Fouad Mahmoud al Rabiah (born June 24, 1959) is a

Kuwait Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the no ...

i, who was held in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Guantanamo Bay detainment camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

s, in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

Sketches of Guantanamo Detainees-Part II
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'', March 15, 2006 from May 2002 to December 2009. Al Rabia's Guantanamo

Internment Serial Number An Internment Serial Number (ISN) is an identification number assigned to captives who come under control of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) during armed conflicts. History On March 3, 2006, in compliance with a court order from D ...

was 551. Al Rabia was an executive with Kuwait's national airline before his wrongful arrest and extradition. He had studied in the United States, and described himself as an America-phile. He is also a philanthropist, along with members of his family, and they regularly followed-up to observed in person the charitable enterprises they donated to. He had routinely made preliminary and follow-up field trips to check on projects they had donated to. In 2001, he described traveling to Afghanistan, for charitable purposes. Al Rabia was to face charges in 2008 before a

Guantanamo military commission ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...

, but all charges were dropped in 2009. In September 2009, Al Rabia's

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

petition concluded, and

US District Court Judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district cou ...

ordered that he be released "forthwith". That release occurred on December 9, 2009. Al Rabiah's lawyers called on President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

to apologise on behalf of the

and provide "appropriate compensation" to al Rabiah for his ordeal.

Guantanamo military commission

On October 22, 2008, the

Office of Military Commissions ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...

filed charges against Fouad Al Rabia and

Fayiz Al Kandari Faiz Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari (born 3 June 1977) is a Kuwaiti citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba, from 2002 to 2016. He has never been charged with war crimes. The US De ...

. On August 12, 2009, Fouad Al Rabia's Defense Counsel,

Lieutenant Commander Lieutenant commander (also hyphenated lieutenant-commander and abbreviated Lt Cdr, LtCdr. or LCDR) is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander. The corresponding rank i ...

Kevin Bogucki Kevin () is the anglicized form of the Irish masculine given name (; mga, Caoimhghín ; sga, Cóemgein ; Latinized as ). It is composed of "dear; noble"; Old Irish and ("birth"; Old Irish ). The variant ''Kevan'' is anglicized from , an ...

asserted his clearance for travel to Kuwait was being withheld. All charges were dropped in 2009.

Fouad al Rabia's weight

The documents published when charges were proposed against Fouad al Rabia included the weights recorded by the camp's medical staff.

Torture

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the ...

'' published an article based on interviews with Fouad and other former Guantanamo captives, entitled ''"Former Guantanamo inmates tell of confessions under 'torture'"''. Al Rabiah told Jenifer Fenton he was tortured by his initial

Northern Alliance The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan ( prs, جبهه متحد اسلامی ملی برای نجات افغانستان ''Jabha-yi Muttahid-i Islāmi-yi Millī barāyi Nijāt ...

captors, tortured in the

Kandahar detention facility Kandahar Central Jail, also known as Sarpuza Prison or Sarposa Prison, is a minimum security prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It has been historically used for the incarceration of common criminals of Kandahar Province. In the last two decades, the ...

, tortured in the

Bagram Collection Point The Parwan Detention Facility (also called Detention Facility in Parwan or Bagram prison) is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. duri ...

, and tortured in Guantanamo. He told her he had been interrogated over 200 times, including ''"lots and lots of torture"''. Al Rabiah showed Fenton a copy of a two-page letter found in

Tora Bora Tora Bora ( ps, توره بوړه, "Black Cave") is a cave complex, part of the Spin Ghar (White Mountains) mountain range of eastern Afghanistan. It is situated in the Pachir Aw Agam District of Nangarhar, approximately west of the Khyber P ...

that he was tortured into confessing he wrote. The letter's author wrote that he and his son Abdullah lead an attack in Afghanistan in 1991. However, while Al Rabiah's son is named Abdullah, he was only one year old in 1991. Al Rabiah told Fenton he started to confess to all his interrogators accusations after he was asked ''"Would you like to go home a drug addict?"'' He told Fenton that he regarded this as one of the threats, that triggered his false confessions.

Repatriation

On May 12, 2007, the ''

Kuwait Times ''Kuwait Times'' is an English-language daily published in Kuwait. It is the first English language paper in the Persian Gulf region. History and profile ''Kuwait Times'' was founded by Yousuf Saleh Alyan in 1961. The 36-page broadsheet provid ...

'' reported that Kuwait and the USA concluded negotiations regarding the repatriation of the remaining Kuwaiti captives.

Immediate release

On September 17, 2009,

Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Colleen Constance Kollar-Kotelly (born April 17, 1943) is an American lawyer serving as a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and was previously presiding judge of the Foreign Int ...

ordered that Al Rabia could no longer be detained under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force and ordered the government to release him from detention at Guantanamo Bay He was repatriated on December 9, 2009. The U.S. Department of Justice announced that he had been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the control of the government of Kuwait. The transfer was carried out under an arrangement between the United States and the government of Kuwait. The United States would continue to consult with the government of Kuwait regarding Al Rabia.

References

External links

Judges Question Evidence On Guantanamo Detainees
NPR - April 28, 2011
Royal jet sent to bring Kuwaiti home from GuantanamoEmotional welcome home for Guantanamo detaineeInnocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released in Kuwait
* ttp://www.miamiherald.com/1218/story/1377049.html Pentagon drops Kuwaiti's war crimes casebr>Barack Obama means change – except on tortureJudge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruling (PDF)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rabiah, Fouad Mahmoud Al- Living people 1959 births Guantanamo detainees known to have been released Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States