Saad Madi Saad al Azmi (born May 29, 1979) 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 citizen.
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He was held in
extrajudicial detention 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 ...
Guantánamo Bay detainment camps, 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 ...
, and later repatriated on November 4, 2005.
Joint Task Force Guantanamo
Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) is a U.S. military joint task force based at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on the southeastern end of the base. JTF-GTMO falls under US Southern Command. Since January 2002 the command h ...
counter-terrorism
Counterterrorism (also spelled counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, incorporates the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that Government, governments, law enforcement, business, and Intelligence agency, intellig ...
analysts
report that al-Azmi was born on May 29, 1979, in
Doha
Doha ( ar, الدوحة, ad-Dawḥa or ''ad-Dōḥa'') is the capital city and main financial hub of Qatar. Located on the Persian Gulf coast in the east of the country, north of Al Wakrah and south of Al Khor, it is home to most of the c ...
, Kuwait.
Repatriation
Al-Azmi and four other men were repatriated on November 4, 2005.
[
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The five stood trial in a Kuwaiti court, and were acquitted.
[
]
The ''
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. n ...
'' reported that the two main charges were that the detainees had helped fund
Al Wafa, an Afghan charity with ties to al-Qaeda, and that they had fought alongside the Taliban.
[
]
Further, the prosecution argued that the detainees actions had endangered Kuwait's political standing and its relations with friendly nations.
The detainees'
defense had argued that testimony secured in Guantanamo could not be used in Kuwaiti courts, because the detainees and interrogators hadn't signed them.
[
Further, they had argued, the allegations the USA had directed at them weren't violations of Kuwaiti law.
]
McClatchy interview
On June 15, 2008, the McClatchy News Service
The McClatchy Company, commonly referred to as simply McClatchy, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law and based in Sacramento, California. It operates 29 daily newspapers in fourteen states an ...
published articles based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. McClatchy reporters interviewed Saad Madi al Azmi.[
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mirror
[ He told McClatchy reporters that he had never been to Afghanistan, and that he was captured in his hotel room in Pakistan by Pakistani police in August 2001. He said he was captured with Adel al Zamel, who the McClatchy reporters noted was captured in Peshawar in January 2002. He said he had traveled to Pakistan to import honey.
When he was arrested his visa had expired.][ He thought he would soon be released over what was a minor indiscretion, but a Pakistani police officer demanded a bribe first, which he declined, resulting in a longer detention, which, unfortunately, overlapped al Qaeda's attacks on ]September 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
, making it economically worthwhile for the Pakistani police to turn him over the Americans.
Al Azmi told reporters he was beaten in both Kandahar detention facility and the Bagram Theater Internment Facility
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. durin ...
.[
]
See also
* Abdul-Aziz al-Shimmiri
* Adel Zamel Abdul-Mohsen
* Abdallah Saleh Ali Al Ajmi
* Mohammed Fnaitil al-Dehani
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Azmi, Saad Madi Saad Al
Guantanamo detainees known to have been released
Kuwaiti extrajudicial prisoners of the United States
Living people
Bagram Theater Internment Facility detainees
1979 births