Hozaifa Parhat

Ablikim Turahun (also known as Hozaifa Parhat) is an Uyghur refugee, wrongly imprisoned for seven years in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.^[1] His Internment Serial Number was 320. Joint Task Force Guantanamo reported he was born on February 11, 1971, in Ghulja, China.

Turahun is one of the 22 Uighurs held in Guantanamo for many years despite it became clear early on that they were innocent.^[2][3][4]

He won his habeas corpus in 2008. Judge Ricardo Urbina declared his detention as unlawful and ordered to set him free in the United States. He was sent to Bermuda in June 2009.

Parhat v. Gates

He is the lead petitioner in Parhat v. Gates, no. 06-1397 (D.C. Cir.), a case brought by seven Uyghurs challenging their "enemy combatant" designation under the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.^[5]

Susan Baker Manning, one of Parhat's attorneys, commented:

If we're going to hold people, possibly for the rest of their lives, it seems eminently fair that we should look at all the evidence to see if they are or are not the people who should be at Guantánamo.^[6]

Combatant Status Review

The Bush administration asserted that:

the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not extend to captured prisoners who are not members of the regular Afghan armed force nor meet the criteria for prisoner of war for voluntary forces.^[7]

Critics argued the Conventions obliged the U.S. to conduct competent tribunals to determine the status of prisoners. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Defense instituted Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), to determine whether detainees met the new definition of an "enemy combatant".

"Enemy combatant" was defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as:

an individual who was part of, or supporting, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who commits a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.^[8]

The CSRTs are not bound by the rules of evidence that would normally apply in civilian court, and the government’s evidence is presumed to be “genuine and accurate.”^[9] From July 2004 through March 2005, CSRTs were convened to determine whether each prisoner had been correctly classified as an "enemy combatant".

Hozaifa Parhat was among the 60% of prisoners who chose to participate in tribunal hearings.^[10] A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal of each detainee, listing the allegations that supported their detention as an "enemy combatant".

Hozaifa Parhat's memo accused him of the following: ^[11]

The memo listed the following allegations against him:

The detainee is associated with al Qaida and the Taliban:

1. The detainee departed China in May 2001 and traveled to Tora Bora, Afghanistan via Pakistan.
2. The detainee received training on the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle and other light weapons at a Uighur training camp in Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
3. The training camp was provided to the Uighurs by the Taliban.
4. The East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) operated facilities in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in which Uighur expatriates underwent small arms training. The camps were funded by Bin Laden and the Taliban.
5. The detainee lived at the Uighur training camp from early June through mid-October 2001 until the United States bombinb campaign that destroyed the camp.

The detainee participated in military operations against the United States and its coalition partners.

1. The detainee stated that the Uighur training camp was destroyed during the first night of the United States bombing campaign.
2. The detainee fled along with others farther into the mountains of Tora Bora with the initiation of the United States bombing campaign.
3. The detainee was captured in Pakistan fleeing Afghanistan with other Uighur and Arab personnel in 2001.

Transcript

Parhat chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[12] On March 3, 2006, in response to a court order from Judge Jed Rakoff, the Department of Defense published a ten page summarized transcript from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[13]

Federal appeal

On June 12, 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled on Boumediene v. Bush. Its ruling overturned aspects of the Detainee Treatment Act and Military Commissions Act of 2006, allowing Guantanamo captives to access the US justice system for habeas petitions.

On Monday June 23, 2008, it was announced that a three judge Federal court of appeal had overturned the determination of Parhat's Combatant Status Review Tribunal on Friday June 20, 2008.^{[14][15][16][17][18]} Parhat's was the first case to ruled on since the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush. The panel that reviewed Parhat's CSR Tribunal determination was made up of David B. Sentelle, Merrick B. Garland and Thomas B. Griffith.^[19] The court initially published only a one paragraph announcement as its full ruling contained classified material. According to CNN the judges ordered the Department of Defense to either: "release or transfer Parhat, or to expeditiously hold a new [military] tribunal."^[17]

According to Sabin Willett, one of his lawyers, it was not possible to tell Parhat of the ruling, because camp authorities were holding him in solitary confinement.^[20]

The Los Angeles Times quoted comments on the ruling from David Cole, the author of two books on military law^[20]:

Now all of these cases have been revived and this is the first case to move forward. And here is somebody that the military has been holding on to for six years and the federal court now says he shouldn't have been held in the first place. Absent this independent judicial review, he might have been sitting there for another 10 to 15 years. Now he has a chance to find freedom.

On June 19, 2008, Congressional Representatives Bill Delahunt and Dana Rohrabacher published an open letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, calling for the Uyghurs to be moved to more humane conditions within Guantanamo until a country can be found to accept them.^[18]

The 39 paqe redacted, unclassified version of the ruling was published on June 30.^[21] The ruling pointedly criticized the government's argument that evidence must be reliable because it appears in several documents, stating that “This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true.” It compared this argument to the Bellman's dictum in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: "Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has 'said it thrice' does not make an allegation true."^[22]

Steve Chapman a legal columnist at the Chicago Tribune commented on the Bush administration's arguments^[23]:

The operating assumption here is that the prisoners are terrorists who were captured while fighting a vicious war against the United States. But can the critics be sure? All they really know about the Guantanamo detainees is that they are Guantanamo detainees. To conclude that they are all bloodthirsty jihadists requires believing that the U.S. government is infallible.

Petition for release into the USA

On July 23, 2008 Susan Baker Manning filed a motion requesting Parhat be released on parole in the USA, until his habeas petition was completed.^[24][25]

On August 5, 2008 the United States Department of Justice opposed Parhat being released in the USA, and to having a judgment made on his habeas petition.^[26] The Government's opposition filing was 22 pages long.

The Department of Justice had initially claimed it was necessary to convene a new Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which might consider new evidence supporting a determination that Parhat was indeed an "enemy combatant".^[27] On September 2, 2008 the DC Circuit Court denied the Department of Justice plea, ensuring that there would be no re-hearing for Parhat.^[28]

The Bush administration still maintains no foreign country is willing to accept Parhat, and is resisting calls to offer him residency or asylum in the USA.^[29]

On September 29, 2008 James Oliphant, writing in the Chicago Tribune, quoted Jason Pinney, one of the Uyghur's attorneys.^[30] Oliphant characterized the USA decideing to label the Separatist group the Uyghurs were said to have been affiliated with a terrorist group, long after they were captured, in order to curry support from the Chinese for the invasion of Iraq:

"The Uighurs are really the poster boys for what happens when you exclude judicial review from something like Guantanamo. You get abuse." "If you connect the dots, it does not look good. The government knew it did something wrong, picked up the wrong people." "They want to blame the international community. They won't accept these poor Uighurs. You've brought them here and you have labeled them terrorists. The worst of the worst. Cold-blooded killers."

Oliphant also quoted Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Guantanamo spokesman, who defended the record of GI's at Guantanamo^[30]:

"This assertion is categorically untrue. For years, we have been hard at work with the international community in resettlement options for the Uighurs at Guantanamo, as we do not repatriate detainees to countries which cannot provide credible assurances of humane treatment."

Sent to Bermuda

Huzaifa Parhat and three other Uyghurs Abdul Helil Mamut, Emam Abdulahat and Jalal Jalaladin were set free in Bermuda on June 11, 2009.^[31]

References