March 2005, a CSRT was convened to make a determination whether each captive had been correctly classified as an "enemy combatant". Mehrabanb Fazrollah among the two-thirds of prisoners who chose to participate in their tribunals.[2]
A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal, listing the alleged facts that led to his detainment. Mehrabanb Fazrollah's memo accused him of the following: [3]
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 Fazrollah's detainee ID.[4]
The allegations he would have faced, during his Tribunal, were:
- a. The detaine is a member of the Taliban.
- The detainee voluntarily traveled from Tajikistan to Afghanistan in March or April of 2001.
- b. The detainee participated in operations against the United States and/or its coalition partners.
- The detainee admitted to fighting with the Taliban.
- The detainee was captured carrying a Kalishnikov [sic] rifle and ammunition.
[edit] witness requests
Mehrabanb Fazrollah requested the testimony of two witnesses from Tajikistan, Saidaharaad Sharipov and Ziyarat Khojaev. He was told that the US State Department had been requested to request Mehrabanb Fazrollah's embassy to request his country's civil service to help locate his witnesses. The Tribunal President told Mehrabanb Fazrollah they had waited about a month, and now the Tribunal was going to rule that his witnesses were "not reasonably available".
[edit] Testimony
The allegations against Mehrabanb Fazrollah were not recorded in his transcript.
Mehrabanb Fazrollah gave a detailed account of leaving his home in Tajikistan to visit his son in Pakistan. He described crossing Afghanistan, overland, on his way to Pakistan. He described taking a bus from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to Karachi, and a train from Karachi to Madras, where his son lived.
Then Mehrabanb Fazrollah described his return journey. He arrived at the river that forms the border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan around June 27, 2001. But he wasn't able to sneak across the river. So he was still in Afghanistan when:
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"The month of September arrived and this tragedy happened in the United States and it became even more impossible to cross over into my country. People were saying that any foreigner who was in that area were going to be arrested and handed over to the Russian government. I was really afraid and escaped from that area and went to Kudoz [sic] ."
Kudoz [sic] was full of refugees. Two men, with accents he didn't recognize, captured him. They wanted him to accept a very old AK-47. When he wouldn't they beat him up. They then made him board a crowded truck. The truck delivered him to a "house".
He and his fellow prisoners were made to enter the cellar of this house, where they were given some food. But this was quickly followed by explosions. And Mehrabanb Fazrollah found himself in the middle of a prison uprising that went on for seven or eight days.
Mehrabanb Fazrollah described how he and his fellow prisoners were allowed to exit from the cellar, one at a time, where their shoes were removed and their hands were bound behind their backs. Other prisoners were let out, bound, and made to lie face down on the ground. Then there were some more explosions nearby. Everyone scattered, even the bound men. Mehrabanb Fazrollah ran into the cellar, where he was trapped for the next seven or eight days.
People on the surface poured gasoline into the cellar, and tried to set it on fire. Then water was poured in flushing everyone out.
The survivors were given some food, blankets, and shoes that he believed came from the Red Cross. They were shown to General Dostum, who crammed them into a crowded jailhouse.
Then, during Ramadan, Americans came. He was flown to Kandahar, where there was more room, better food, clean water, and medicine, if you needed it.
Mehrabanb Fazrollah did not describe any of his interrogations. He was not asked why he thought he was in custody.
Most of the Tribunal officers questions concerned what he did with the very old AK-47 he was handed when his captors made him board the truck. He said he dropped it on the floor, and didn't touch it again.
[edit] Administrative Review Board hearing
Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".
They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat -- or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.
[edit] Allegations
The Summary of Evidence memo prepared for his Administrative Review Board hearing states[5]:
- Traveled overland from Tajikistan, to Pakistan, to enter his son in a religious school, in the Spring of 2001.
- Experienced difficulty crossing the border back into Tajikistan, and was still in Afghanistan when al Qaeda attacked the USA on September 11, 2001.
- Underwent compulsory military training when Tajikistan was still part of the Soviet Union.
- Fought in the civil war that beset Tajikistan following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
- Was present during the riot at qali jangi prison, near Mazari Sharif.
- That the Tajikistan government wanted the USA to transfer him to their custody, so he could face prosecution there.
[edit] Administrative Review Board recommendations
Mehrabanb Fazrollah's Administrative Review Board's recommendation was among those the DoD released on September 4, 2007.[6][7] Most Board's recommendation were unanimous. His was not. Both the 6 page majority position and the 5 page minority position were so heavily redacted that it can not be determined whether or not the Board recommended release or transfer. But only the decision memos released are those for captives who were cleared for release. So the Designated Civilian Official.
[edit] References
- ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
- ^ OARDEC, Index to Transcripts of Detainee Testimony and Documents Submitted by Detainees at Combatant Status Review Tribunals Held at Guantanamo Between July 2004 and March 2005, September 4, 2007
- ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Mehrabanb Fazrollah'sCombatant Status Review Tribunal - pages 30-34
- ^ Summary of Evidence (.pdf) prepared for Mehrabanb Fazrollah's Combatant Status Review Tribunals - September 30, 2004 - page 71
- ^ OARDEC (November 3, 2005). Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Fazrollah, Mehrabanb pages 16-17. United States Department of Defense. Retrieved on 2007-10-03.
- ^ OARDEC (January 8, 2006). Administrative Review Board assessment and recommendation for ICO ISN 77 (Tajikistan) page 46. United States Department of Defense. Retrieved on 2007-10-03.
- ^ OARDEC (December 1, 2006). Classified Record of Proceedings and basis for Administrative Review Board decision for ISN 77 pages 47-58. United States Department of Defense. Retrieved on 2007-10-03.
