Shhh, But 2 More Gitmo Detainees Transferred to Serbia

Posted on July 11, 2016July 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

July 11, 2016

The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of Muhammadi Davlatov and Mansur Ahmad Saad al-Dayfi from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Government of Serbia.

Related reading: Lawsuit petition against Barack Obama

76 Detainees remain at Gitmo

From left, Mansoor al Dayfi, a Yemeni, and Umar Abdulayev, a Tajik, who were taken to Guantánamo Bay from Afghanistan on the same day, Feb. 9, 2002 pose for the International Committee of the Red Cross in separate undated photos provided by their attorneys.

From left, Mansoor al Dayfi, a Yemeni, and Umar Abdulayev, a Tajik, who were taken to Guantánamo Bay from Afghanistan on the same day, Feb. 9, 2002 pose for the International Committee of the Red Cross in separate undated photos provided by their attorneys.

Spotted in Guantánamo’s stacks of books for the detainees: A copy of a Serbian-English dictionary and phrase book that looked and felt like it had never been cracked before it was pulled from a shelf on Saturday, July 9, 2016. The stamp says it was approved for the detainees on July 21, 2009.

Spotted in Guantánamo’s stacks of books for the detainees: A copy of a Serbian-English dictionary and phrase book that looked and felt like it had never been cracked before it was pulled from a shelf on Saturday, July 9, 2016. The stamp says it was approved for the detainees on July 21, 2009.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/guantanamo/article88852237.html#storylink=cpy

The weekend releases to Italy and Serbia raised to 30 the number of countries that have resettled detainees for the Obama administration.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

MiamiHerald: The Pentagon said Monday it delivered two prisoners to Serbia, ending more than 14 years of detention without charges and wrapping up a weekend of releases that downsized the captive population to 76.

One, a Tajik known here as Umar Abdulayev, 37, had been cleared for release by both Bush and Obama administration review panels but resisted repatriation. In 2009 he announced through his lawyer that he was so fearful of return that he’d rather spend the rest of his life on this remote base in southeast Cuba.

The other, a Yemeni named Mansoor al Dayfi, in his mid 30s, was cleared for release by the inter-agency review panel in October. From 2010, he had been held as a “forever prisoner,” a captive considered too dangerous to release but ineligible for trial until the board downgraded his dangerousness.

It was the second Defense Department transfer disclosure in 20 hours. Earlier, the Pentagon said that a Yemeni was being resettled in Italy. Neither Italy nor Serbia had offered sanctuary to a Guantánamo prisoner before. Now, 27 of the last 76 captives are approved for transfer with security assurances that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

A Pentagon statement called Abdulayev by a different name, Muhammadi Davlatov. He was the last Tajik in the prison of now 14 nationalities and left the base with the other two before dawn Saturday.

“I’m delighted for him. It took way too long but it’s an enormous victory that he would get out of Guantánamo and he wouldn’t go to Tajikistan,” said Chicago attorney Matthew J. O’Hara, who seven years ago disclosed that Abdulayev feared repatriation more than spending the rest of his life in a Guantánamo cell.

Part of it was the stigma of having been at Guantánamo, he said. Part of it was fears that his family came out on the wrong side of that nation’s civil war.

Instead, O’Hara said the 37-year-old man who sports a long black ponytail wants to forge a career as a linguist or translator using the Arabic and English he learned in prison and the Tajik and Russian he learned before fleeing his homeland in 2001. He doesn’t speak Serbian but his attorney said “he’s a sponge” in his ability to pick up languages.

He also wants to marry and have children, he said.

Leaked prison records indicate that U.S. troops brought both men to the crude open-air prison compound called Camp X-Ray on Feb. 9, 2002, the eighth shipment of captives from Afghanistan. In all, 34 men were brought to Guantánamo that day to raise the total of war-on-terror captives to 220. Read more here

Another Gitmo Detainee Released to Italy

Posted on July 10, 2016July 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

So, while Obama is finishing his trip to Poland and Spain and the homeland is under attack by Black Lives Matter and The New Black Panthers and we mourn the death of law enforcement…the Department of Defense was busy otherwise.

They released Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman to Italy.

Captured at Arab Brigade on the front lines in Afghanistan. Detainee received basic militant training at al-Qaida’s al-Faruq Training Camp and advanced training in poisons at al-Qaida’s Tarnak Farm Training Camp. Detainee is reported to be a veteran of the Bosnian Jihad and a close associate of former Bosnian commander and al-Qaida operative Abu Zubayr al-Haili. JTFGTMO determined this detainee to be:

A HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies
A HIGH threat from a detention perspective
Of HIGH intelligence value

Read his full jacket and history here.

As directed by the president’s Jan. 22, 2009, executive order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of this case. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, Suleiman was unanimously approved for transfer by the six departments and agencies comprising the task force.

In accordance with statutory requirements, the secretary of defense informed Congress of the United States’ intent to transfer this individual and of the secretary’s determination that this transfer meets the statutory standard.

The United States is grateful to the Government of Italy for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The United States coordinated with the Government of Italy to ensure this transfer took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures.

Today, 78 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay.

So who is Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman?

Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman is a citizen of Yemen currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba after being classified as an enemy combatant by the United States‘s.^[1] American intelligence analysts estimate Suleiman was born in 1974 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and the Department of Defense assigned him the Internment Serial Number 153.

As of September 2010 Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman has been confined in the Guantanamo detention camps without charge for eight years eight months.^[2]

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal, on October 12, 2004.^[3]^[4] The memo listed the following allegations against him:

a. The detainee is associated with al Qaida and the Taliban:

Originally from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,^[5] the detainee traveled to Jalalabad, Afghanistan via Hudaida, Yemen; Sana Yemen; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Karachi , Pakistan; Quetta, Pakistan; and Kabul, Afghanistan.

The detainee worked for a suspected al Qaida operative in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The detainee trained in Khandahar, Afghanistan to make poisons.

Two of the detainee’s aliases are listed in a document recovered from a safehouse raid associated with suspected al Qaida members in Karachi, Pakistan.

b. The detainee participated in military operations against the United States and its coalition partners:

The detainee was a member of an Arab fighting group against the Northern Alliance in Talaqoun.

The detainee was a nurse at Talaquon while fighting the Northern Alliance and was at Tora Bora before trying to cross the border into Pakistan.

The detainee was arrested in December 2001, by Pakistani authorities attempting to cross the border from Afghanistan with other Arabs.

First annual Administrative Review Board

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman’s first annual Administrative Review Board, on 27 May 2005.^[7] The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

There is no record that Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman participated in this Board hearing.

Second annual Administrative Review Board

A Summary of Evidence memo was prepared for Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman’s second annual Administrative Review Board, on 8 August 2006.^[8] The memo listed factors for and against his continued detention.

There is no record that Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman participated in this Board hearing.

References

↑ list of prisoners (.pdf), US Department of Defense, May 15, 2006

↑ Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman – The Guantánamo Docket [1] The New York Times

↑ Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal — Suleiman, Fayiz Ahmad Yahia [2] OARDEC October 12, 2004

↑ OARDEC (October 12, 2004). “Summary of Evidence for Combatant Status Review Tribunal — Suleiman, Fayiz Ahmad Yahia”. United States Department of Defense. pp. pages 53–54. http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/000101-000200.pdf#53. Retrieved 2007-12-04.

↑ When this memo was first released in March 2005 “Jeddah, Saudi Arabia” was redacted.

↑ Review process unprecedented [3] Spc Timothy Book March 10, 2006

↑ OARDEC (27 May 2005). “Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Suleiman, Fayiz Ahmad Yahia”. United States Department of Defense. pp. pages 77–78. http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/ARB_Round_1_Factors_000099-000196.pdf#77. Retrieved 2007-12-04.

↑ OARDEC (8 August 2006). “Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of”. United States Department of Defense. pp. pages 26–28. http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt_arb/ARB_Round_2_Factors_200-298.pdf#26. Retrieved 2007-12-04.

POTUS/ Kerry Deal with FARC Failing?

Posted on July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 by Denise Simon

As with perhaps the Iranian JPOA deal, this too will fail, even with that baseball game?

HAVANA (Reuters) – Colombia’s leftist FARC rebel leader and U.S. President Barack Obama attended the same baseball game in Cuba on Tuesday, underscoring a message of regional cooperation that Obama took on his historic visit to the Communist-led country.

FARC negotiator Pastor Alape confirmed the attendance of a contingent of 40 members and said the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and a Cuban team was a “symbol of peace.” A Reuters reporter also saw the rebels, who are in Havana for peace talks with the Colombian government. More here from Reuters.

WSJ: The current negotiations do not ensure genuine accountability for FARC members responsible for war crimes and human-rights violations; and that those guilty of kidnapping, murder, forced abortions, armed displacement, indiscriminate attacks on innocent women and children or drug trafficking will be appropriately punished. On the contrary, the so-called peace agreement will serve as a thick mantle of impunity.

The agreements with FARC are clever in the way they disguise impunity. While there will be investigations, trials and sentences for human-rights violations, those who plead guilty will in every case be exempted from prison time. The agreement explicitly grants convicted—and confessed—human-rights violators the right to run for public office, a right that the Colombian Constitution expressly withholds from convicted felons. Think of what will happen: FARC kingpins who ordered massacres, kidnappings, child-soldier recruitment and extortions, will now run for mayors and governors of the regions they victimized.

The agreements also grant total amnesty for drug trafficking. By being labeled a “political crime,” drug trafficking becomes eligible for executive amnesty. There will be no prison in Colombia or extradition to the U.S. for those running the world’s largest cocaine cartel.

To make things worse, the agreement includes no demand for FARC to surrender the billions of dollars worth of illegal assets that it has amassed through the drug traffic. Colombian and American taxpayers—the latter through U.S. foreign aid to Colombia—will carry the entire burden of economic reparations for FARC’s victims.

FARC’s vast illegal fortune will doubtless be used to advance its “political” agenda after it “transitions” into becoming a political party. Given the size of its ill-gotten treasury, FARC will become the wealthiest political organization in the country by far, which will seriously imperil the stability of Colombian democracy.

John Kerry FARC meeting Cuba This photo, posted on Twitter by a member of the FARC delegation in Cuba, shows US Secretary of State John Kerry meeting with FARC peace negotiators.Pastor Alape/FARC

BusinessInsider: Amid the fanfare surrounding President Barack Obama’s landmark visit to Cuba on Monday, a different US diplomatic achievement took place.

As Obama toured Havana, Secretary of State John Kerry sat down for a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a left-wing rebel group that has fought Colombian forces and paramilitaries for more than 50 years.

The meeting was the first one between a US secretary of state and the FARC since the rebels were designated a terrorist group by the US in 1997.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Special Envoy for the Colombian Peace Process Bernard Aronson, far left, meet with members of the Colombian government team holding peace talks with rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, in Havana, March 21, 2016.Colombia’s Peace Commissioner via AP

Even if Colombian and FARC negotiators conclude a peace deal, removal from the terror list could take some time. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group with extensive ties to Colombian politicians and responsible for many rights abuses, weren’t removed from the list until 2014 — eight years after they officially demobilized.

Other issues remain before a deal is finished. In March, the Colombian congress gave the government power to set up demobilization zones, where government officials won’t be able arrest FARC members.

*****

A FARC Splinter Group Has Pulled Out of the Colombian Ceasefire Agreement

Time: A splinter group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel front said on Wednesday it will not participate in a ceasefire agreement with the government, potentially derailing a resolution to nearly five decades of violent internal conflict in the South American nation.

In a statement, the Armando Rios First Front — a 200-member division of FARC — said it will not lay down arms and will continue its battle against the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos, according to Reuters.

“We have decided not to demobilize, we will continue the fight for the taking of power by the people for the people, independent of the decision taken by the rest of the members of the organization,” the statement said.

The peace deal was announced two weeks ago following more than three years of dialogue between the two sides.

The splinter group said it was calling on other FARC groups to pull out of the deal as well, reports Reuters.

Uber Top Choice for Smuggling Migrants to Border

Posted on July 1, 2016July 1, 2016 by Denise Simon

Smugglers Use Uber-Registered Drivers to Move Migrants to U.S. Border

But it’s uncertain if they used the app.

(Reuters) – Human traffickers are finding increasingly creative ways of shuttling Central American migrants through Mexico to the U.S. border and that includes hiring Uber-registered drivers.

On June 10, five vehicles carrying 34 Central American migrants were apprehended while traveling together between the northern Mexican states of Zacatecas and Coahuila, said Segismundo Doguin, a Coahuila state official at the National Migration Institute (INM).

Four of the vehicles were linked to the Uber Technologies platform, Doguin said, but it was unclear whether the human smugglers had hailed the drivers using the Uber app. The drivers said they were not the owners of the cars but worked as Uber chauffeurs, he said.

Uber Mexico said in a statement that it bore no responsibility but was cooperating with authorities.

“The company does not own the cars registered on the platform, nor does it employ the drivers, who are independent contractors,” Uber said.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of Central American children and families trying to reach the United States this year, a hot button issue in the U.S. presidential race. Republican candidate Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to keep them out.

Mexican migration officials attribute the increase to migrants finding new routes past checkpoints, increasingly through varied forms of transport.

“First we saw them on trains, then on buses, then on trucks and today we see them in rented vehicles,” Doguin told Reuters by telephone on Wednesday.

The drivers left the northern Mexican city of Monterrey and picked up the migrants in Matehuala, 323 kilometers (201 miles) further south, Doguin said. The caravan was headed for the city of Reynosa, 551 kilometers (342 miles) north, on the border with Texas.

The migrants told investigators they each paid 3,000 pesos ($162) to make the journey, Doguin said.

Uber said it does not offer services in Matehuala.

Only three of the drivers were registered in the database, Uber said. One of them was dismissed nine months ago for unrelated reasons. The other two were discharged when the INM flagged the situation, the company said.

This is not the first time Uber-registered cars have been used to ferry migrants, Doguin said.

“About two months ago, seven other vehicles were detected in the area of San Luis Potosi state … and were also in the Uber system,” he said.

Pentagon Releases bin Ladin’s Bodyguard to Montenegro

Posted on June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 by Denise Simon

Pentagon transfer Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab Al Rahabi (#Yemen 1979) from Guantanamo Bay to #Montenegro.

The transfer of Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab al-Rahabi leaves 79 detainees remaining at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo. Al-Rahabi, 37, who was brought to Guantanamo in January 2002, had been accused of being a bodyguard for the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon documents. More from Reuters.

Related reading: Baltics, Montenegro and NATO

In part from LWJ: US officials repeatedly warned that Rahabi was a threat. Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force, and a Periodic Review Board (PRB) all deemed Rahabi too dangerous to transfer. Curiously, another PRB approved Rahabi’s transfer in late 2014, just months after the same body said his continued detention remained necessary to mitigate the threat he posed.

According to a leaked threat assessment, dated Apr. 28, 2008, Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) concluded Rahabi was a “high” risk who is “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies.”

JTF-GTMO found that Rahabi was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and was also related to the al Qaeda founder by marriage.

Rahabi “swore bayat (oath of allegiance)” to Bin Laden and “received specialized close combat training for his role as a suicide operative in an aborted component” of the 9/11 hijackings, according to JTF-GTMO’s threat assessment.

US officials concluded that Rahabi was one of several al Qaeda members “designated as suicide operatives in a plot to hijack US air carriers traveling across Southeast Asia and destroy them in midair.” The hijackings were initially intended to coincide with al Qaeda’s attacks on the East Coast of the US, but bin Laden reportedly canceled them because he feared the two parts of the operation would be too difficult to synchronize.

JTF-GTMO’s analysts concluded that Rahabi “participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces and was captured with a group referred to as the ‘Dirty 30,’ which included [bin Laden] bodyguards and “a jihadist “assessed” to be the would-be 20th hijacker on 9/11. The latter individual is Mohammed al Qahtani, who is still detained at Guantanamo. Qahtani was denied entry into the US in August 2001 and eventually returned to South Asia. Qahtani was captured by Pakistani forces in December 2001 as he and more than two dozen others, including Rahabi, attempted to flee the Battle of Tora Bora.

For these reasons and more, JTF-GTMO recommended that Rahabi be retained in US custody.

President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force also determined that Rahabi was too dangerous to transfer.

The task force, which concluded its work in January 2010, recommended that Rahabi be held in “[c]ontinued detention pursuant to the [2001] Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

A Periodic Review Board (PRB) established by the Obama administration reevaluated Rahabi’s case in early 2014. The PRB determined on Mar. 5, 2014 that “continued law of war detention of” Rahabi remained “necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

That is, the PRB concluded that Rahabi was too much of a risk to transfer as well, just as JTF-GTMO and President Obama’s task force had before hand. [See LWJ report, Review board rules against Guantanamo detainee.]