Mohammed Ali Salem Al Zarnuki

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Mohammed Ali Salem Al Zarnuki is a citizen of Yemen, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] His detainee ID number is 691.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 testimony
- 1.2 witnesses
2 Administrative Review Board hearing
3 References

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

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 a 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 administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

Al Zarnuki chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[2]

Al Zarnuki was in the middle of a hunger strike when his Tribunal convened.

[edit] testimony

Al Zarnuki was arrested with 13 others in a house in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Many of the occupants were students, or applying to be students, at Salafi University. He had traveled there for religious study in the winter of 2002. He said he had never traveled to Afghanistan. Al Zarnuki had been ill for several months, with a disease he thought might have been chicken pox.

Some of the allegations against Al Zarnuki concerned his ties to Jama'at al Tablighi. Al Zarnuki said he wasn't a member of Tablighi, he had merely been studying with them.

Al Zarnuki complained that he wasn't getting adequate medical care in Guantanamo. He stated that he had a painful growth on his head that wasn't been attended to. The transcript describes it as a visible bump the size of a quarter.

[edit] witnesses

Two witnesses were called to testify on Al Zarnuki's behalf. Ahmed Abdul Qader and Mohammed Mohammed Hassen are fellow Yemeni citizens, like Al Zarnuki. None of them knew why they were arrested. The two witnesses concurred that Al Zarnuki had been ill at the time of their capture. Qadar testified that Al Zarnuki had been too ill to go out, and sometimes to ill to join the communal prayers or meals.

[edit] Administrative Review Board hearing

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.

Al Zarnuki chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.^[3]