Mohammad Gul
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- This article is about the Guantanamo detainee, for the cricket player see Gul Mohammad.
Mohammad Gul is an Afghan held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba.[1] His detainee ID number is 457. American intelligence analysts estimate that he was born in 1962 in Zamikhel, Afghanistan.
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[edit] Summary
Three neighbors of Mohammad Gul, Abib Sarajuddin, his brother, Khan Zaman, and his son Gul Zaman, were captured during the same raid as Mohammad Gul.[2] American forces had bombed Abib Patel's house, on November 16, 2001, when they received a tip that he had allowed a fleeing Taliban leader to stay overnight in his guesthouse. On January 21, 2002 American forces raided the village to arrest Abib Sarajuddin. They arrested Mohammad Gul because they didn't understand he was legally entitled to carry a Pakistani passport, and because his house contained a "signalling mirror".
He and his neighbour Gul Zaman convinced their Tribunals that their passports were legitimate, and that they confirmed they were not in Saudi Arabia when American forces bombed the village.
[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal
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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 United States 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.
Gul chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[6]
[edit] allegations
The allegations Gul faced were:
- a. The detainee is associated with forces that have engaged in hostilities against the United States and its coalition partners.
- The detainee was seized in an open-air area near a suspected Taliban facility.
- A Kalashnikov rifle was confiscated from the detainee's home the night he was arrested.
- The detainee was captured with communications equipment.
- Coalition forces were fired upon from the direction of a suspected hostile facility during the seizure of the detainee and his associates.
- The detainee was captured with Sarajuddin, a recruiter for Pacha Khan.
- Pacha Khan, a renegade Pashtun Commander, has been conducted military operations against the Afghan Transitional Administration (ATA) and coalition forces.
- It is alleged that Jalaluddin Haqqani, used Sarajuddin's guesthouse for shelter.
- Jalaluddin Haqqani was the Taliban Minister of Frontiers and Tribal Affairs.
- The detainee has been working for HIG since it began.
- The HIG is listed in the United States Department of Homeland Security's "Terrorist Organization Reference Guide".
[edit] Testimony
Gul denied that he was seized in the open. He said he was at home, asleep, in his bed when the Americans came. Every home in his area of Afghanistan had a weapon for self-protection. The rifle the Americans confiscated belonged to his father.
Gul denied any ties to the Taliban, to Pacha Khan, to Jalaluddin Haqqani, and to terrorism in general. Gul acknowledged knowing Sarajuddin Ibab; they were neighbors in their small village, but they were not close, nor had they ever worked together.
Gul said that at the time of his capture, he had a work visa for Saudi Arabia and had spent six of the last seven years working there as a driver for a supermarket. He had returned just six weeks before his capture because his wife was ill. He had no idea who his neighbor Sarajuddin had hosted while he was in Saudi Arabia.
Gul pointed out that he was just a young boy when HIG began.
[edit] Witness
Gul called another neighbor, Zaman Khan, as a witness. Zaman confirmed that Gul worked in Saudi Arabia and had recently returned because his wife was sick. Zaman confirmed that Gul was not tied to the Taliban, to HIG, or any charity groups. Zaman confirmed that Gul did not work with Sarajuddin.
[edit] Testified at Gul Zaman's CSRT
Gul testified at Gul Zaman's Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[7]
[edit] Mohammad Gul's guess as to why he was captured
During his testimony, Gul was asked why he thought he was taken into custody with Zaman, his father, and his uncle, while most of his neighbor's were not. He said that after the Americans finished searching the Zaman's house, they searched another neighbors house, and then searched his family's house. He said that the reason they singled him out was that they found his passport, and that foreign travel made them think he was someone important.
[edit] Legal travel documents
Gul also testified, in more detail, about how he and his fellow villagers were able to acquire legal travel documents. Afghanistan had endured decades of fighting. During the fighting in their district, he and Gul Zaman, and most of their neighbors, had spent time in refugee camps in Pakistan. Pakistan had a policy of giving Afghan refugees who could establish their identity legal Pakistani passports.
[edit] The identity of Jalaluddin Haqqani
During Gul Zaman's Combatant Status Review Tribunal Gul Zaman, Khan Zaman, Mohammad Gul, and the Tribunal members, were trying to determine who Jalaluddin Haqqani was. Apparently one of the unclassified documents submitted to the Tribunal was an article about Haqqani from the February 2, 2002 New York Times. The Tribunal's President tried to estimate when the four were captured. It sounded to him as if they were captured in November 2001.
Mohammad Gul said he remembered hearing Haqqani's name on the radio news, during the fight against the Soviet occupiers. Khan Zaman, Gul Zaman's uncle, said Haqqani had been a resistance leader against the Soviets, who fought under a leader named Pir. Khan Zaman said Haqqani was from Paktia, their Province.
[edit] Release
According to the transcript from Khan Zaman's Administrative Review Board hearing Mohammad Gul and Zaman's nephew Gul Zaman were deemed not to have been enemy combatants after all.[8] He said there were given letters certifying that they were not enemy combatants.
[edit] References
- ^ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
- ^ John F. Burns, Villagers Add to Reports of Raids Gone Astray, New York Times, February 2, 2002
- ^ Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court, New York Times, November 11, 2004 - mirror
- ^ Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals", Financial Times, December 11, 2004
- ^ 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.
- ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Mohammad Gul's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - - mirror - pages 1-12
- ^ Summarized transcripts (.pdf), from Gul Zaman's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - mirror - pages 39-53
- ^ Summarized transcript (.pdf), from Khan Zaman's Administrative Review Board hearing - page 207
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