Asim Thahit Abdullah al Khalaqi explained

Asim Thahit Abdullah Al Khalaqi
Birth Date:1968
Birth Place:Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Id Number:152
Alias:Asim Thabit Al Khalaqi
Penalty:Extrajudicial detention
Status:Deceased

Asim Thahit Abdullah Al Khalaqi (1968-2015), also known as Asim Thabit Al Khalaqi, was a citizen of Yemen, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 152. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts believe Khalaqi was born in 1968 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

On December 30, 2014, Khalaqi was transferred to the custody of Kazakhstan with four other detainees. They were prevented from being repatriated to Yemen because of its uncertain political state. Al Khalaqi died of chronic kidney failure 129 days after his transfer.

Official status reviews

In the early years of his response to the 9/11 attacks, United States President George W. Bush asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. He said they could be held indefinitely at the detention center his government set up at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, on the island of Cuba, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention.[1] 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.[1] [2]

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Asim Thahit Abdullah Al Khalaqi's 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on November 4, 2004.[3]

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:[4]

Khalaqi chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.[5] The DoD published a thirteen-page summarized transcript.

On July 12, 2006, the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of reviews of the Guantanamo detainees. Khalaqi was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article, his transcript contained the following exchange:

al khalaqi: Are these evidence or accusations?
tribunal president: They are in the form of both...
Al Khalaqi: I'm sorry, I just don't understand. How does it fit the two pictures or definitions? For example, if I say this table is the chair and the chair is the table and they are the same thing, does that make sense?
tribunal president: No, that doesn't make sense. But this process makes sense to me and hopefully it will make sense to you, because you're the one who's going to have to provide us with evidence and tell us that you did or did not do these things as listed on the summary of evidence.
Al Khalaqi: So I just answer the accusations. But I'm going to call it accusations. I'm not going to call it evidence.
tribunal president: Very well, you can call it as you wish.

Habeas corpus submission

Khalaqi was one of the sixteen Guantanamo captives whose amalgamated habeas corpus submissions were heard by US District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton on January 31, 2007.[6]

On June 12, 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Boumediene v. Bush, that the Military Commissions Act could not remove the right for Guantanamo captives to access the US Federal Court system. And all previous Guantanamo captives' habeas petitions were re-instated. In July 2008, Civil Action No. 05-CV-999 was re-filed on Asim Ben Thabit Al-Khalaqi's behalf. His was the sole case in 05-CV-999.

Formerly secret Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment

On April 25, 2011, the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts.[7] [8] A nine-page assessment was drafted on January 1, 2007.[9] It was signed by camp commandant Harry B. Harris Jr., who recommended continued detention. His 2007 JTF-GTMO assessment characterized him as a "medium risk".

Joint Review Task Force

When he assumed office in January 2009 President Barack Obama made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo.[10] [11] [12] He promised the use of torture would cease at the camp. 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 the individuals as either eligible to be charged; eligible for release; or too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, even though there was no evidence to justify laying charges against them.[13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] Khalaqi was one of the 55 individuals whose release the Task Force recommended.

Transfer to Kazakhstan

On December 31, 2014, Khalaqi, and four other men, were transferred to Kazakhstan.Fox News pointed out to readers that al Khalaqi, and the other men, were the first individuals to be transferred to Kazakhstan. Fellow Yemenis (Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna and Sabri Mohammad al Qurashi), and Tunisians Adel Al-Hakeemy and Lotfi Bin Ali, were also transferred. Fox News noted that his 2007 JTF-GTMO assessment characterized him as a "medium risk". Reuters pointed out that the 2009 reviews by the Joint Review Task Force had reclassified all five men as "low risk".

National Public Radio pointed out that all the agencies with representatives on the Joint Review Task Force had unanimously agreed to release the five men.

Matt Spetalnick, of Reuters, noted that Khalaqi had denied claims from John Walker Lindh, "the American Taliban", that he had fought with al Qaeda.

Vice News described the men as only nominally being free.Lotfi Bin Ali, who was released to Kazakhstan at the same time as al-Khalaqi, and had been in regular contact with him via Skype, told Vice News that Kazakhstan security officials regularly inspected the former captives' living quarters, initially doing so almost every day:

"The police used to come almost every day to the apartment. They would open the door and enter and check the place for a minute or two, then they would leave... It's as if it's Guantanamo 2, to be honest."

Vice News reported that "In cooperation with the Kazakh government, the local chapter of the ICRC is charged with the care of the former detainees, and provides healthcare, food stipends, language classes, and transport."

Death in Kazakhstan

On May 21, 2015, Claire Ward, writing in Vice News, reported that al-Khalaqi had been found dead in his sparsely furnished apartment in Kyzylorda, on . Lotfi Bin Ali, who was released to Kazakhstan at the same time as al-Khalaqi, described al-Khalaqi frequently going into comas, in his cell, at Guantanamo, requiring Guantanamo medical personnel to rush to his aid. Prior to his autopsy, Kazakhstan authorities suspected he might have died from food poisoning, but his autopsy determined that he died of kidney failure, and also had a serious lung infection. On May 22, 2015, The Guardian quoted another friend of Khalaqi, Jihad Dhiab (recently transferred to Uruguay) regarding Khalaqi's cause of death.[19]

Guantanamo spokesman Captain Tom Gresback told Vice News, "Every detainee is given a thorough health screening prior to transfer... The detainee would not have been transferred if he failed the health screening." His 2007 Joint Task Force Guantanamo detainee assessment described al-Khalaqi as being in "good health".[9]

External links

Notes and References

  1. News: U.S. military reviews 'enemy combatant' use . . 2007-10-11 . 2007-10-23 . 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..
  2. News: Q&A: What next for Guantanamo prisoners? . . 2002-01-21 . 2008-11-24 . https://web.archive.org/web/20081123204530/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1773140.stm . 23 November 2008 . bot: unknown .
  3. Web site: Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- Al Khalaqi, Asim Thahit Abdullah . 4 November 2004 . OARDEC . OARDEC . 52 . . 2007-12-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20071204202342/http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/000101-000200.pdf#52 . 4 December 2007 . dead.
  4. Web site: The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study. The Brookings Institution. 2008-12-16. Benjamin Wittes. 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.
  5. News: Summarized Transcript. OARDEC. 11–23. https://web.archive.org/web/20060731085245/http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/Set_14_1292-1317H.pdf#page=11. 2006-07-31. 2015-05-20. live .
  6. Web site: Gherebi, et al. v. Bush. January 31, 2007. United States Department of Justice. Reggie B. Walton. Reggie B. Walton. May 19, 2007. October 3, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181003031059/http://www.pegc.us/archive/In_re_Gitmo/order_RBW_20070131.pdf. dead.
  7. 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 . . 2011-04-27 . 2012-07-13 . Christopher Hope . Robert Winnett . Holly Watt . Heidi Blake . 2012-07-15 . 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. .
  8. News: WikiLeaks: The Guantánamo files database. https://web.archive.org/web/20110429040459/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wikileaks-files/guantanamo-bay-wikileaks-files/8476672/WikiLeaks-The-Guantanamo-files-database.html. dead. 2011-04-29. The Telegraph (UK). 2011-04-27. 2012-07-10.
  9. News: Asim Thabit Abdallah Al Khalaqi: Guantanamo Bay detainee file on Asim Thabit Abdallah Al Khalaqi, US9YM-000152DP, passed to the Telegraph by Wikileaks . The Telegraph (UK). 2011-04-27. 2015-05-20.
  10. News: Justice task force recommends about 50 Guantanamo detainees be held indefinitely . Peter Finn . Washington Post . January 22, 2010 . July 21, 2010 . 2015-05-04 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150504225142/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012104936.html . live.
  11. News: Most Guantanamo detainees low-level fighters, task force report says . Peter Finn . Washington Post . May 29, 2010 . July 21, 2010 . 2015-05-10 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150510052105/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/28/AR2010052803873.html . live.
  12. Web site: Andy Worthington. Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo?. June 11, 2010. July 21, 2010. 2010-06-16. 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.
  13. News: Who are the 55 cleared Guantanamo prisoners on the list released by the Obama administration?. Andy Worthington. Andy Worthington. 2012-10-25. 2015-05-21.
  14. News: U.S. names 55 Guantánamo captives cleared for release . . Carol Rosenberg . Carol Rosenberg . 2012-09-21 . 2012-10-05 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121005195921/http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/21/3014519/us-names-55-guantanamo-captives.html . live.
  15. News: U.S. releases list of Guantanamo detainees cleared for transfer . . Danica Coto . 2012-09-21 . 2012-09-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120923020958/http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1260726--omar-khadr-not-on-u-s-list-of-guantanamo-detainees-cleared-for-transfer . live . The U.S. Justice Department has made public the names of 55 Guantanamo prisoners who have been approved for transfer to the custody of other countries, releasing information sought by human rights organizations. The announcement, which reverses a 2009 decision, was a surprise to organizations that had filed FOIA requests seeking the information..
  16. News: US releases names of 55 Guantanamo detainees approved for transfer . freedetainees.org . 2012-09-23 . 2012-10-23 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121023035640/http://freedetainees.org/2012/09/21/us-releases-names-of-55-guantanamo-detainees-approved-for-transfer/ . dead . 2015-05-22.
  17. News: Quei reclusi di Guantanamo che possiamo trovarci in casa . Those inmates from Guantanamo that we can find in the house . . Fausto Biloslavo . 2012-09-23 . 2012-10-08 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121008213708/http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/esteri/quei-reclusi-guantanamo-che-possiamo-trovarci-casa-839863.html . live.
  18. News: Current Guantanamo Bay Detainee-Petitioners Approved For Transfer (Sept. 21, 2012) . . 2012-09-21 . 2012-11-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20121114082358/http://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2012/09/21/17/22/1dquzf.So.56.pdf. live.
  19. News: Former Guantánamo detainee dies in Kazakhstan six months after release. The Guardian (UK). Diana Cariboni . Raya Jalabi . Jonathan Watts . 2015-05-22. 2015-05-22. "When a prisoner’s health becomes very fragile, the American military seek to release him as soon as possible to avoid the responsibility of a death in prison".

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