Abdullah Mujahid

Abdullah Mujahid (born 1971) is a citizen of Afghanistan who is still held in extrajudicial detention after being transferred from United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba — to an Afghan prison.

His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 1100.

According to the Associated Press, the allegations against Mujahid, in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, state Mujahid was head of security for the city of Gardez and for Paktia province.

He was accused of ties to al-Qaeda and of attacking U.S. forces, and was arrested in July 2003. Mujahid claimed he was loyal to the coalition.

Background

Abdullah Mujahid is a militia leader from Afghanistan's Tajik ethnic group, who rose up against the Taliban in the closing days of its administration of Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan Transitional Authority rewarded Mujahid, and other militia leaders who had risen up against the Taliban, with the control of security forces. Both Mujahid and Pacha Khan Zadran, a Pashtun from the Zadran tribe, were rewarded with security appointments in Paktia province.

Mujahid and Zadran struggled to consolidate greater shares of control over Paktia's security forces.
Mujahid and Zadran's forces were reported to have engaged in gun battles during their disputes. Both men's forces were accused of abusing their authority and routinely robbing civilians at their roadblocks.

By 2003, both men were regarded as renegades and enemies by US forces.

A high-level delegation from Kabul visited Mujahid, and offered him a nominally more senior position in Kabul as a "Highway Commander".
Mujahid accepted this offer, and yielded up his position as Chief of Police of Gardez, and traveled to Kabul. However, the promised promotion never materialized. When Mujahid returned home to Gardez, he was sent to Guantanamo.

Zadran's nephew, and Lieutenant, Jan Baz, was also apprehended and sent to Bagram Theater detention facility. But Zadran remained at large, and now represents Paktia in the Afghan Parliament.

Mujahid faced a number of allegations during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board hearings: notably that he was fired for corruption and collusion with the opposition, that he was a senior commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir. He was also accused of currently being a member of Harakat-e-Mulavi, a group which American intelligence analysts believe is now allied with the rebels.

Mujahid's lawyers assert that the Lashkar-e-Taiba connection is a case of mistaken identity. A senior commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, also named Abdullah Mujahid, was killed in 2006. Mujahid's lawyers acknowledge that he fought with Harakat-e-Mulavi, against some of Afghanistan's foreign occupiers—during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, during the 1980s.

All of the allegations against Mujahid have been dropped in early 2007, and he was cleared for release. However, as of August 2007, he still remains in Guantanamo.

Combatant Status Review

The Bush administration asserted that:

the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not extend to captured prisoners who are not members of the regular Afghan armed force nor meet the criteria for prisoner of war for voluntary forces.

Critics argued the Conventions obliged the U.S. to conduct competent tribunals to determine the status of prisoners. Subsequently, the U.S. Department of Defense instituted Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), to determine whether detainees met the new definition of an "enemy combatant".

"Enemy combatant" was defined by the U.S. Department of Defense as:

an individual who was part of, or supporting, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. This includes any person who commits a belligerent act or has directly supported hostilities in aid of enemy armed forces.

The CSRTs are not bound by the rules of evidence that would normally apply in civilian court, and the government’s evidence is presumed to be “genuine and accurate.”
From July 2004 through March 2005, CSRTs were convened to determine whether each prisoner had been correctly classified as an "enemy combatant".

was among the 60% of prisoners who chose to participate in tribunal hearings. A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for the tribunal of each detainee, listing the allegations that supported their detention as an "enemy combatant".

's memo accused him of the following:

Witnesses

Mujahid requested eight witnesses:
* Said Mohammed Ali Shah - a Guantanamo detainee.
* Haji Mohammed Aktiar - the Tribunal's President doesn't identify Aktiar any further, but assumes he is back in Afghanistan. In fact three individuals named Akhtiar Mohammed were detained in Guantanamo, and two were still in detention at the time of the Tribunals.
* Mohammed Aman - also a Guantanamo detainee.
* Mohammed Musa - apparently also a Guantanamo detainee. But his name does not match that of any on the official list.
* Shahzdeh Masoud - one of Hamid Karzai's advisors, who led a delegation to Gardez to convince Mujahid to step down.

* Gulltay Deh - the Afghan Defense Ministry's representative on Masoud's delegation.
* Haji Saifullah - the ''Boston Globe'' reported Saifullah was dead.
* Minister of Interior - Ahmed Ali Jalali - the Interior Ministry's representative on Masoud's delegation, currently teaching at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

The Tribunal's President decided to allow three of the other Guantanamo detainees as witnesses. However, he informed Mujahid that they would not be allowed to testify, in person, for "Force Protection reasons". He then informed Mujahid that American officials had not been able to secure the cooperation of the Afghan government in locating the witnesses back in Afghanistan.

The ''Boston Globe'' reported that they found that many witnesses that detainees had requested, who US officials claimed were not reasonably available, were easily located.
The article particularly the ease with which they located Mujahid's witnesses. It quoted the President of Mujahid's Tribunal:

The Afghan government was contacted on or about 26 November 2004, As of this date, the Afghanistan government has not responded to our request. . . . Without the cooperation of that government, we are unable to contact those witnesses and to obtain the testimony you requested.

The article then stated:

But in Afghanistan earlier this month, a reporter for the Globe located three of the four witnesses in a matter of days.

Transcript

Mujahid chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

On March 3, 2006, in response to a court order from Jed Rakoff the Department of Defense published a twelve-page summarized transcript from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and nine pages of statements from witnesses who were not allowed to testify in person at his Tribunal.

Testimony

Mujahid denied that he was removed due to suspicions of collusion with anti-government forces. He testified that he left the position of Provincial Security Chief to assume a new position in Kabul. He claimed the witnesses of the visiting commission would testify that he left his position to take a promotion. Mujahid denied being associated with any anti-government forces. He also denied any responsibility for any attacks on US or coalition forces.

The three witnesses he called all confirmed that he had been an effective Police commander for the Karzai government, and confirmed that he was not fired, he was promoted.

They attributed their captures to false denunciations from rival factions within Karzai's coalition.

Hafizullah Shabaz Khail's accusation

Guantanamo detainee Hafizullah Shabaz Khail said that Mujahid had arrested him, when his mentor, the Governor, of his Province was in Kabul.
Summarized transcripts (.pdf)
from Hafizullah Shabaz Khail's ''Combatant Status Review Tribunal'' - pages 11-21

Summarized transcript (.pdf) from Hafizullah Shabaz Khail's ''Administrative Review Board hearing'' - page 178

Khail was the District Chief of Zormat, and the chair of the security committee in Paktia Province. Khail said his arrest, and the false allegations against him, were due to his arrest of a protégé of Mujahid, named Taj Mohammed. According to Khail, Taj Mohammed was a security officer who worked under Mujahid, who had abused his uniform and his authority to rob a businessman of 200,000 Khaldars. Khail said he forced Taj Mohammed to pay the businessman back.

Abdullah Musahed v. George W. Bush

A writ of habeas corpus, Abdullah Musahed v. George W. Bush, was submitted on Abdullah Musahed's behalf.

In response, on 10 August 2005,
the Department of Defense published 37
pages of unclassified documents related to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.
On December 17, 2004 Tribunal panel 26 convened and confirmed his "enemy combatant" status.

The documents published from Abdullah's CSR Tribunal state that his original Tribunal President was replaced.
The documents contain multiple incompatible explanations as to why Mohammed Musa's testimony was not made available.
The documents state that the original Tribunal President had ruled his testimony "redundant". His Personal Representative's notes, however, stated that he couldn't find Mohammed Musa.

The CSRT's Legal Advisor recorded in his Legal Sufficiency Review:

Administrative Review Board

Detainees whose Combatant Status Review Tribunal labeled them "enemy combatants" were scheduled for annual Administrative Review Board hearings. These hearings were designed to assess the threat a detainee might pose if released or transferred, and whether there were other factors that warranted his continued detention.

Summary of Evidence memo

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for
Abdullah Mujahid's
Administrative Review Board,
on 23 June 2005.

The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

The following primary factors favor continued detention

:

The following primary factors favor release or transfer

:

Transcript

Mujahid chose to participate in his Administrative Review Board hearing.

Response to the factors

* Mujahid confirmed he fought against the Soviets—for about eight months, when he was sixteen or seventeen. After the Soviets withdrew he fought against the Communist government that had been left behind.
* Mujahid confirmed that he had worked for the Rabbani government prior to the Taliban regime, and had served as a police officer after its fall. But, during the Taliban's regime he laid low, and worked as a simple farmer.
* Mujahid denied participating in an anti-US attack in Gardez. He disputed that this incident took place.
* In response to the allegation that he was a "former Lashkar-e-Tayyiba commander" he asked the time frame when he was supposed to have filled this role. He said he had given his interrogators a full account of his life, and there were no gaps in it when he could have been a Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. He added:

* After the factor where Lashkar-e-Tayyiba's roots in Pakistan were outlined he pointed out:

Mujahid and the claim that captives were "captured on the battlefield"

On August 12, 2007 Farah Stockman, writing in the ''Boston Globe'' used Mjuahid'd story to comment on the Bush administration's claim that Guantanamo captives had been apprehended "on the battlefield".
Stockman described Mujahid as an early supporter during the overthrow of the Taliban, whose usefulness waned after their ouster, because he was illiterate, and was rumored to be corrupt.
Stockman wrote:

Transfer to an Afghan prison

On November 25, 2008, the Department of Defense published a list of when Guantanamo captives were repatriated.

According to that list he was repatriated on December 12, 2007.

The Center for Constitutional Rights reports that all of the Afghans repatriated to Afghanistan from April 2007 were sent to Afghan custody in the American built and supervised wing of the Pul-e-Charkhi prison near Kabul.

References

External links

The story of Abdullah Mujahid, an Afghan police chief betrayed by the US administration and wrongly sent to Guantánamo
Andy Worthington

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mujahid, Abdullah
Living people
Guantanamo detainees known to have been transferred and never released
1971 births
Afghan extrajudicial prisoners of the United States
Block D, Pul-e-Charkhi prison
Afghan Tajik people