User:Geo Swan/Abdullah Khan (Guantanamo captive 950)

Abdullah Khan is a citizen of Afghanistan who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 950. The Department of Defense estimates he was born in 1956.

Abdullah Khan was transferred to Afghanistan on February 8, 2006.

Anand Gopal, the author of No Good Men Among the Living noted the implausibility that Abdullah Khan was held because the US believed he was Khirullah Khairkhwa, even though they already held the original Khairkhwa in Guantanamo.

Background
Khan testified that he was a merchant, from the Northern, Uzbek portion of Afghanistan, who traveled to Southern Kandahar Province in 2003, for the first time since before the Taliban took power. He testified he was threatened, in a Kandahar market place, by locals, who held animosity against him from his earlier visit decades earlier. He felt threatened, so went early to the home of his host Hajji Shahzada.

Khan testified that his host invited another man over for dinner and that they spent the evening playing cards. The next day American forces arrested him, his host, and the other guest, based on a denunciation. Khan believed his enemies had falsely denounce him to the Americans, telling them he was the well-known Taliban Governor Khirullah Khairkhwa. Khan believed his enemies collected a large bounty through the American bounty program.

Khan told his Tribunal that his American interrogators in Afghanistan insisted they knew he was lying about his identity. He told his Tribunal they insisted they knew he was really Khirullah Khairkhwa, and that if he didn't confess they would send him to a worse place.

Khan told his Tribunal that he was sent to Guantanamo. He told his Tribunal that the other captives informed him that Guantanamo already held the real Khirullah Khairkhwa, that the real Khirullah Khairkhwa had been captured more than a year before he was captured.

Khan told his Tribunal that when his Guantanamo interrogators also insisted they knew he was Khirullah Khairkhwa he requested that they check the prison roster, and verify they already held the original Khairkhwa. He told his Tribunal that none of his interrogators checked the prison roster, because they kept leveling the accusation against him that he was Khirullah Khairkhwa.

Khan told his Tribunal that the Summary of Evidence memo prepared for his Tribunal, which had been shown to him just a few days earlier, was the first time the accusation that he was Khirullah Khairkhwa was dropped.

Khan told his Tribunal that the allegations on his Summary of Evidence were brand new to him, that none of the questions his interrogators asked him were related to the allegations.

The main allegations against Khan's host Shahzada, and his fellow guest Nasrullah were that they spent the previous evening with Khirullah Khairkhwa. Shahzada was one of the 38 captives whose Tribunal determined he had not been an enemy combatant after all.Washington Post Khan and Nasrullah's Administrative Review Board hearing recommended their repatriation in 2005.

Combatant Status Review
A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Abdullah Khan's Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on January 5, 2005. The memo listed the following allegations against him:

Transcript
Khan 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 twelve pages of summarized transcripts from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal. For unexplained reasons the Guantanamo intelligence analysts who managed his case file separated the five pages that recorded the allegations and Khan's response to them from the rest of his testimony.

Response
In response to the allegations:

Administrative Review Board hearing


Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".

They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat—or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.

Summary of Evidence memo
A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Abdullah Khan's Administrative Review Board.

The following primary factors favor continued detention

The following primary factors favor release or transfer

Recommendations
The recommendations of his Board, to Gordon England, the Designated Civilian Official, were made public on September 4, 2007.

The Administrative Review Board's recommendations quote Abdullah Khan's Assisting Military Officers' report from his Enemy Combatant election form that he declined to attend his Tribunal because he did not want to return to Afghanistan—that he wanted to live out the rest of his life in Guantanamo.

The recommendations were heavily redacted. It is not clear what the Board recommended. The Board's recommendation was unanimous. But the Department of Defense only made public the recommendations of captives who the Designated Civilian Official had cleared for release or transfer from Guantanamo.

Abdullah Khan's Board's recommendations contained three notable unredacted passages:
 * Recruitment. Members of known terrorist organizations or known or suspected terrorist support organizations recruited the EC.
 * (U) Organizational affiliations.. The EC has been a known affiliate of organizations that espouse terrorist and violent acts against the United States and its allies.
 * (U) Behavior. The EC's behavior during interrogation and detention do not indicate that he poses a dangerous threat to the U.S. and its allies.

Formerly secret Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment
On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts. His four page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on May 20, 2005. It was signed by camp commandant Brigadier General Jay W. Hood. He recommended "transfer to the control of another country for continued detention."