Abdu Ali al Haji Sharqawi explained

Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj
Birth Date:26 May 1974[1] [2]
Birth Place:Taiz, Yemen
Date Of Arrest:February 2002
Place Of Arrest:Karachi, Pakistan
Nationality:Yemen
Detained At:CIA's black sites
Guantanamo
Id Number:1457
Status:Still held in Guantanamo

Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj (born May 26, 1974 in Taiz, Yemen), also known as Riyadh the Facilitator, is a Yemeni alleged Al-Qaeda associate who is currently being held in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He is accused of being a 'senior al-Qaida facilitator who swore an oath of allegiance to and personally recruited bodyguards for Osama Bin Laden.[3]

Al-Hajj arrived at the Guantanamo detention camps on 20 September 2004, and has been held there for .

Transportation to Guantanamo Bay

Human Rights group Reprieve reports that flight records show two captives named Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash were flown from Kabul in September 2002. The two men were flown aboard N379P, a plane suspected to be part of the CIA's ghost fleet. Flight records showed that the plane originally departed from Diego Garcia, stopped in Morocco, Portugal, then Kabul before landing in Guantanamo Bay.[4]

The Guardian reports that one of the two men has been released from US custody.[4]

A differing report shows al-Hajj was arrested by the CIA in Karachi, Pakistan, in February 2002, and rendered to Jordan. He was transferred to Afghanistan in January 2004, where he was held at the CIA-run Dark Prison, then at Bagram Air Base, and then finally transferred to Guantanamo in September 2004.[5]

Extraordinary rendition

Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj has written that after his capture, in February 2002, in Pakistan he spent two years in CIA custody in foreign interrogation centers, prior to his transfer to Guantanamo, in February 2004:[6] [7] He writes that he spent 19 months in Amman, Jordan, and then five months in a secret interrogation center. While inJordan he had been handed over to the custody of Jordan's General Intelligence Department. He wrote:

Official status reviews

Originally the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.[8] In 2004 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants

Following the Supreme Court's ruling the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.[8] [9]

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations.:[10]

Habeas Corpus

In June 2011, a federal Judge ruled that the Obama administration can not use certain statements al-Hajj gave to justify his detention because the government did not rebut claims of torture in Jordan and Afghanistan. But the same judge rejected a defense attempt to suppress an incriminating statement al-Hajj made before his claims of torture.[11]

Formerly secret Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment

On 25 April 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts.[12] [13] His 11-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on 20 July 2008.[14] It was signed by camp commandant Rear Admiral David M Thomas Jr.He recommended continued detention.

Joint Review Task Force

When he assumed office in January 2009, President Barack Obama made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo.[15] [16] [17] He promised to institute a new review system. That new review system was composed of officials from six departments, where the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. When it reported back, a year later, the Joint Review Task Force classified some individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them. On 9 April 2013, that document was made public after a Freedom of Information Act request.[18] Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj was one of the 71 individuals deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release. Al-Hajj was approved for transfer on 8 June 2021.[19]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: JTF- GTMO Detainee Assessment. 21 March 2023. Department of Defense.
  2. Web site: Guantanamo Detainee Assessment. 21 March 2023. Department of Defense. 12 November 2015.
  3. Web site: JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment. therenditionproject.org.uk.
  4. News: Fresh questions on torture flights spark demands for inquiry . . . 10 March 2008 . 17 March 2008 . Flight plan records show that one of the aircraft, registered N379P, flew in September 2002 from Diego Garcia to Morocco. From there it flew to Portugal and then to Kabul. Passenger names have been blacked out. However, Reprieve, which represents prisoners faced with the death penalty and torture, said that in Kabul the aircraft picked up Al-Sharqawi and Hassan bin Attash, two suspects who were tortured in Jordan before being rendered to Afghanistan and flown to Guantánamo Bay. Those rendered through Diego Garcia remain unidentified. In a letter to Miliband, Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: 'It is certainly not going to rebuild public confidence if we say that two people were illegally taken through British territory but then refuse to reveal the fates of these men.' . https://web.archive.org/web/20080314003313/http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/10/ciarendition.terrorism . 14 March 2008 . live .
  5. News: Human Rights Watch, Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan (2008) . . 8 January 2009 . https://web.archive.org/web/20090115004404/http://www.hrw.org/en/node/62263/section/4 . 15 January 2009 . bot: unknown . dmy .
  6. News: Non-Jordanian suspects sent by CIA to Amman spy center . . . 2 December 2007 . 2 December 2007 . dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20110523075938/http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/12/02/non_jordanian_suspects_sent_by_cia_to_amman_spy_center/. 23 May 2011. dmy .
  7. News: We'll make you see death . . Joanne . Mariner . 10 April 2008 . 5 November 2008 . dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20090113155331/http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/10/jordan_rendition/index.html. 13 January 2009. dmy .
  8. News: U.S. military reviews 'enemy combatant' use. USA Today. 11 October 2007. 23 October 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20071023220558/http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-10-11-guantanamo-combatants_N.htm. live. Critics called it an overdue acknowledgment that the so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals are unfairly geared toward labeling detainees the enemy, even when they pose little danger. Simply redoing the tribunals won't fix the problem, they said, because the system still allows coerced evidence and denies detainees legal representation.. dmy-all.
  9. News: Q&A: What next for Guantanamo prisoners? . . 21 January 2002 . 24 November 2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20081123204530/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1773140.stm . 23 November 2008 . bot: unknown . dmy .
  10. Web site: The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study. The Brookings Institution. 2008-12-16. Benjamin Wittes. Zaathira Wyne. 2010-02-16. https://web.archive.org/web/20170519100934/https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1216_detainees_wittes.pdf. 2017-05-19. live.
  11. News: Gitmo Detainee Seals Up Torture Confessions. courthousenews.com. Tim Hull. 8 June 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20120319024315/http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/06/08/37210.htm. 19 March 2012. 10 April 2016. dead. Next he was transferred to a so-called "dark prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to a recently unsealed ruling in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia..
  12. News: WikiLeaks: Guantanamo Bay terrorist secrets revealed -- Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West – while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose . . 27 April 2011 . 13 July 2012 . Christopher Hope . Robert Winnett . Holly Watt . Heidi Blake . 15 July 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120715015806/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8471907/WikiLeaks-Guantanamo-Bay-terrorist-secrets-revealed.html. live. The Daily Telegraph, along with other newspapers including The Washington Post, today exposes America’s own analysis of almost ten years of controversial interrogations on the world’s most dangerous terrorists. This newspaper has been shown thousands of pages of top-secret files obtained by the WikiLeaks website. . dmy-all .
  13. News: WikiLeaks: The Guantánamo files database. The Telegraph (UK). 27 April 2011. 10 July 2012. 26 June 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150626204100/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/guantanamo-bay-wikileaks-files/8476672/WikiLeaks-The-Guantanamo-files-database.html. dead.
  14. News: Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj: Guantanamo Bay detainee file on Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj, PK9YM-001457DP, passed to the Telegraph by Wikileaks. The Telegraph (UK). 27 April 2011. 13 July 2012. 15 July 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120715015806/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8471907/WikiLeaks-Guantanamo-Bay-terrorist-secrets-revealed.html. live. dmy-all.
  15. News: Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely. Peter Finn. The Washington Post. 22 January 2010. 21 July 2010. 4 May 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150504225142/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012104936.html. live. dmy-all.
  16. News: Most Guantanamo detainees low-level fighters, task force report says. Peter Finn. The Washington Post. 29 May 2010. 21 July 2010. 10 May 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150510052105/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/28/AR2010052803873.html. live. dmy-all.
  17. Web site: Andy Worthington. Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo?. 11 June 2010. 21 July 2010. 16 June 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100616161842/http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/06/11/does-obama-really-know-or-care-about-who-is-at-guantanamo. live.
  18. News: 71 Guantanamo Detainees Determined Eligible to Receive a Periodic Review Board as of April 19, 2013 . . 9 April 2013 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150519230955/https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1020057-guantanamo-parole-list.html . 19 May 2015 . 18 May 2015 . dead.
  19. Web site: Unclassified summary of final determination. 21 March 2023. Department of Defense.

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