Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel

Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel
Detained at	Guantanamo
ISN	498
Charge(s)	No charge
Status	Transferred to Oman on 2017-01-16

Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel is a citizen of Yemen, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.^[1] His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 498. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts estimate that he was born in 1978, in Ta'iz, Yemen.

He was transferred to Oman with nine other men, on January 16, 2017.^[2][3][4]

Inconsistent identification

Haidel was identified inconsistently on official Department of Defense documents:

• He was identified as Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel on the Summary of Evidence memo prepared for his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on October 8, 2004.^{[1][5][6][7][8][9][10]}
• He was identified as Mohammed Mohammed Ahmen Said on the Summary of Evidence memos prepared for his first and second annual Administrative Review Board hearings, on September 28, 2005, and June 7, 2006.^[11][12]

Press reports

On July 12, 2006, the magazine Mother Jones provided excerpts from the transcripts of a selection of the Guantanamo detainees.^[13] Haidel was one of the detainees profiled. According to the article, his transcript contained the following comment:

When I was in the Kandahar prison, the interrogator hit my arm and told me I received training in mortars. As he was hitting me, I kept telling him, "No, I didn't receive training." I was crying and finally I told him I did receive the training. My hands were tied behind my back and my knees were on the ground and my head was bleeding. I was in a lot of pain, so I said I had the training. At that point, with all my suffering, if he had asked me if I was Osama bin Laden, I would have said yes…. Am I an enemy of the United States? I never knew any Americans until I came to this prison. Americans should know who their real enemies are. What is my crime for being here for three years? That is all I would like to say.

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.^[14] 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

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a 3x5 meter trailer where the captive sat with his hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor.^[15][16]

Following the Supreme Court's ruling the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants.^[14][17]

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:^[18]

• Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel was listed as one of the captives who(m):

• "The military alleges ... are associated with both Al Qaeda and the Taliban."^[18]
• "The military alleges ... traveled to Afghanistan for jihad."^[18]
• "The military alleges that the following detainees stayed in Al Qaeda, Taliban or other guest- or safehouses."^[18]
• "The military alleges ... took military or terrorist training in Afghanistan."^[18]
• "The military alleges ... fought for the Taliban."^[18]
• "The military alleges ... were at Tora Bora."^[18]
• was a foreign fighter.^[18]

• Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel was listed as one of the "82 detainees made no statement to CSRT or ARB tribunals or made statements that do not bear materially on the military's allegations against them."^[18]

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on October 8, 2004.^[10][19]

Haidel chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[20] On March 3, 2006, in response to a court order from Jed Rakoff the Department of Defense published a three-page summarized transcript from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[21]

References

1. OARDEC (May 15, 2006). "List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
2. Greg Myre (2017-01-16). "10 Guantanamo Prisoners Freed in Oman; 45 Detainees Remain". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2017-01-17. The freed prisoners were not identified by name or nationality, though the Oman News Agency, citing the country's Foreign Ministry, reported that the 10 had arrived in the country on Monday for "temporary residence."
3. Carol Rosenberg (2017-01-16). "U.S. sends 10 Guantánamo captives to Oman". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2017-01-17. A Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed that the transfer had taken place, downsizing the detainee population to 45. Neither Oman nor the official provided the identities of the 10 men who were sent there.
4. Carol Rosenberg (2017-01-16). "Victims of mistaken identity among the 10 sent from Guantánamo to Oman". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2017-01-18. A Pentagon statement did not explain why the Department of Defense chose to wait to identify the 10 men for more than a day after the Sultanate of Oman announced it had taken them in as "temporary" residents "in consideration to their humanitarian situation."
5. OARDEC (April 20, 2006). "List of detainee who went through complete CSRT process" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
6. OARDEC (July 17, 2007). "Index for Combatant Status Review Board unclassified summaries of evidence" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 3, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
7. OARDEC (September 4, 2007). "Index for testimony" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 3, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
8. OARDEC (August 9, 2007). "Index to Summaries of Detention-Release Factors for ARB Round One" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
9. OARDEC (July 17, 2007). "Index of Summaries of Detention-Release Factors for ARB Round Two" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 26, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
10. OARDEC (8 October 2004). "Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal -- Haidel, Mohammed Ahmed Said (published September 2007)" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 26–27. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 December 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
11. OARDEC (28 September 2005). "Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Said, Mohammed Mohammed Ahmen" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 60–61. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 May 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
12. OARDEC (7 June 2006). "Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Said, Mohammed Mohammed Ahmen" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 82–84. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 October 2016. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
13. "Why Am I in Cuba?", Mother Jones, July 12, 2006
14. "U.S. military reviews 'enemy combatant' use". USA Today. 2007-10-11. Archived from the original on 2007-10-23. 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.
15. Guantánamo Prisoners Getting Their Day, but Hardly in Court, New York Times, November 11, 2004 - mirror Archived 2007-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
16. Inside the Guantánamo Bay hearings: Barbarian "Justice" dispensed by KGB-style "military tribunals", Financial Times, December 11, 2004
17. "Q&A: What next for Guantanamo prisoners?". BBC News. 2002-01-21. Archived from the original on 23 November 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
18. Benjamin Wittes; Zaathira Wyne (2008-12-16). "The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study" (PDF). The Brookings Institution. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-05-19. Retrieved 2010-02-16.
19. OARDEC (March 2005) [8 October 2004]. "Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 103–104. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 July 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
20. OARDEC. "Summarized Statement" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. pp. 9–11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-11-05. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
21. "US releases Guantanamo files". The Age. April 4, 2006. Retrieved 2008-03-15.