| Faruq Ali Ahmed | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 12, 1983 - Ta'iz, Yemen |
| Detained at | Guantanamo Bay camp |
| ISN | 32 |
| Charge(s) | No charge (extrajudicial detention) |
| Status | Released |
Faruq Ali Ahmed (born December 12, 1983) is a citizen of Yemen best known for the eight years he spent in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.[1][2] His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 32. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts reports that he was born on December 12, 1983, in Taiz Yemen.
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Faruq Ali Ahmed had memorized all 6,000 verses of the Koran by the time he was sixteen years old, and with his parent's approval, decided to go to Afghanistan to teach the Koran to children.[3] By tradition the Koran is always taught in Arabic, so his inability to speak Pashto would not be a roadblock. Faruq Ali Ahmed was present in Afghanistan, at the time of the al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001, and was caught up in the chaos following the US aerial bombardment of Afghanistan.
JTF-GTMO analysts assert that Faruq Ali Ahmed's casual association with Taliban public officials justified classifying him as an "enemy combatant". They also asserted that an anonymous informant claimed he saw him carrying an AK-47, and another anonymous informant claimed he had overheard someone utter "Farouq" over a satellite phone.
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 Presidency's definition of an enemy combatant.
Ahmed chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[4]
The allegations against Ahmed were:[5]
- a The detainee associated with known members of the Taliban.
- The Detainee traveled from his home in Yemen to Afghanistan via Pakistan in March 2001.
- The Detainee admitted to giving his passport known by him to be a member of the Taliban.
- The Detainee admitted to lodging at an official Taliban residence in Kabul, with a Taliban representative he met in Quetta Pakistan.
- b The detainee was a member of al-Qaida.
- The Detainee was observed carrying an AK-47 and wearing fatigues at UBL’s private airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
- The Detainee was captured by Pakistani Forces as part of an organized group of 30 Mujhedeen after the fall of Tora Bora.
Faruq Al Ahmed agreed to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[4]
According to the study entitled, No-hearing hearings, Faruq Ali Ahmed's Personal Representative recorded his or her objections to the Tribunal's conclusion:[6]
"I do not believe the Tribunal gave full weight to the exhibits regarding ISN [redacted]'s truthfulness regarding the time frames in which he saw various other ISNs in Afghanistan. It is unfortunate that the 302 in question was so heavily redacted that the Tribunal could not see that while ISN [redacted] may have been a couple months off in his recollection of ISN [redacted]'s appearance with an AK 47, that he was six months to a year off in his recollections of other Yemeni detainees he identified. I do feel with some certainty that ISN [redacted] has lied about other detainees to receive preferable treatment and to cause them problems while in custody. Had the Tribunal taken this evidence out as unreliable, then the position we have taken is that a teacher of the Koran (to the Taliban's children) is an enemy combatant (partially because he slept under a Taliban roof)."
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.
Ahmed chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.[8]
Ahmed was the subject of an article in the February 3, 2006 issue of the National Journal.[3] According to the article Ahmed's Personal Representative, from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, filed a protest to the fairness of his review, which was attached to his writ of habeas corpus. The article reported that the two more serious allegations against Ahmed, which he had flatly denied, were based solely on a denunciation by two other detainees, one of whom the FBI had warned was an unreliable liar. The article quotes from Ahmed's Personal Representative's protest:
"I do feel with some certainty that [the accuser] has lied about other detainees to receive preferable treatment and to cause them problems while in custody, Had the tribunal taken this evidence out as unreliable, then the position we have taken is that a teacher of the Koran (to the Taliban's children) is an enemy combatant (partially because he slept under a Taliban roof.)"
The other detainee who denounced Ahmed was Mohammed al Qahtani, who the subject of a Time magazine expose. Al Qahtani was held in an isolation unit and subjected to interrogation for 18 to 20 hours a day, for 48 days out of 54. The article notes:
"By late November 2002, an FBI agent wrote, Detainee 63, al Qahtani, was 'evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to nonexistent people, reporting hearing voices, cowering in a corner of his cell covered with a sheet for hours on end.)'"
The interrogation log that Time made available for download chronicles how the exhausting nature of al Qahtani's questioning brought on physical collapses. When al Qahtani collapsed medical technicians were called in to give him IV drips, enemas, force-feedings, to get him going again.
At the end of his interrogation al Qahtani identified the mug shots of thirty of the other detainees as bodyguards of Osama bin Laden. Ahmed was one of the thirty men al Qahtani fingered. Al Qahtani was later to recant everything he confessed during his extreme interrogation.
The story identifies David Remes and Mark Falkoff of Covington & Burling, lawyers who volunteered through the Center for Constitutional Rights to represent Guantanamo detainees, as Ahmed's lawyers. They represent 16 other detainees. The article quotes Remes as saying he didn't actually expect that his clients would be innocent, that he volunteered because he felt every suspect deserved legal advice. But that when he and Falcoff traveled to visit the families of their clients, and looked into their backgrounds, they found all the evidence was consistent with their clients telling the truth about their lack of ties to terrorism.
Remes and Falkoff found that several other clients of theirs faced denunciation from al Qahtani and from the other unnamed detainee that the FBI had identified as an unreliable liar.
According to the article, during his Administrative Review Board hearing, Ahmed faced one new allegation:[3]
"The board told Farouq that a new piece of evidence had turned up against him, he later told his lawyers. Somebody had said, at some point in the past four years, that they had heard the name "Farouq" over a walkie-talkie during the battle of Tora Bora."
The article points out that Farouq is a very common personal name, noting:
"It's a first name, in fact, that is shared by the foreign minister of Syria, the culture minister of Egypt, the political director of the Palestinian Fatah party, the major general in charge of earthquake relief in Pakistan."
Farouq is also the name of one of al Qaeda's most well-known military training camps.
Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald reported that Farouq Ali Ahmed [sic] was one of twelve men transferred from Guantanamo on December 19, 2009.[9] The other eleven men were: Ayman Batarfi, Jamal Alawi Mari, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami, Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf, Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim, Mohammed Hashim, Ismael Arale and Mohamed Suleiman Barre.[9] Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim and Mohammed Hashim were Afghans. Asmael Arale and Mohamed Suleiman Barre were Somalis. The other five men were fellow Yemenis.
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