| Adel Hassan Hamad | |
| Birth Place: | Port Sudan, Sudan |
| Date Of Arrest: | July 18, 2002 |
| Id Number: | 940 |
| Charge: | No charge |
| Status: | Repatriated |
| Occupation: | Hospital administrator |
Adel Hassan Hamad is a citizen of Sudan, who was held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba.[1] Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts estimate he was born in 1958, in Port Sudan, Sudan. Adel Hassan was repatriated to Sudan without charges on December 12, 2007.[2]
William Teesdale, a Portland, Oregon public defender, who is part of a team defending several Guantanamo captives, wrote a description of his team's work representing Adel.[3] He wrote:
"Then, in May, 2005, the Government produced the factual return, as ordered by the District Court. We learned something stunning. There was a dissenting voice on the military CSRT panel that declared Adel an Enemy Combatant. An army major, whose name is classified, had the courage to file a dissenting report calling the result in Adel’s case 'unconscionable.'"
Teesdale described traveling to Afghanistan, and searching for witnesses who could prove Adel's innocence.[3] Teesdale wrote:
"All of the information gathered in this investigation was filed with the court in Mr. Hamad’s case in the form of a motion for summary judgment. On October 17, 2006 President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which attempts to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear Guantanamo detainee habeas cases. All of our cases are presently stayed pending resolution of this issue."
On October 5, 2007 the lawyers for Adel Hassan Hamad filed an affidavit from an officer who had served with OARDEC who had criticisms of the process.[4] The officer, an Army reservist whose name was redacted, was a prosecutor in civilian life. He wrote of the Tribunals: ``"training was minimal" -and- ``"the process was not well defined". The officer had sat on 49 Tribunals.
CBS News reports that the unnamed officer is a Major, who participated in meetings with the admiral in charge of OARDEC to discuss six instances where Tribunals that had determined captives were innocent had those determinations reversed by extraordinary second Tribunals.[5] CBS News speculated that the Army major was the Tribunal member who recorded a minority opinion in Adel Hassan Hamad's case, calling his detention "unconscionable" because it was not based on sufficient evidence.
The Army major has described "acrimony" at a meeting convened to discuss why some Tribunals determined Uyghur captives in Guantanamo were not enemy combatants, when other Tribunals determined they were, even though the Uyghurs cases were so similar.[5]
James R. Crisfield, the Legal Advisor who reviewed Tribunal determinations for "legal sufficiency" commented on the reasoning of the "dissenting Tribunal member":
He and fellow Sudanese Salim Mahmud Adam were repatriated on December 13, 2007.[6]
On May 14, 2008 the Daily Times of Pakistan reported that "Salim Mahmud Adam" and "Adel Hasan Hamad" had announced plans to sue the United States government over their detention.[7] The article reports that he told the Daily Times that his 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal had cleared him of the allegation that he was an "enemy combatant".
Hassan filed suit against the government and several individuals in federal district court in Seattle in April, 2010. His case was bolstered by an affidavit from Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who stated that top U.S. officials, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, had known that the majority of the detainees initially sent to Guantánamo were innocent, but that the detainees had been kept there for reasons of political expedience.[8]
Hamad had daughter who was born after his arrest and who died before his release for lack of medical care.[9]