Ziyad bin Salih bin Muhammad Al Bahooth

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Ziyad bin Salih bin Muhammad Al Bahooth (also transliterated as Ziyad Salih Muhammad Al Bahuth) is a citizen of Saudi Arabia held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantánamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1] Al Bahooth's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 272. American intelligence analysts estimate that Al Bahooth was born in 1982, in Qasim, Saudi Arabia.

Contents

[edit] Identity

The US Department of Defense was forced, by court order, to release the names of the captives taken in the "war on terror" who were held in Guantanamo. On April 20, 2006 they released a list of 558 names, nationalities and ID numbers, of all the captives whose status as "enemy combatants" had been reviewed by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[2] Twenty-five days later they released a list of 759 names, nationalities, ID numbers, dates of birth, and places of birth, of all captives who had been held in military custody in Guantanamo.[1]

[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 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.

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

[edit] Administrative Review Board hearing

Hearing room where Guantanamo captive's annual Administrative Review Board hearings convened for captives whose Combatant Status Review Tribunal had already determined they were an "enemy combatant".
Hearing room where Guantanamo captive's annual Administrative Review Board hearings convened for captives whose Combatant Status Review Tribunal had already determined they were an "enemy combatant".[4]

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.

The factors for and against continuing to detain Al Bahooth were among the 121 that the Department of Defense released on March 3, 2006.[3]

[edit] The following primary factors favor continued detention:

a. Commitment
  1. The detainee traveled from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Kabul, Afghanistan with 90,000 Saudi Riyals (~$24,000 USD) and claimed to do so to help the poor and needy.
  2. The detainee took a bus from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to Damascus, Syria and then traveled by plane to Tehran, Iran from which he took a bus to Meshad, Afghanistan. Detainee then boarded a bus that traveled to Herat, Afghanistan and finally to Kabul, Afghanistan.
b. Training
The detainee spent one and a half months at a Taliban training center located outside Kabul, Afghanistan where he received one week of training with an AK-47 rifle.
c. Connections/Associations
  1. The detainee spent his time in Kabul with a known Taliban member.
  2. The detainee thinks the Taliban member gave the detainee weapons training in order to get him to join al Qaida.
  3. Weapons training was given to the detainee by the Taliban member in an attempt to recruit the detainee for the Taliban.
  4. One of the detainee's known aliases was on a list of captured al Qaida members that was discovered on a computer hard drive associated with a senior al Qaida member.
  5. The detainee's name was found on a floppy disk recovered from raids of a suspected al Qaida safehouse.
  6. The detainee's name appears on a computer file seized during joint raids conducted with the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate (ISID) against al Qaida-associated safehouses in Rawalpindi in March 2003.
  7. The detainee's name was found on a computer hard drive seized from members of a suspected of a suspected al Qaida terrorist cell involved on U.S. attack on U.S [sic] Marines on Faylaka Island in October 2002.
  8. The detainee's name, nationalisty and his possession of a Saudi passport was found on a document recovered from the raid of a suspected al Qaida safehouse in Karachi, Pakistan.
  9. An al Qaida associate identified the detainee as arriving in Afghanistan in 2000 and fighting in the Omar Sa'if Center north of Kabul.
d. Other Relevant Data
The detainee was captured by the Pakistani government after crossing the border in the Nangahar Province in December 2001.

[edit] The following primary factors favor release or transfer:

  • The detainee said he did not join the Taliban, al Qaida, or any relief organization.
  • The detainee said he would not sacrifice anything for Usama Bin Laden [sic] , al Qaida, the Taliban, or any relief organization.
  • The detainee said Usama Bin Laden is wrong for the terrorist acts for which he is responsible.
  • The detainee denied having any knowledge of the attacks on the United States prior to their execution on September 11th, and also denied knowledge of any rumors or plans of future attacks on the United States or United States interests.

[edit] Repatriated on December 29, 2007

A captive named "Ziyad Saleh Bahuth" was repatriated on December 29, 2007, with nine other men.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006
  2. ^ a b list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, April 20, 2006
  3. ^ a b Factors for and against the continued detention (.pdf) of Ziyad bin Salih bin Muhammad Al Bahooth Administrative Review Board, May 19, 2005 - page 38
  4. ^ (Spc Timothy Book. "Review process unprecedented", The Wire (JTF-GTMO), Friday March 10, 2006, pp. 1. Retrieved on 2007-10-12. 
  5. ^ P.K. Abdul Ghafour. "10 More Return From Guantanamo", Arab News, December 29, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-12-29.