Talk:Muhammad Jayid Hadi Al-Subai'i

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saudi Arabia Portal
This article is part of WikiProject Saudi Arabia, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to Saudi Arabia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
Low This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance scale.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
Photo request It is requested that a picture or pictures of this person be included in this article to improve its quality.

Note: Wikipedia's non-free content use policy almost never permits the use of non-free images (such as promotional photos, press photos, screenshots, book covers and similar) to merely show what a living person looks like. Efforts should be made to take a free licensed photo during a public appearance, or obtaining a free content release of an existing photo instead.
Maintenance An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

[edit] not notable?

Anothoer wikipedian applied the {{nn}} tag. I am going to leave a note on their talk page asking them to return here with a fuller explanation of their concern.

IMO Al-Subai'i, as someone who was held, for years, in extrajudicial detention, in a detention facility that has stirred world-wide controversy merits coverage in the wikipedia, provided that coverage complies with the important core policies WP:NPOV, WP:NOR and WP:VER.

Some wikipedians have challenged the notability of other Guantanamo captives, and when asked to explain their challenges, their responses have been like:

  • "But they are just prisoners! How are they different from all the inmates in San Quentin? They are no different than any other prisoner. Are you arguing that we should have an article about every prisoner?"
  • "But they are just prisoners of war? Are you arguing that we should have an article about every prisoner of war?"

The Guantanamo captives are not convicts, like the prisoners in San Quentin. Not a single one of them is in detention because they have been convicted of a crime.

The Guantanamo captives are not Prisoners of War. That is part of what makes their detention so controversial. Many independent legal scholars believe that they are entitled to POW status.

Some of those who flag these articles as "not notable" seem to have accepted, without question, all of the assertions of the Bush Presidency. They regard everything about Guantanamo as "not notable" because they accept that what transpired there was "business as usual", entirely legal, quietly effective, and without controversy.

Well, IMO, one of the missing sections from WP:NOT should be WP:NOT#wikipedia is not a hagiography. No one should be using WP:BIO to suppress material that makes their favorite nation, religion, political cause, political party, or politician look bad, so long as it complies with the wikipedia's core policies, like WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:VER.

Cheers! Geo Swan 18:31, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid you're letting your political views color your opinion as to whether individuals are notable or not. Though I am a conservative and generally (though by no means completely) supportive of Bush, my issue with notability here is whether or not each and every Gitmo detainee is notable simply because of their detention. I believe that each article should be judged on a case-by-case basis. Just off the top of my head, a good measure of the notability of a particular detainee would be whether or not he or his case is mentioned by name in any of the major news media. If he was mentioned by any of the over-the-air or cable news networks, the larger newspapers, or even the better known web sites, I think that is a good rule-of-thumb threshold of notability. I am not sure that applies to this particular detainee, though if you provide such sources I'd be more than willing to change my mind.
This article appears mainly to be about the process of and rationale for holding detainees, and the tribunal process they face(d) at Gitmo. Most of the text of the article could be boilerplate that applied to a large number of individual detainees, with just a cursory mention of the detainee at the top and his disposition at the bottom. I haven't reviewed any other articles to see if this applies, however.
If The Powers That Be at Wikipedia have set a policy that all detainees are individually notable just because they are detainees, then so be it. But I don't believe this is the case, at least not yet. I don't want to see a group of people trying to express a point of view simply by swamping Wikipedia with a large number of individual articles.
I am sure that some of the detainees are notable, simply because they received individual press coverage and/or were charged with a specific offense. For instance, I randomly picked a name off the category list and found Khalid Mahomoud Abdul Wahab Al Asmr, who received a mention by The Washington Post. In my opinion, this detainee is notable because of this media source.
In summary, each case should be judged on its own merits. I personally do not believe that merely being a Gitmo detainee makes one notable in itself. Realkyhick 06:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Forgive me for indenting all the rest of your paragraphs, so I can indent mine two stops.
Thanks for your reply.
I want to check to see if I understand some of what you wrote:
  • While you said you thought my views colored this article...
    • you didn't say you thought here seemed biased.
    • you didn't say you thought anything here wasn't referenced to a verifiable, authoritative source.
  • If there isn't anything that you think violates WP:NPOV, WP:VER, or WP:NOR, then perhaps you could explain what you concern is?
  • If you do think there are aspects of this article that violate policy, could you please be specific, about which passages trigger your concern?
The main sources the articles reference are the Summary of Evidence memos prepared for the captive's Combatant Status Review Tribunals and the Summary of Evidence memos prepare for their Administrative Review Board hearings, and the transcripts from their CSRT and ARB hearings. There are over 6,000 pages. And they contain some amazing info. So, most of the articles contain the allegations against the captives, and I am slowly working my way through the transcripts, a second time, to make sure the articles contain a summary of the captive's attempts to defend themselves.
I have had one correspondent make the complaint:

"Why did you put all those summaries? All their testimony boils down to is a claim that they were innocent."

I don't think I can agree that my opinions have colored the coverage of this material. As I said above, does it violate WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, or WP:VER?
May I be frank? The impression I have been left with is that how notable people find the Guantanamo captives is related to how much trust they put in the credibility of the Bush administration spokesmen's claims about the captives.
So, if neutral, coverage of controversial material is evidence of personal views coloring article space, why don't you consider the removal of that material evidence of personal views coloring article space?
I encourage you to go and read more articles. I encourage you to read some transcripts. Take a look at Abdullah Khan's transcript. The guy was denounced, for a bounty. His denouncers told the Americans he was denounced that he was not really the small Uzbek merchant Abdullah Khan, as he claimed, he was really Khirullah Khairkhwa, who read Taliban press releases, and served as the Governor of Herat for late 2000 and 2001.
Khan told his Tribunals that his interrogators kept insisting he was lying. They kept insisting that his denials that he was Khairkhwa were lies. Khan told his Tribunal that when he arrived in Guantanamo fellow captives told him that the real Khirullah Khairkhwa was already in Guantanamo, and had been there since Guantanamo opened. In fact the real Khairkhwa had been captured almost a year and a half prior to the capture of Khan. Khan told his Tribunal he pleaded with his interrogators to check the prison roster, for a year and a half, so they could see he wasn't lying.
It is unbelievable, for a year and a half none of his interrogators was willing or able to take the obvious step of checking the roster.
If is only due to the discipline imposed on JTF-GTMO that they were forced to look into the record deeply enough to realize that he was not Khairkhwa.
What does this have to do with Al Subai? It emphasizes the importance of figuring out the captives' identities. It means that we can't have any faith in the DoD claims of the captives' names and identities.
I am going to close by repeating a question I asked above. I consider it important, and I will be disappointed if you don't respond to it. So, if neutral, coverage of controversial material is evidence of personal views coloring article space, why don't you consider the removal of that material evidence of personal views coloring article space?
Cheers! Geo Swan 20:25, 24 May 2007 (UTC)