Muhhammad Said Bin Salem

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Muhhammad Said Bin Salem is a citizen of Yemen, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] His detainee ID number is 251. The Department of Defense reports that Bin Salem was born on April 25, 1975, in Hadramaut, Yemen.

Contents

[edit] Identity

The Yemen Times reported, on March 11, 2007, that a Yemeni named Mohammed Sa’eed Bin Salman, who was also born in Ta'iz, was on the list of Yemenis who had been cleared for release.[2] The official list does not include a captive named Mohammed Sa’eed Bin Salman.[1] Muhhammad Said Bin Salem's name is the closest match.

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunal notice read to a Guantanamo captive.
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 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 Tribunal. 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.

To comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, during the winter and spring of 2005, the Department of Defense released 507 memoranda. Those 507 memoranda each contained the allegations against a single detainee, prepared for their Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The detainee's name and ID numbers were redacted from all but one of the memoranda. However 169 of the memoranda had the detainee's ID hand-written on the top right hand of the first page corner. When the Department of Defense complied with a court order, and released official lists of the detainee's names and ID numbers it was possible to identify who those 169 were written about. Muhhammad Said Bin Salem was one of those 169 detainees.[3]

[edit] Allegations

The allegations that Bin Salem would have faced during his Tribunal were:

a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida and the Taliban:
  1. The detainee traveled from Yemen to Afghanistan in July, 2001.
  2. The detainee received training in the use of the Kalishnikov [sic] rifle, the RPG, and the PK machine gun at the al Farouq training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
  3. The detainee supported al Qaida and Taliban forces by serving as a cook at a rest and relaxation facility for front line troops at Bagram, Afghanistan.
  4. The detainee retreated from Bagram to Pakistan where he was captured by Pakistani forces in December 2001.

[edit] Release

Mark Falkoff told the Yemeni Times that he had to threaten legal action to get the Pentagon to release a list of the Yemenis who had already been cleared for release.[2] The Yemeni Times reported that the Pentagon had cleared some of the captives for release as early as June 2004 — which precedes the first Combatant Status Review Tribunal by over a month.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  2. ^ a b Amel Al-Ariqi. "Yemeni detainees are the largest group at Guantánamo", Yemen Times, March 11, 2007. Retrieved on March 15. 
  3. ^ Summary of Evidence memo (.pdf) prepared for Muhhammad Said Bin Salem's Combatant Status Review Tribunal - November 1, 2004 - page 84