Adel al Hakeemy was born in Ben Arous, Tunisia, in 1969. He was one of 10 siblings, and jobs were scarce in Tunisia, so at 16 he emigrated to Italy. There he secured legal residence and learned to cook, eventually working in well-regarded restaurants and as a chef’s assistant in a Bolognese hotel. In 1998, approaching the age of 30 and wanting to find a Muslim wife, he traveled to Pakistan and was married there. The in-laws asked him to move with them to Afghanistan, and a false Belgian passport was arranged. They settled in Jalalabad and talked about starting a restaurant there, serving European-style food, with Adel as the chef.

Then, in 2001, the US invaded Afghanistan. Adel fled the war zone, but was captured by Pakistani bounty hunters—possibly on false information from an Italian source—and sold to US forces. He was taken to Kandahar, tortured, and then sent to Guantánamo as an “enemy combatant.”  His daughter Hind was born while he was in Cuba. On February 12, 2012, he will have been there for 10 years.

According to the British organization Reprieve, Italian interrogators visited him and other Italian residents at Guantánamo in 2002 and 2003 and shared their information with the US authorities. Hakeemy later told his lawyers, “I was in Camp Delta when the Italians came. I told them we were treated badly. One of them agreed with everything I said about my treatment, and said he knew what was happening here.”

After Reprieve issued its report and an article about the men appeared in the newspaper La Repubblica, 41 Italian Senators demanded an investigation into Italy’s role in interrogating the men and in what it termed their extraordinary rendition.

Where is the world to save us from torture?
Where is the world to save us from the fire and sadness?
Where is the world to save the hunger strikers?

- Adnan Latif
Poems from Guantánamo*

* Written under duress and published with great difficulty in 2007 by The University of Iowa Press,  Poems from Guantánamo is a collection of 22 poems from seventeen of the detainees.  A brief  biographical statement about each detainee is provided before the poems.  As the collection’s editor Mark Falkoff writes, “Many of the men at Guantánamo turned to writing poetry as a way to maintain their sanity, to memorialize their suffering and to preserve their humanity through acts of creation…. Perhaps their poems will prick the conscience of the nation.”  

If This Is A Man

We mourn the death of the Adnan Latif.  Originating from Yemen, Adnan Latif was sold for bounty at the Pakistan/Afghanistan border in 2001, was one of the first men to be brought to the camp back in 2002, suffered torture including solitary confinement for the first three years, then willingly undertook a hunger strike for justice for over six months in 2005, was later held at the base psychiatric ward due to his deteriorating mental health, and was forbidden under a moratorium – like the other fifty-six Yemeni men detained at Guantánamo yet cleared for release since 2009 – by the Obama administration to return to Yemen because of that country’s instability. At the time of his death at the age of thirty-six years old, Adnan Latif spent ten years, seven months, and twenty-five days detained at Guantánamo.

In Search of Affordable Medical Care

As Judge Kennedy wrote in his 2010 decision for Adnan’s release: “It is undisputed that in 1994, he [Adnan Latif] sustained head injuries as the result of a car accident and the Yemeni government paid for him to receive treatment at the Islamic Hospital in Amman, Jordan.”  However, the treatment was incomplete and Adnan Latif spent the next few years searching for affordable health care.  In the Yemen Ministry of Defense’s “Military Medical Decision Form” dated July of 1995, his diagnosis still reported “1) Loss of sight in left eye as a result of eye nerve damage. 2) Loss of hearing in the ears.”  And after finding the same health results in another medical report dated August of 1999, the doctors “recommend that he return to the previous center outside for more tests and therapeutic and surgical procedures at his own expense” (our italics).

The vast difference of health care systems in this part of the world lends credibility to Adnan Latif’s need/recommendation to find medical care outside of Yemen.  In fact, despite the significant progress that Yemen has made in its health care system, as of 2004 there were only three doctors per 10,000 people. In 2001, Adnan Latif traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where he heard of a charitable health care office of a Pakistani aid worker that might help him.  Soon afterwards, it was there that he was arrested.  It is important to note that these medical documents were deemed not admissible during Adnan Latif’s “status” hearing in 2004, and yet, with these documents in hand, Judge Kennedy found that the prosecutors did not meet the adequate proof for Adnan Latif’s involvement with al Qaeda.

Hunger Strike for Basic Human Rights

Even with the medical treatment at the detention center being almost nonexistent, the condition of confinement is horrific.  The punishment for disobeying even arbitrary disciplinary rules includes solitary confinement, no comfort items, no mattress, no pants, etc.  In 2007, Adnan Latif participated in a hunger strike which lasted for over six months.  As a result, Mark Folkoff explains, “Twice a day, the guards immobilize Latif’s head, strap his arms and legs to a special restraint chair, and force-feed him a liquid nutrient by inserting a tube up his nose and into his stomach a clear violation of international standards. The feeding, Latif says, ‘is like having a dagger shoved down your throat.’”  In 2008, Latif Adnan lost a Federal Court case for his plea for a blanket and mattress in his cell.  In his decision, Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan reasons, “While the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene gives [Latif] the right to challenge the fact of his confinement, it says nothing of his right to challenge the conditions of his confinement.”  With this evidence, the physical and psychological torture perpetrated at Guantánamo is systematic and legally upheld.

A Kafkaesque Legal Nightmare

Adnan Latif remained in custody until his death despite the determination of Department of Defense in 2004 that he “is not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training” and a 2007 determination that Adnan Latif should be transferred away from Guantánamo Bay “subject to the process for making appropriate diplomatic arrangements for his departure.”  What we have also learned from the Wikileaks documents illegally released was that Adnan Latif was repeatedly found to be innocent by the Joint Task Force of Guantánamo in 2008 and again by the Guantánamo Review Task Force established by the Obama administration in 2009.  And in public court, we knew of a Washington DC judge who ordered his release from detention in 2010.  This last ruling was quickly appealed by the Obama administration’s prosecutors and later overturned in 2011.  Furthermore, Amnesty International was just about to launch a worldwide campaign on his behalf.  And then he was found dead in his cell.  It was a death he has long despairingly desired.  Dubiously reported to be an overdose, like the other eight deaths at the camp since 2002 there will be no independent investigation.

Adnan Latif’s Own Words

The following is a letter Adnan Latif wrote to his lawyer on December 26, 2010:

David Remes,

Do whatever you wish to do, the issue is over.

I am happy to express from this darkness and draw a true picture of the condition in which I exist. I am moving towards a dark cave and a dark life in the shadow of a dark prison. This is a prison that does not know humanity, and does not know [anything] except the language of power, oppression and humiliation for whoever enters it. It does not differentiate between a criminal and the innocent, and between the right of the sick or the elderly who is weak and is unable to bear and a man who is still bearing all this from the prison administration that is evil in mercy.

Hardship is the only language that is used here. Anybody who is able to die will be able to achieve happiness for himself, he has no other hope except that. The requirement is to announce the end, and challenge the self love for life and the soul that insists to end it all and leave this life which is no longer anymore called a life, instead it itself has become death and renewable torture. Ending it is a mercy and happiness for this soul.

I will not allow any more of this and I will end it. I will send [move] it to a world that is much better than this world. There, the real life will live again that will be filled with complete happiness and be rid of all harassments. There, the environment will clear up, things will calm down and you will be able to relax and you will not see the world of evil people.

I am in need of a person who blindfolds his eyes from me [looks the other way] and leaves me in my freedom so that I can choose my end. With all my pains, I say goodbye to you and the cry of death should be enough for you.

A world power failed to safeguard peace and human rights and from saving me. I will do whatever I am able to do to rid myself of the imposed death on me at any moment of this prison.

156

Shut Down Guantánamo

When Luke Hansen was covering the military commission procedures at Guantánamo last October, he overheard a reporter from Fox News say of Adnan Latif, “I think he died from hopelessness.”  Adnan did, indeed, embody everything that is unjust about Guantánamo, Bagram and the other detention centers we have yet to know about.  We too must not lose love, lose hope, lose indignation, lose whatever it is that springs from truth and justice within us and our community to stop indefinite detention without due process and close down these centers of darkness and death.

Amin al-Bakri is pictured above (left) prior to his abduction by U.S. agents and (right) after 6 years of imprisonment in U.S. custody—first at secret C.I.A. detention sites known for the use of torture in interrogations, and then at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where physical and mental torture have been commonly documented. Since 2002 Amin has been confined virtually incommunicado, without access to counsel and with little contact with his family, except through heavily censored letters, and more recently, through rare, monitored phone calls. In a cry for help, Amin’s father, Mohammed al-Bakri, wrote to President Obama, “These pictures show the heavy toll that Amin’s imprisonment has had on him.” No pictures of Amin have been made available subsequent to the one taken above (right) in 2008.

Kidnapped, Tortured and Indefinitely Imprisoned Without Charge

In 2002, Amin al-Bakri, a gem salesman with investments in shrimp farming, was on a five-day business trip to Thailand.  After checking out of his hotel, Amin was headed to the airport to fly back to Yemen, eager to celebrate his 40th birthday with his wife and children, when unknown U.S. agents seized him.  His wife and children had no idea what had happened to him until a Yemeni newspaper reported that he had been kidnapped by unknown American agents.  All of the efforts by the al-Bakri family to find Amin were unsuccessful.  They only learned that he was still alive when they received a postcard in his handwriting from the U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, forwarded by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  In the postcard Amin asked family members to look after his two sons and young daughter.

During the month that U.S. agents seized Amin, two prisoners at Bagram were tortured to death by U.S. interrogators, and at least 84 others died as a result of abusive treatment in U.S. custody at various detention sites worldwide.  Documented interrogation methods inflicted on prisoners at C.I.A. “black sites” and at Bagram have included beatings; electric shocks; prolonged suspension from the ceiling; stress positions; solitary confinement in “dog boxes”; sexual abuse and humiliation; starvation; freezing temperatures; water-boarding; simulated drowning; continual blaring of deafening music; intentional subjection to screams from neighboring prison cells; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; and mock executions.

Because Amin has been held virtually incommunicado in Afghanistan without access to his attorneys, we cannot know for certain where he was detained between his abduction in 2002 and his eventual imprisonment at Bagram.  We do know, however, that Amin was subjected to serious abuse resulting in injuries to his knees and back, and that he has since had unsuccessful surgery on one of his knees. Beyond knowledge of these disclosed injuries, his family can only speculate about what he has endured and is still enduring.

Despite these horrific circumstances, Amin is reported to be a model prisoner.  Most notably, he acts as an interpreter between U.S. military authorities and other prisoners, utilizing his knowledge of English, French, Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu—and has defused and mediated disputes between these groups.

A Family’s Sorrow

Amin’s disappearance and subsequent imprisonment have caused devastating pain for his entire family throughout the past 8 years.  As Amin’s father, Muhammed al-Bakri, has said, “My heart aches when I consider the terrible and degrading treatment he has been forced to endure.”  Amin’s father worries for Amin’s children, explaining, “They’ve been robbed of the joy of their childhood. They know they’ve lost something.”  And he fears for Amin’s wife, who lives “as though half her soul is missing.”  The resulting prolonged stress has caused health problems for both of Amin’s parents, because they have not seen their son for the past eight years and do not know if they ever will again.  In their efforts to win Amin’s release, the family has been grateful for the support of HOOD, a leading human rights organization in Yemen.

The Legal Struggle

For the past eight years no charges have been brought against Amin.  Yet the U.S. government claims it may continue to hold him indefinitely as part of its war against various groups, a war to which Amin has no connection.  The U.S. has offered no evidence to justify Amin’s imprisonment and has concealed all information regarding his initial seizure.  The military’s periodic reviews are the only procedure afforded to Amin.  These reviews rely on secret evidence and afford prisoners no meaningful opportunity to dispute the accusations against them, dispute the alleged evidence against them, or even to access legal counsel.

On July 28, 2008, Muhammad al-Bakri filed a Habeas Corpus Petition on his son’s behalf in U.S. Federal Court. Judge John D. Bates, who heard the case, found that non-Afghans captured outside the battlefield ought to be able to hold their military jailers accountable, and, like those imprisoned at Guantánamo, should be entitled to their day in court.  Judge Bates held that, “The only reason these petitioners are in a theater of war is because [U.S. government forces] brought them there.”  Since 2003, when the Supreme Court began to consider legal rights for prisoners at Guantánamo, the U.S. military has largely sent prisoners to Bagram, instead.  Judge Bates’ decision made clear that our government cannot simply kidnap people and hold them beyond the law.

A Federal Court of Appeals overturned Judge Bates’ decision in May 2010, deferring to the Government’s arguments that Bagram prisoners have no right to challenge their confinement.  Now Amin’s attorneys have offered the lower Court new evidence showing that the government is using Bagram to evade judicial review and public scrutiny.

Amin’s struggle for justice continues, and so does the struggle for all those imprisoned by the U.S. without due process of law.  We urge the courts to recognize and respect the rights of the Bagram prisoners, so that they are not imprisoned indefinitely but can go back to their families and rebuild their lives.  We urge the U.S. legislature to repeal repressive legislation that codifies sham due process and indefinite imprisonment.  We urge the American public to question the imprisonment and torture of these men at the behest of the United States government.  And we urge you to educate and speak out to your communities and congressional officials to condemn practices of torture, imprisonment, and war.

More Information

Learn more about Amin and other Bagram prisoners, International Justice Network
Appeals Court Rules Against Bagram Detainees, Associated Press, May 21, 2010
U.S. to Give Afghan Detainees New Rights, Associated Press, Sept. 12, 2009
At Jail in Bagram, A Detainee Protest, Washington Post, July 16, 2009
Obama’s Gitmo?, Washington Independent, Jan. 7, 2009
Lawyer Questions Plan to Tear Down Afghan Prison, Associated Press, Dec. 31, 2009
Foreign Detainees Have U.S. Right, BBC News, April 2, 2009

Djamel Ameziane was born April 14, 1967. He is 43 years old. A member of the Berber ethnic group, he fled his native Algeria when he was in his early twenties– seeking a better life.

He found that better life; working as a chef at Al Caminetto Trattoria, one of the best Italian restaurants in Vienna, Austria. Forced to leave when his visa was not renewed, he went to Canada. Living and working in Montreal, Ameziane sought political asylum there as well. When that claim was denied in 2000, Ameziane was out of options. He decided to go to Afghanistan because—as Wells Dixon, a member of his legal team, explained—“My client wanted to go to Afghanistan because he believed it was only there that he could live in peace, anonymously and permanently.”

But, soon after he settled there, the U.S. launched a war against Afghanistan in October 2001. Ameziane tried to flee the fighting, but he was captured by local police while trying to cross the border into Pakistan and was turned over to U.S. forces for a bounty of $2,000 or $5,000. Vermont attorney Robert D. Rachlin is working on Ameziane’s case and says: “There’s nothing here that shows that he so much as held a firearm or did anything against the United States — he’s one of those guys who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s nothing more here than guilt by association.” For that “crime,” Ameziane was held at Kandahar Airbase in Afghanistan and then transported to Guantánamo in February 2002, making him one of the earliest prisoners held at the notorious facility.

Torture at Guantánamo

For more than a year Ameziane was held in solitary confinement in a small windowless cell in Camp 6. The International Committee of the Red Cross described Camp 6 as more restrictive than supermax facilities in the U.S. In the United States, prisoners are only placed in supermax facilities—where they are under constant surveillance and always alone– once they have been convicted of a crime.

On at least one occasion, U.S. guards at Guantánamo held Djamel Ameziane’s head down and placed a running water hose between his nose and mouth, running it for several minutes over his face and suffocating him, repeating the operation several times.  Of that experience he writes, “I had the impression that my head was sinking in water. Simply thinking of it gives me the chills.”

He was subjected to other abuse as well, spending as many as 25 and 30 hours at a time in the interrogation room, sometimes with techno music blasting, “enough to burst your eardrums.”  He was once sprayed all over with cayenne pepper and then hosed down with water to accentuate the effect of the pepper spray and make his skin burn. The guards then bound him in cuffs and chains and took him to an interrogation room, where he was left for several hours, writhing in pain, his clothes soaked while air conditioning blasted in the room, and his body burning from the pepper spray. Ameziane is now confined in Camp 4, and has access to other prisoners, reading materials and television. He is no longer interrogated constantly and the worst of the abuse is (hopefully) in the past. But the gross injustice of indefinite detention continues.

Djamel Ameziane’s Family

Ameziane has several brothers and sisters. His father died while he was in Guantánamo, and his mother is elderly and ailing. Djamel’s brother says: “Since Djamel has been at Guantánamo Bay, his whole family has been living a nightmare. Our mother, who hasn’t seen him in 18 years, is very sick and hopes to see him before she dies; that hope is the one thing that has kept her alive since our father died in April 2007.  Our father also hoped to hold Djamel in his arms before he left us, but he didn’t have the chance, and he departed with this dream unfulfilled.  As for Djamel, he was devastated when he learned the sad news that the father who loved him so much passed away. The whole family anxiously awaits Djamel’s return to us.”

What Next?

Ameziane has never been charged with a crime. There is no credible evidence that he took up arms against the U.S. or posed a threat. He remains at Guantánamo  because the United States cannot send him back to Algeria, the country of his birth and has not (despite eight years of Ameziane’s unjust and wrongful detention) found a third country to host him.

Djamel Ameziane has a credible fear of persecution in Algeria.  He grew up in Kabylie, an unstable region in the north of Algeria known for frequent, violent clashes between the Algerian army and Islamic resistance groups. The region is descending into even greater chaos, and clashes are on the increase. The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning to the area, citing “terrorist attacks, including bombings, false roadblocks, kidnappings, ambushes, and assassinations” that occur regularly particularly in Kabylie. In this region, practicing Muslims are automatically suspected of supporting the resistance. They are frequently harassed and targeted for arrests and detention by the government solely because of their religious practices.  The area has also not been Ameziane’s home for nearly two decades and he should not be forced to return there.

The stain of having spent time in Guantánamo would alone be enough to put him at risk of being imprisoned if he is returned.  The first two Algerians transferred out of Guantánamo in July 2008 were disappeared for two weeks and likely subjected to interrogation by Algeria’s “military security” police.  Amnesty International has reported that the most serious violations of human rights abuses have been committed by these forces in cases of individuals detained on suspicion of terrorist activity.

Djamel Ameziane remains trapped at Guantánamo until a third country comes forward to offer him resettlement protection.  A graduate of college, Djamel speaks a number of languages—which would ease his transition to a third country. He is fluent in French, Arabic and English, and speaks some German. In 2008, his lawyers submitted an application for resettlement in Canada, the country he lived in for five years and would not have left had he not previously been denied asylum. One of his brother’s also lives in Canada, making it an easier place for Ameziane to settle in.

The Anglican Church in Canada is prepared to sponsor Djamel Ameziane’s settlement, where one of his brothers also lives. Barry Clarke, Anglican bishop of Montreal, said:  ”Having read what Djamel has suffered and the risk he would face if returned to Algeria, I am convinced that sponsoring him is the right thing to do.” But Canada is not the only option. There is an effort to convince the Austrian government to take him back, and his boss at the Al Caminetto Trattoria is eager to rehire him as a chef.

Despite his long separation from family and imprisonment, Djamel has continued to pursue his interests– he enjoys drawing and water coloring, he reads French mystery novels and plays soccer. Djamel says: “I have only ever wanted to live quietly and peacefully in a country where I would not suffer persecution. That is still my goal.” There is no reason that President Barack Obama, who in January 2009 pledged to shut down Guantánamo and end torture, could not free Djamel Ameziane and help him realize that goal.

More Information

Canadian Council for Refugees: Effort to Resettle Ameziane in Canada
Center for Constitutional Rights

Write to Djamel Ameziane

Please send a copy to Center for Constitutional Rights

Djamel Ameziane, Internment Serial Number 310
Camp Delta
U.S. Naval Base Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
PO Box 160
Washington, DC 20355 USA

Center for Constitutional Rights
Attn: Liz Bradley
Guantánamo Letter Writing Campaign
666 Broadway, Seventh Floor
New York, NY 10003

Nabil Hadjarab, now 31 years old, was “captured” in Afghanistan when he was barely 22. Captured, though, is the wrong word; he was sold to US forces for a bounty of $5,000, a fortune in that country. He had been wounded trying to flee the war; he was taken from his hospital bed in Kandahar to a US military prison. Although he was told – repeatedly – by his interrogators that his was a case of mistaken identity, he was flown to Guantánamo in early 2002. And although he was cleared for release in 2007, he remains there, in some sort of legal limbo, because France refuses to take him back.

He was born in Algeria, though his father had lived in France since 1954, and had served over two years in the French armed forces fighting for France in its brutal war in Algeria. His family brought Nabil to France when he was still a baby, but were unable to care for him, so his childhood was with a foster family in Savigny where he went to primary school and where his father came to visit him on weekends. He recalls this is the happiest time of his life. He has seven half-brothers and sisters from his father’s first marriage; all are French citizens but Nabil never became a citizen. When he was nine, his father took him back with him to Algeria, where he continued his schooling but also returned to France for two months each summer to spend the vacation with his uncle Ahmad’s family. When Nabil was 15, his father died of cancer, and he was taken in by an aunt.

When Nabil turned twenty-one, in 2000, he returned to France to be reunited with his siblings, his uncle and his foster family. Later that year Nabil sought legal advice and attempted to obtain French residency but was told the review of his case could take half a year. Worried about trying to live in France without papers, he went to Britain, where he had heard it was easier. It was not, but there he heard that it was possible to live undocumented in Afghanistan; he decided to go there to pursue religious studies, hoping to find new meaning in his life.

He arrived in March 2001; less than eight months later, the US invaded the country. Reports began to circulate that the Northern Alliance was rounding up and killing Arabs. In fear, Nabil and his housemates fled to Jalalabad, then to the mountains outside the city. The US was bombing all the main roads leading toward safety in Pakistan, so Nabil stayed in the mountains for a few weeks, hoping the danger would ease. It didn’t. Feeling he could wait no longer, Nabil attempted to reach the border. However, he was wounded by a bomb and ended up in that hospital in Jalalabad.

Nabil had never attended a training camp and had nothing at all to do with terrorism or the Taliban, but the US high command, in spite of his interrogators’ reports that his incarceration was a mistake, insisted that every Arab who ended up in US custody should be sent to Guantánamo Bay, regardless of the quality of evidence against them. Shackled, bound and hooded, Nabil was flown to Cuba in early 2002, where he has been ever since. There, though he has been described by the very men charged with “guarding” this dangerous man, as a “brilliant artist, keen footballer, sweet kid,” he has been subjected to all kinds of torture and inhuman treatment: sleep and sensory deprivation, temperature extremes and prolonged isolation. He has never been permitted a family visit, and has spoken with them on the phone only three times.

Nabil wishes not to be sent to Algeria, but to return to France, where he has a loving uncle and aunt, so that he can quietly rebuild his life and be reunited with his family. He dreams of finding work as an interpreter or translator, using his excellent linguistic skills; he speaks fluent English, French and Arabic.

He has written to French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “I have spent over eight years in this prison without any charges being brought against me. … Having spent so long in such an isolating place, I do not want to find myself alone again, in a position where I must beg for charity. The most important thing to me is dignity. My dignity has been taken away from me during the eight years that I have been imprisoned, suffering so many abuses that I do not even wish to discuss. Today I need your help to get it back.”

A Yemeni taxi driver, Nabil was not a devout Muslim, and attended the mosque closest at hand on an irregular basis.  He never went on a Hadj pilgrimage. He smoked and chewed qut, a mild stimulant obtained from a plant, and played in a band. He was encouraged by a friend to go abroad to teach children the Quran in Arabic.

In 1999, he traveled to Afghanistan where he remained eight months. He returned to Yemen where he worked as a painter to earn enough money to return to Afghanistan. In February 2001, he returned to resume his teaching. The events of September 11, 2001 took place seven months later, and in early December he fled to Pakistan to escape being rounded up as a terrorist. Pakistan security forces captured him on December 15, 2001.

In spite of his denial of involvement in terrorist activities, sympathy for the Jihadists, or belief in the use of violence, he was detained for eleven days and then transferred to U.S. custody in exchange for cash. He has been at Guantánamo ever since.

Ravil Mingazov has been held at Guantánamo Bay without charge since 2002. He was born in Russia in 1967, became a ballet dancer with several dance troupes, was conscripted into the Russian army at 19 and first served in the Army ballet troupe. After his conscription ended in 1988, he served voluntarily until 1996 and later returned to the military in the food supply section, where he took over a program which was in “bad shape” and transformed it into a model program, the “best in all the Army’s.” He was rewarded with a watch.

Apparently his troubles began when he converted to Islam in the army, amidst general intolerance towards Muslim soldiers. When Ravil asked for fair treatment, such as halal food and time for worship, it was denied. When he sought assistance outside the military, his commanders retaliated, the KGB stepped up surveillance and his house was ransacked.

Now married to a Muslim woman and with a young son, Ravil sought a country where they could practice their religion in peace. He traveled alone first to Tajikistan, then to Afghanistan, then fled that country after the U.S. invaded, arriving in Pakistan. He was living in a house for Muslim refugees when the Pakistani police arrived and arrested everyone, apparently because someone in the house supposedly knew Abu Zubaydah.  Ravil had no connection with him.

The police turned him over to the Americans who sent him to Bagram prison, where he was badly treated. After a Red Cross officer told him that prisoners were treated humanely at Guantánamo, Ravil made up some stories so that the Americans would think he was someone important and send him to GTMO; what he feared most was to be sent back to Russia, as he knew he’d be badly treated there.  Later in 2006 in Guantánamo he tried to correct those stories.

Since 2002 he has been held at Guantánamo; he has never been charged with anything. In April 2010 Judge Henry Kennedy of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a comprehensive 42-page opinion “methodically analyzing each piece of evidence presented by the government, and concluding that, after eight years of detention, the government failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mingazov was “a part of or substantially supported” al-Qaeda or the Taliban.” (Quoted from The National Law Journal.) The judge ordered him released on May 13, 2010, under the writ of habeas corpus.  The government appealed. Allison Lefrak, the litigation officer at Human Rights USA, who visits Ravil every three months, says “The U.S. Court of Appeals has not affirmed a single decision ordering the release of a detainee.”

In the meantime, Ravil is still at Guantánamo. He has not been able to see his wife or son, who have found another place to live. After hearing about the earthquake in Haiti, Ravil organized a food drive of unopened containers of food to be sent to the Haitian people. He told his lawyer, Gary Thompson, that he wanted to be the last person to leave Gitmo, after everyone else had had a chance to leave. He practicing his Muslim faith ardently. He says, “These walls cannot contain me because the only true garden is the one you grow in your heart.”

In compliance with a court order, the U.S. Department of Defense, on January 15, 2010, published a list of captives held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility that included the name Samiullah Jalatzai.

Two years earlier, Samiullah Jalatzai was arrested, at his home, without explanation.  He is now being held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.

On February 26th, 2010, the ACLU filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf. A second petition was filed on behalf of his brother, Sibghatullah Jalatzai, who was a translator for the U.S. military for four years before his detention nearly 20 months ago.

The petitions charge that the military does not have the authority to detain these men and that the lack of access to a court or fair process to challenge their detention violates the U.S. Constitution and international law.

Neither brother has ever engaged in hostilities against the United States.  They are not members of groups that have engaged in hostilities against the United States.  They have never been told why they are being detained, nor have they been permitted to speak with a lawyer or given a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before a court or impartial administrative board.

“Locking up people who were picked up far from any battlefield for years without telling them why, without giving them access to lawyers and without giving them a real chance to contest the evidence against them is unlawful and un-American,” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The U.S. military does not have the authority to imprison these men and the law demands they get a fair process to prove that.”

Convicted in Absentia

According to the website Legal Issues in the Fight against Terrorism (LIFT), Hakeemy and another Tunisian, Hisham Sliti, were convicted in absentia in Belgium in 2003 for their supposed involvement in the assassination of Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. Hakeemy was sentenced to 4 years in prison and Sliti to 5—based, according to Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, on their association with Hakeemy’s father-in-law Amor Sliti.

In January 2005, a Tunisian military court convicted Hakeemy under article 123 of its Code of Military Justice to 20 years in prison on charges of participating in a terrorist organization abroad. The main evidence against him, according to the court ruling, came from statements by codefendants in custody, who claimed that they had met Hakeemy at a military camp in Afghanistan. During the trial those codefendants tried to disavow their statements to the police, but the judge refused the request. Another Tunisian court sentenced him to 32 years for violating a law that was passed while he was already in Guantánamo.

Approved for Transfer

In 2006, under the Bush administration, Hakeemy was approved for transfer from Guantánamo by a military review board, which concluded that he no longer represented a threat to the US or its allies.

But where could he go? Italy didn’t want him, and Belgium and Tunisia had already judged him guilty—though one case appears to be guilt by association and the other a fabrication. Transferring Hakimi to Tunisia would violate both US precedent and international law.

In August 2009, two Belgian lawyers filed to extradite Sliti and Hakeemy, and it looked like the US would deliver them to Belgium in time for an October 6 court date, but the plan fell through.

A lot happened—or almost happened—for Guantánamo prisoners in 2009. In June the US and the European Union announced jointly that the last hurdles had been cleared for up to 50 detainees to be accommodated in EU countries. Earlier that month, on June 12, the US Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners have the right of habeas corpus: that is; they are entitled to appeal, to see the evidence against them, and to present witnesses for their defense in US civilian courts. (Before that they received only Combatant Status Review Tribunals, at which the accused have no voice.)  Hakeemy has repeatedly asked for the chance to mount a defense. An appeal he filed in DC court in 2006 was denied in 2009 for no stated reason. His most recent appeal was denied in 2010.

The journalist Andy Worthington has written about him in the book The Guantánamo Files and in numerous published articles. Of organizations with websites in English, the London-based charity Reprieve carries a profile and is working for his release. Reprieve invites supporters to write to him, as does the organization Ummah Forum.
A Facebook page also requests letters of support.

More Information

“The Questionable Fate of Two Tunisians”
The Guantánamo Docket, New York Times/NPR
Belgian government ponders extradition request for two Tunisian Guantanamo detainees
The Lift

For ten years, Samir Nasy Hajan Mukbel (ISN-043) has been held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, indefinitely and without charge or trial. Samir was on the first plane to bring prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, GTMO, on January 11, 2002.

Samir was born in Taiz, Yemen in 1977, to a poor working family. He is 33 years old and the eldest of twelve brothers and sisters. At a young age his family relied upon him to provide for them financially since Samir’s father could no longer work at his factory job due to illness. Samir worked in a plastics factory in Taiz making only $50 dollars a month. At that time, in mid- 2000, a friend, Marwan, convinced him to go to Afghanistan with the lure of more jobs that were better paying.

Once in Afghanistan he found much to the contrary. In a hearing at Guantánamo Samir stated “I thought Afghanistan was a rich country, but when I got there I found out different…it was all destroyed with poverty and destruction. I found that there was no basis for getting a job there.” At this time Samir believed he had been tricked by his friend into going to Afghanistan but he had no money to get home.  He was forced to stay with his friend and go to the mosque to get something to eat.

As time went on and things got worse Marwan suggested they fight for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance with the promise of money, a wife, and a house. Samir refused this option and soon after, the terrorist events on 9/11 would change the lives of countless people around the world. Samir’s life would not be spared. He would find himself on a tragic course that continues to this day.

October 2001 brought to Afghanistan Operation Enduring Freedom. When Samir began hearing gunfire and seeing bombs drop from U.S. military planes above him he realized he better flee. When he told Marwan he was going to leave Afghanistan, Marwan was nowhere to be found and neither was Samir’s passport.

Without a passport Samir made his way to the Pakistan border hoping to get help from the border guards with contacting the Yemeni consular for assistance. Like many before and after him Samir did not receive the help he desperately sought but rather, accused of being a body guard to Osama Bin Laden and a member of al-Qaida. He was held in custody in Pakistan for two months before being transferred to U.S. custody.

In its case against Samir the Department of Defense, Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO), claims Samir is a member of al-Qaida who served on Usama Bin Laden’s (UBL) security detail, that he admitted to being a fighter in UBL’s 55^th Arab Brigade, and is assessed have participated in hostilities against the U.S. and coalition forces in UBL’s Tora Bora Mountain complex. The DOD claims Samir was captured near Parachinar, PK, on December 15, 2001, by Pakistani authorities with a group of 31 other Arab al-Qaida fighters referred to as the Dirty 30 by U.S. intelligence. He was held for 15 days before being transferred on December 26, 2001 from Peshawar to U.S. custody at the Kandahar Detention Facility.

The JTF-GTMO assessment of Samir, a secret U.S. military summary, publicly available via McClatchy news papers provided through Wiki leaks, dates back to March of 2008. It can only be assumed at this time that it has not been updated. Throughout the assessment of Samir, the JTF-GTMO refers to three other detainees that had provided evidence against Samir claiming that he was seen at al-Qaida training camps as well as al-Qaida guest houses in Kandahar going back to 1999 and 2000. In the JTF-GTMO assessment there is an Analyst Note that states “This report places detainee in Afghanistan earlier than admitted and supports the time lines provided by ISN-1457 and ISN-1453. What the report doesn’t say is that U.S. courts exposed Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj, (ISN-1457) and Sanad Yislam Ali al-Kazimi, (ISN 1453) confessions as being false. Another source of the allegations against Samir is from Mohammed al Qahtgani (ISN 63) who was tortured at Guantánamo and later withdrew his false allegations. As far as being part of the Dirty Thirty, those assessed to be UBL body guards or part of his security detail, 10 have already been repatriated to their own countries. There have been no reports that they have “returned” to militant or terrorist activity.

As for Marwan Jawan, a childhood friend of Samir since he was eight, the JTO-GTMO claims that he has an alias of Abu Ali al-Yafii, and was an active al-Qaida recruiter in Yemen and a jihadist who fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Marwan Jawan the assessment states is assumed to have been killed in Kandahar during U.S. and Coalition bombing.

As of this writing Samir Nasy Hajan Mukbel remains held at Guantánamo Bay indefinitely. The JTF-GTMO assessment claims he is a “HIGH risk as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests, and allies.” However, the assessment does not reveal any convincing evidence that Samir committed any hostilities against the U.S. or the Coalition forces and as stated previously much of any evidence is spurious. The report also states that he is a “LOW” threat from a detention perspective and of “Medium” intelligence value.  There is no doubt that this man should be given a fair trial. Unfortunately even if he should be cleared of all allegations, being a Yemeni he would merely become the 59^th Yemeni detained solely because of his nationality.

Samir has not had any contact from his family in years. He only wishes to return home and begin a new life that would include a wife and children, and a home that would be big enough for his whole family.

More Information

Reprieve, UK
Department of Defense, JTF-GTMO Detainee Assessment
Andy Worthington
Center for Constitutional Rights: Guantánamo by the Numbers